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Today, the Eagles lost a game they deserved to lose.
They made mistakes. They played sloppy football. They were called for seven billion penalties. It was all very unwatchable.
The best unit on the field Sunday was Dave Fipp’s special teams squad. That was the truth very often during the Chip Kelly era, and we know how a lot of that era went, especially last season.
Today, the Eagles looked like another Chip Kelly-coached team.
The defense was very, very bad. Malcolm Jenkins’ pick-six was essentially the only good play by Jim Schwartz’s unit. They couldn’t manage to stop Washington on the ground as Matt Jones and company ran right past Fletcher Cox and the defensive line.
In the air, it was just as bad. DeSean Jackson and Pierre Garcon caught a combined 10 passes for 132 yards. Kirk Cousins was never sacked. It was just a brutal afternoon for a defense that, through three weeks, led the league in scoring defense.
As always, the defense improved as the game went on, allowing just six second-half points, but like last week, the improvement didn’t come in time.
The offense didn’t get very many chances to make plays, but when they were on the field, penalties and miscues kept them from doing very much. One big Carson Wentz play was negated by a questionable block in the back, but most of the time, the Eagles didn’t do much on the ground or in the air. Wentz tried to cobble a comeback together with XX points in the fourth quarter, but it was too late, and the defense didn’t do him any favors.
Neither did his targets: down by 10 midway through the fourth quarter, Wentz led the Eagles’ offense to Washington’s 10-yard line and, on third down, threw a pass a little high to a wide-open Zach Ertz, who let the ball slip right through both of his hands.
Then Carson Wentz tried to lead the Eagles back to a tie late in the fourth, but couldn’t manage to not get destroyed by defenders. So Doug Pederson decided to punt… after taking a timeout. Meaning he wouldn’t have all three to keep the clock from winding very, very far down.
In the ugliest game of the season, Doug Pederson looked like a rookie coach at the worst possible time.
It was the perfect, depressingly bad moment to encapsulate a depressingly bad game from an Eagles team most thought could be NFC contenders just three weeks ago.