Eagles-Browns winners and losers

The Eagles are 1-0 after defeating the Browns 29-10 thanks to some good performances by the Eagles and bad ones by the Browns. Let’s take stock of the winners and losers from the game. They won’t always be this easy.

Winners

The Eagles

Duh. They won. But it wasn’t just that they won, it was how they won, which was very encouraging. They were the only team to win by double digits on Sunday.

Carson Wentz

Wentz had a strong debut. Yes it was against Browns. So what. The rookie made two beautiful throws for touchdowns and had a few other good passes as well. He looked pretty poised and in command of the offense the whole game. For a week, he silenced the doubters.

Doug Pederson

The rookie head coach was an uninspiring hire for many, but his debut in a competitive game was pretty impressive. He and his staff put together a good game plan and adjusted well. In the 2nd quarter the offense seemed to get a little stale and conservative but they adjusted and came out slinging in the 3rd. When it came time to just grind the clock out, Pederson didn’t fool around and kept the ball in the hands of his running backs. And he went for it on 4th down when and where many other coaches would have been content to punt.

Jordan Matthews

Matthews had himself a really good game. He not only had one of the most productive games of his career, he didn’t look out of place playing on the outside. And after a bad drop to start the game, he was a reliable target the rest of the day.

Losers

The Browns

They not only lost the game, they did so to the QB they proclaimed wasn’t good enough for them to draft. The Browns plan to add talent to a bad roster before drafting a QB isn’t a bad one, but their comments specifically about Wentz had big potential to backfire. And on Sunday, they did. Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

Hue Jackson

Jackson was seen by many (including yours truly) as the one eyed man in the land of the blind that was the 2016 coaching pool. He had a terrible game. The fake punt that wasn’t really a fake punt was just an awful decision. If you’re going for it with your punt team, you’re not fooling anyone by lining up the punter on the line of scrimmage. It was almost as bad as the Colts fake punt last year. The rest of his game wasn’t much better. RGIII appeared to be hurt near the end of the game and Jackson put him back in for garbage time. The Browns offense was two big plays and nothing else. Hue Jackson is an experienced head coach. On Sunday he got outcoached by a rookie.