What’s Wrong With the Eagles?

What’s Wrong With the Eagles?

Viewed by many as a Super Bowl contender prior to the season, the Eagles are sitting at .500 with a crucial game against the Dallas Cowboys coming up. An embarrassing loss to the Vikings dropped them to 3-3 when they had a chance to take full control of the division. Why do the Eagles look more like a middle-of-the-pack team than an NFC powerhouse? Let’s examine…

1. The Injury Bug Bites Yet Again

The Eagles injury luck has been ridiculously bad over the past few seasons. Questions have arisen about the training staff’s performance, and after several years now of the team being decimated by injuries, maybe we should take a good, hard look at them. The cornerback position, already the weakest part of the team, has once again been torn apart. Ronald Darby wasn’t fully healthy after tearing his ACL last season and then hurt his hamstring a few weeks ago. Jalen Mills hasn’t played in nearly a full year thanks to some foot injury. Sidney Jones doesn’t have functioning hamstrings. Cre’Von LeBlanc, one of last season’s heroes, hasn’t played a snap this season because of a Lisfranc sprain. Avonte Maddox has been out since the Green Bay game due to a concussion and neck sprain. The defensive tackle position has been decimated as well. Fletcher Cox has been recovering from a January foot injury. Malik Jackson was lost for the season in Week One. Timmy Jernigan went down the following week. 

Our offense has looked lost since DeSean Jackson suffered an abdominal injury early on against Atlanta in Week Two. Dallas Goedert and Alshon Jeffery have missed time. Jason Peters has been constantly in-and-out of games and isn’t slated to play against Dallas.

Sometimes you just get unlucky with injuries, but when this is the third straight year you’ve been “unlucky”, there’s a problem.

2. The Cornerbacks, Injured or Not, Suck

Philadelphia doesn’t have good cornerbacks. They haven’t had a consistently good corner since Asante Samuel was still roaming the secondary nearly a decade ago. We’ve seen the lowest of the low in CB play over the years, but it never hurt as much as it does now because we’re supposed to be contenders. Even when the CB room is healthy, we don’t get quality play from them. Darby has had his good moments, but he’s not on the field enough to piece them together. Mills and Jones are toaster strudels when they do play. Douglas is easily our best cover man, but his lack of speed severely hampers him in certain matchups. Watching Stefon Diggs torch him time and time again reminded me of when Green Bay’s Ladarius Gunter attempted to stop Julio Jones in the 2016 NFC Championship. You can’t be a 4.6 guy and expect success. 

Howie Roseman, once adored by the fans, is starting to draw tons of criticism for his refusal to put real assets into the CB position. Jalen Ramsey was there and he just didn’t do enough to get him. Ramsey is better than whatever the two first-rounders (Rams got him two firsts and a fourth) would’ve turned out to be. The Eagles draft record isn’t good either, so why not invest in a known commodity? One anonymous Eagles player even ripped into the team for not getting a deal done. His exact words were, “We dropped the ball. I don’t even want to talk about that (expletive).” 

I hope Philadelphia doesn’t expect Jalen Mills to walk through the door after such a long absence and begin clamping receivers. 

3. Carson Wentz Has No Help

There are several people who have failed to realize that Carson Wentz is playing ELITE football this season. His ability to extend plays is comparable to only Patrick Mahomes, Russell Wilson, and Deshaun Watson. Wentz is a perfect example of why traditional stats just cannot show the full picture of what a player is doing. Take a glance at the leaderboards and you may think that Dak Prescott is playing better than Wentz, but just watch one game from each of them and you’ll realize it’s the complete opposite. The issue with the Eagles offense is that the receivers are not helping anyone. They’re dropping passes, they’re being pushed out of bounds by imaginary forces, they’re not getting separation, etc. Once DeSean Jackson left the lineup, everything just fell apart. Alshon Jeffery has been hurt and ineffective, Nelson Agholor fell off the face of the Earth, Mack Hollins makes no impact outside of special teams, and J.J. Arcega-Whiteside makes us regret passing on D.K. Metcalf with every passing week. There’s no vertical threat since Agholor forgot how to track deep passes. Currently, our best pass-catcher outside of Zach Ertz is Miles Sanders… a rookie running back.

Obviously developing a strong run game is a great way to open up a poor passing attack, but when your opponent is going to score every time they have the ball, you can’t keep up that way. If Jackson doesn’t return soon, it may be too late when he does.

4. Slow Starts

This has been a problem throughout the two years of the Mike Groh era. The Eagles start slow every single game. They stumble out of the gate every single week. By the end of the first quarter, you can expect Philadelphia to be down by two scores. Last week against Minnesota they were down by 21 before they scored their first touchdown. The offense cannot come out flat when they get the ball. The defense is struggling, and starting out with an early deficit isn’t helping. There’s just no reason that a team with a QB this talented and an offensive line of this caliber can’t come out and punch someone in the mouth. For me, the blame has to go to Mike Groh. He never should’ve been promoted to OC in the first place, and I’m not sure if the team will realize in time that he isn’t the answer and was never the answer. 

What Isn’t the Problem?

- Carson Wentz isn’t the problem. He is doing all he can and his receivers refuse to assist him. It’s completely unfair to our franchise QB.

- The issues on the defensive line are overblown. They haven’t been as potent as we have hoped, but when coverage is breaking down in two seconds, there isn’t much they can do. You can see the pressure numbers are there, but there’s just no way for them to get sacks with receivers running rampant through the secondary.

- Jim Schwartz is still a good coordinator. He needs the talent to work with, just like every other coach. We all want him to blitz more and play the DBs up, but with the lack of talent on the outside defensive backfield, things like that aren’t possible. Blitzing leaves guys like Sidney Jones in 1-on-1 matchups, and that’s just not something you want. If you see the way Rasul Douglas has been outrun on some big plays, you’d understand why it’s not ideal to have him near the line of scrimmage. Bringing in Jalen Ramsey would’ve really allowed Schwartz to do more on defense, but for now, don’t expect any sweeping changes.

-By: Micah Jimoh