While any idiot can say “Hey let’s sign every high-priced Free Agent on the market”. THE 12 focuses on what we can do with what we already have, to fix or improve our team.

QUICK knockouts in boxing usually come from punches to the head. So inexperienced fighters often fixate on (headhunting) throwing punches to the head. Even a mediocre trainer will instruct their fighter to “Work the body to bring down the head”; because punishing the body, can rob an opponent of offensive firepower, and make their arms feel heavy, loosening their defense.

Listen, there are no quick knockouts in football. No matter how hard the Eagles rock an opponent early, the game is still sixty minutes. Which just makes working the body even more important.

Running the ball is about power and will. Yes, technique is important, yes angles are important, yes quickness matters. However, the defense also has technique, they take angles, and they’re quick too. Once beef meets beef in the trenches, it’s power and will. And when you spend a day beating a man into the dirt, you break his will. You bring down the head.

The Eagles had three losses last year, and in two of them (Washington and New Orleans) we got away from our M.O. of running the ball, with just 14 handoffs in either game. We were in both games until the end, so there was never a need to get away from the run. We just sort of…did.

Instead of playing our game, our offensive coaching staff over-thought things, and played down to our opponent. Instead of doing what works, we got cute. Luckily we lost the Washington game, and it screwed our heads on straight. Had we gotten away with that game plan, who knows how far we’d have strayed from our fundamentals.

We are a running team, and we need to never lose sight of that. We’re a team that wins in the trenches! We win the street fights. We aren’t locked in here with them. They’re locked in here with US! Once the game starts, we get to play with our food for sixty minutes. So why not torture, torment, harass, and demoralize them? Punish them.

Work the body.