FanPost

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - Week 2

Andy out-coached Doug.

The Good.

1. Carson Wentz. The numbers were only part of the story today, but for only the second time in his career, Carson threw back to back 300 yard games. He was forced to throw the ball 46 times, which leads me to believe Doug isn't going to give him a rest any time soon with the way this running game is going, but he connected on 25 of those balls (54%) but averaged a respectable 7.2 yards per attempt.

He threw for 333 yards, 2 TDs, and 1 Interception, but to be honest, Doug called a very poorly timed screen that was sniffed out by the defense and extremely poorly executed by the offensive line, causing pressure and a tip leading to the interception. Conversely, Carson probably escaped at least one or two other interceptions, including the extremely lucky completion to Ertz at the end of the half that led to a circus catch, but bounced right off of the defender in coverage.

Additionally, Wentz may have had the most impressive day running the ball in his pro career, making a number of impressive runs, including a 3rd and 13 scramble that he converted with a headfirst dive in the 4th quarter. He continued to make plays on his own while his offensive line allowed pressure to the QB all day. Wentz had another big run for a first down in the 4th quarter, juking out at least 2 defenders along the way. He ended the day with 55 yards on the ground for a 13.3 average yard per rush. I would actually like to see more designed QB runs.

Ultimately, Wentz wasn't perfect, but he made some impressive touch passes to Smith and Jeffery all day. I thought Smith should have came away with the back shoulder TD grab in the first quarter. The final TD throw to Agholor was also very good. You get the risk with the reward from Wentz. He can be erratic at times, but ultimately it was him who kept the birds in this game offensively.

2. Eagles receivers. Zach Ertz continues to be Wentz' favorite target, leading the team in receiving yards for the second straight week (5 receptions for 97 yards, 19.4 yards per reception). Ertz continued to be especially clutch on third down. I don't have the stats on it, but it seemed like Ertz made multiple third down receptions again this week.

Alshon Jeffery had his breakout game. There were times I felt like he could've came away with catches, but he finished the day with 7 receptions, which led the team, and 13 targets, which also led the team. He got his first TD as an Eagle and finished the day with 92 yards. Overall, I thought Alshon was running routes well and making plays that we brought him in to make.

Torrey Smith, Darren Sproles, and even Mack Hollins had good days as well, combining for 9 catches and 128 yards. I thought Smith missed the first quarter potential TD pass, albeit it being a tough catch, he didn't get much air on his jump and it was a nice back shoulder throw. But Smith made up for it with a few other nice catches and a 16.5 yards per catch average, even though he may be tagged with a couple drops on the day.

It was good to see Mack-10 step up in Marcus Johnson's absence.

Agholor's toe-tapping touchdown late in the game was also very nice. It was his only catch of the day, but he's certainly looking like an improved player. His season totals are now 7 receptions, 95 yards, and 2 TDs. He started off hot last season too, so let's hope he can sustain it this year. Agholor also beat a defender causing the CB to hold him, and the refs caught it, giving the Birds an auto first down. His contributions go beyond the stat line.

3. Eagles Pass rush. Eagles D-Line continued to prove that they're for real. Fletcher Cox is opening up with the additions of Timmy Jernigan, netting at least one sack in back to back games to start the season. Mychal Kendricks and Chris Long also had one sack each, while Jernigan and Graham each netted 0.5 sacks on the day.

Overall, I thought the D-line did great in containing Kareem Hunt all day. He broke free in the third quarter, but limiting him to 109 yards sounds worse than it was. The one gain accounted for about 50 yards on the ground, and besides that, he only rushed for about 30 yards on the other 12 carries. I'm not entirely worried about that big play. It was great blocking by K.C. and Corey Graham, the third string Safety, was the one who missed the open field tackle in McCleod and Watkins' absence. Unfortunate timing.

Moving forward, the Eagles D-Line will continue to wreak havoc on opposing offenses. Alex Smith was held to 251 yards and 1 TD after lighting up the Patriots a week before. Granted, that's not a total shut down, and he did have some big rushing plays on the day too, but Carson Wentz was the best player wearing #11 today, and a lot of that was due to the defensive line being a force.

Vinny Curry made a few impressive stops on Hunt in the backfield, having one tackle for a loss out of the teams 6. Cox, Jernigan, Kendricks (2), and Long had the others.

4. Individual Defensive performances:

Mychal Kendricks deserves credit for his play so far this season. He had a great day today, netting 1 sack, 2 tackles for a loss, and 4 solo tackles, one of which was a very nice hustle play to knock Hunt down preventing him from getting a big gain. So far, I'm glad we didn't trade Kendricks.

Malcolm Jenkins continues be one of my favorite players. He played Travis Kelce fairly well all day, albeit Kelce putting up 108 yards and a TD. Jenkins wasn't covering Kelce one on one every play once McCleod and Watkins went down with hamstring injuries, but early on he was blanketing him. Jenkins just continues to be one of the smartest players on the field and one of the Eagles' best tacklers and most versatile defenders, proving he can still cover well.

