It's rare that you can point to one specific point in a game where it all started to go wrong, but today we can do that. Late in the third quarter up by nine, the Eagles had goal to go from the three yard line. A Titan defender was left completely unblocked (looked like it was on Mike McGlynn) and broke up a handoff between Kevin Kolb and LeSean McCoy. The ball came loose, the Titans recovered and it started to get ugly. The Titans would go on to outscore the Eagles 30-3 from that point on including 27 fourth quarter points.
There's a lot of blame to go around here, but let's look at the easy stuff. Four turnovers, which the Titans scored 20 points off(although one was a meaningless late pick 6), and ten penalties for 100 yards. You don't have to look very far beyond those numbers to see where thing went wrong, but let's do it anyway...
First, you just have to tip your cap to Kenny Britt who had the most receiving yards of any WR ever against the Eagles. He had 225 yards and 3 TDs, just an amazing performance from him and you can only give him credit. He absolutely dominated the pairing of Ellis Hobbs & Nate Allen on the right side of the field. They were both just made to look silly play after play. There's really not much else to say. The pass rush certainly gave them no help as they managed to get to Kerry Collins just once and barely breathed on him in the second half.
Ok let's see if I can stomach going over the offense...
Again, much like the defense this was a game where you can really spread the blame around. Kevin Kolb was not sharp, the WRs had some bad drops & slips, the offensive line was poor, and the red zone performance was abysmal. Need I say much more? No, but I will anyway.
Although his line and receivers certainly did him no favors Kevin Kolb clearly struggled today. He threw one bad pick earlier in the game and probably would thrown at least one more if not for a great play from Riley Cooper. We definitely did not see the sharpness and accuracy from him today that we saw that we had seen the last two weeks. He won't have a chance to bounce back however, as Andy Reid announced after the game that Michael Vick will be ready to go after the bye and as he had previously said will be the starting QB.
It's really hard to point to anyone on the Eagles offense who had a real good game. Riley Cooper showed some things today, but he also slipped on what would have been a crucial first down late in the game. LeSean McCoy managed just 48 yards on 16 carries. The offensive line had Kolb running around all day and didn't exactly open up holes for McCoy. The Eagles most effective runs today came from Chad Hall, who averaged almost 5 yards per carry... but that has to be in part because the Titans were surprised he got the ball. Jeremy Maclin had a big drop while the Eagles were trying to stop the bleeding late in the 4th...
The Eagles had a 9 point lead heading into the fourth quarter of the game. They lost by 18. That's a 27 point swing in one quarter. It was a total collapse and they'll be heading into their bye week with a pretty bitter taste in their mouths.