OUR little trip did not go well….
EAGLES 9 – Buccaneers 32
Note: With all the speculation immediately following the game, I wanted to hang back a day or two, before putting my take out there. What’s the point of being one more voice yelling, right? Instead, I chose to step back a bit, then mosey up, once I didn’t have to raise my voice to be heard.
EAGLES STATS:
Passing: QB Jalen Hurts (25/35 – 71.4 – 250 – 1 – 0)
Rushing: RB D’Andre Swift (10 – 34 – 3.4 – 0 – 0)
Receiving: WR Devonta Smith (12 – 8 – 148 – 18.5 – 0)
Offensive Line Report: (TFL: 5/ Sacks: 3/ Scrums Won: 0/ Scrums Lost: 1)
Drive Killer: NA (TD: /Int: / FR: / 4th down stops: / FF: )
Sack Leader: DE Brandon Graham (Sacks: 1.0/ FF: 0/ Tackles: 3) *3TFL
Special Teams Ace: NA
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I hear you asking, “What about all the stuff that stats don’t reveal?” Well, that’s the reason for these Four Things articles. It’s to point out what we need to address BEFORE the game. Then AFTER the game, there’s a no-bullshit assessment of whether or not the Eagles did any of what they needed to do, to ensure the win.
So how much of what I mentioned in Four Things: BUCCANEERS did the Eagles actually get around to doing? Well let’s see:
1) Run To Set-up the Pass: Considering that Hurts dislocated a finger on his passing hand just a week ago, the smart money was on the team leaning on the run in this game. At the half, Swift had 4 carries for 16 yards.
Was our passing game helping us score points at a blistering pace? No. We had 9 points at the half. Then we of course, made no adjustments after the half. Which of course, resulted in us scoring 9 fewer points, in the second half. Maybe you are wondering why we didn’t run the ball, like we did when we beat this team a few months ago.
Well, Head Coach Nick Sirianni figured, if running the ball was the obvious thing to do, then of course he shouldn’t run the ball, thereby taking his opponents by surprise. But his opponents would expect him to deduce that, so of course he should run the ball. Ah ha! Laughable that they would think that he’d fall for such an amateurish ploy! So instead, Coach Nick poisoned all of our cups. And Tampa watched as we all died. Brilliant. (NOT DONE)
2) Get the Ball Out Quickly: The idea (again) was to help the QB with the injured finger. Here’s a copy and pasted excerpt from Four Things : Give him some short routes, especially over the middle, where he can take advantage of a blitzer. The Buccaneers like to blitz S Antoine Winfield Jr., and they need to be made to pay for that.
Instead, the plan was to hold the ball forever, in the face of the blitz, and try to force deep passes to a VERY covered Devonta Smith. And shit kiddies, sometimes it even worked!
Other times, the plan was to rely on a play that hasn’t worked all season: The WR Screen. Everyone look under your chair! WR Screens for everyone!!! You get a Screen! And you get a Screen! And you get a Screen! And Devonta already covered in the backfield? He gets a Screen too! See my forehead? Yeah, put the bullet right here. Right the fuck here! (NOT DONE)
3) Challenge the Throws: The idea was for the Secondary to contest throws, but you have to be somewhere in the zip code of the receiver, or not running into each other, to contest passes.
In this game (and for the last month), this Secondary has convinced me that a group of blind kindergarteners, couldn’t possibly be worse at covering NFL receivers. And it just kept getting worse and worse! Luckily, the season has ended. Because at this rate of decline, I am abjectly terrified to find out what they’d look like, in another two weeks. (NOT DONE)
4) Box the MLB: Keeping the MLB in the box, instead of dropping him into a shallow zone, would force the Bucs to assign a blocker to him, which wouldn’t allow them to double team a defensive lineman. Today instead of LB Nick Morrow (10 – 0.0 – 0 – 0) playing the middle, LB Zach Cunningham (9 – 0.0 – 0 – 0) took over those duties.
Early on, seeing Cunningham in the box made me feel great. Then an offensive lineman sauntered out to block him, and Cunningham stuck to that block like Velcro. (Aw, noice!) We were frequently gashed vs the run early, but the front seven seemed to settle things down somewhat later in the game.
Also, to his credit, Cunningham did get his hands on two passes over the middle, nearly intercepting one of them. (DONE)
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So this week we completed just 1 of the Four Things, as the score indicates. Next stop, the Hefty bags outside of our lockers.
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Game Hero: Devonta Smith – The young man balled out. Using his killer route running, he still put up nearly a buck fifty, despite the opposing secondary keying on him, as our only downfield threat. Anyone wondering if he could be #1 WR, just had that question resoundingly answered. If this team had a legit Slot who worked the middle of the field, this Offense would break scoreboards.
Game goat: The coaching staff – The shitty gameplan was bad enough, but not making adjustments after the half is unforgivable. Anyway you cut it, we’re getting new coordinators. The only question is, are we also getting a new coach? We’d be stupid to fire Sirianni, but then again, I said it was stupid to fire Doug Pederson.
On The Whole:
At no point did some of our players look fired up about playing in this game. For many of our players, this game was the first opportunity towards “unfinished business”. However, for guys who weren’t here last year, and who came from teams with cultures of failure, the stakes were not the same for them. That motivation simply didn’t exist.
There was also an air of tightness about the team. (Has been for weeks now.) The play, the play-calling… All of it seemed less geared towards succeeding, and more geared towards not failing. The trust was gone. The energy was gone. The joy was gone. Football is a hard sport to win when one of those is missing, but it’s impossible to win when all three are.
Picking on individual aspects of this loss, is a pointless endeavor. Especially since many of the failings will change with new personnel. I however, need to discuss the Eagles inability to handle the blitz, and the Secondary’s inability to play defense.
Jalen Hurts is in his fourth year as a professional, and his third as a starter. Despite that, the kind of blitzes that the Bucs threw at him, are the kind that teams throw at rookies. And Hurst responded like one, with rushed throw aways, and backing up extra steps, from the Shotgun.
His inability to punish a blitz, comes down to one of two possibilities. The first is, perhaps our coaches aren’t allowing him the freedom to change even a single route, upon recognition of a possible blitz. The second possibility is, Hurts simply isn’t smart enough to read, process, and adjust to increased pressure. Only one of those can be fixed with coaching. The other says the Eagles need to draft a 1st round QB.
As for the Secondary, coverage, tackle angles, tackle execution, all of it. These are the things they get paid to do. None of them are paid to run city government, or build spacecraft, or handle spin control for Kanye West. And yet, to a man, no one was doing what they get paid to do out there.
Easy knee-jerk response is “Cut ‘em!”. With guys on one year deals? Sure! See ya! Bye! However, not everyone’s contract will allow for that, without putting the Eagles on the hook for dead money, on par with that of a rebuilding team. So we have to tread lightly here. Weakening ourselves, is strengthening our division rivals.