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The Philadelphia Eagles picked up their fifth loss of the 2014 NFL season on Sunday with a loss to the Dallas Cowboys. (Recap)
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The Eagles moved to 9-5 on the season.
Now that the game is over, let's assign a letter grade.
Overall grade: F
Bad.
Offense: F
The Eagles gained 294 yards of offense on 53 plays, which comes out to 5.5 yards per play. That's not terrible. But the yards didn't match the points. The Eagles committed three offensive turnovers: two interceptions by Mark Sanchez and one incredibly untimely fumble by Brent Celek. Speaking of the former, Sanchez had a really bad game. He missed open throws and didn't make good decisions. He looked like what is to be expected out of a backup quarterback. Sanchez finished with 17 completions on 28 attempts for 252 yards (9.0 average), zero touchdowns, two interceptions, and a 60.4 rating.
The run game wasn't great either. 75 yards on 21 carries for a 3.6 average is less than stellar. LeSean McCoy's 64 yards on 16 attempts wasn't anything special.
Defense: F
38 points. This unit just didn't get the job done. The Eagles did manage to shut down DeMarco Murray again; he only finished with 81 yards on 31 carries for a 2.6 average despite his two touchdowns. But the Eagles just couldn't handle the Dallas passing attack. Tony Romo made some great throws and Dez Bryant made some great catches. The Eagles secondary just wasn't good enough. Bradley Fletcher, Cary Williams, Brandon Boykin, Malcolm Jenkins, and Nate Allen were all burned or beaten at points. Just not good enough.
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Special teams: D-
The gaffe on the opening kickoff really set a bad tone for the game. Many will be eager to blame Josh Huff, but I don't know. How many balls bounce back on kickoffs like that? And should Brad Smith have stayed behind? No matter who deserves the blame, it was a failure of epic proportions.
This unit avoided an "F" because Cody Parkey made two important field goals and Donnie Jones had a decent game punting.
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What's your grade?