Rasul Douglas. Douglas had a solid debut performance, showing us he's not afraid to make a tackle, stopping Kelce on one hurdle attempt, and breaking quickly on a few routes, hitting Hill and another receiver hard right after they made the catch. He also had a very nice pass defense early in the game. It may have been a different ball game if Darby was in, because the Eagles corners actually hung in there against a very explosive Chiefs offense.

5. Darren Sproles. Yes, he had a big fumble, and that was ugly, but he was also making a lot out of nothing in the running game today, proving to be the one bright light in a very dismal rushing attack. Sproles finished the day with 78 total yards, which is saying something considering the other 2 Eagles running backs finished with a COMBINED NET YARDAGE of 1 yard....yes, one yard total.

6. Heart. Wentz has heart, along with the rest of the offense. The final drive he pieced together showed he wanted to win really, really badly. Even the Hail Mary throw was pretty spot on. I have to say, I feel like Wentz is a true leader out there and it looked like that loss really got to him. This is encouraging leadership and emotional intelligence from a young QB.

7. Onside kick. The rookie kicker made a nice kick, but Burton made an even nicer tip to knock it away from the Chiefs ST player and recovered it on his own as well. The Eagles ST unit continues to be a very strong part of the team.

The Bad.

1. The running game. Sproles finished with 48 yards on the ground on 10 carries (4.8 YPC), Smallwood finished with 4 yards on 3 carries (-3 yards receiving), and Blount finished with 0 yards rushing, and 0 yards receiving (on one catch)....

I'm not sure why Blount was yanked from the game. He was given no rushing attempts on the day. I saw him fully dressed with his helmet on while standing on the sideline throughout the game, but didn't hear anyone say he was hurt. If so, I apologize, I missed that announcement. I have him on my fantasy bench and he wasn't listed as hurt either, for whatever that is worth.

The offensive line is to blame in part for this, but the Eagles managed to get Sproles going fairly well, so it isn't a total excuse. The lack of running game is part of the reason Wentz is forced to throw the ball so much. I still think Doug needs to do a better job at managing the balance either way, because his attempts at mixing in the screen game as a running substitute is not working.

2. The offensive line. Wentz was under pressure a lot in back to back weeks. Yes, both opponents had solid defensive lines, but there were blatant missed blocks all game. Lane Johnson got beat by Justin Houston frequently, Sproles was asked to block too much on passing downs (spoiler alert, it didn't go well), Jason Peters had a false start, Jason Kelce had a holding call and a blown assignment that led to the first Wentz fumble, and Issac Seumalo got burned leading to a handful of Wentz sacks as well. Seumalo may be a growing concern for this team moving forward.

The Chiefs got a hold of Wentz 6 times today for sacks, and had 10 tackles for loss. Those are putrid numbers.

On top of that, there was no where to run for the backs today. Terrible performance.

3. Doug's late game play calling. I am now officially on Team No Screen. Doug called 2 or 3 screen calls during the Eagles two minute drill at the end of the game, and not one of them worked. At one point, Wentz saw the defender approaching Sproles and chucked it in the dirt to save him. I even noticed the announcer caught that one.

On the interception, I honestly think that was a combination of the line getting blown back in Wentz' face causing the tip, but also a terrible play call. Doug just has a way of putting Wentz in a bad situation. The screen play wasn't working all day, nor did it work last week, and he calls it so often it's almost predictable.

At the time, the game was tied 13-13, Eagles were backed up in their own territory, and he continued to call risky screen pass calls that led to big plays for the defense.

On the day, the Birds passed the ball 46 times and ran it just 13 times (excluding scrambles by Wentz). If you factor in the 4 Wentz rushes as passes (they were designed passes), the Eagles called 50 passes to only 13 rushes. That is a 79.4% passing to 20.6% rushing...Extremely off-balanced. Part of that is explained by the lack of O-Line play, again, but where was Blount? Where was Clement? If Smallwood isn't panning out, do you just give up? Sproles was having success, so why only give him 10 carries? 4.8 yards per rush is very legitimate, and he especially had success on shotgun runs to the outside, a formation Doug uses frequently.

I also didn't liked how much Doug uses Sproles as a pass blocker. Sproles has never been good in that position, and a big part is his size. At the end of the game, on the second to last Eagles drive, on third down, a defender literally jumped over Sproles and wrapped up Wentz forcing him to throw it away. Another play, the linebacker came in through the A Gap on a shotgun play action and Sproles missed it, leading to a sack.

Speaking of play action, Doug kept calling it! The Chiefs knew we weren't going to run the ball with under 2 minutes to go, 2 timeouts, and down by 2 touchdowns...All that did was give the K.C. pass rush more time to cause pressure on an already struggling offensive line. Just doesn't make sense....

At one point, the Eagles ran a play and the clock was at about 1:05 and Doug let it run down by about 7 seconds before calling a timeout. He needs to be quicker. If you don't think that matters, think back to onside kick where he was arguing over 2 seconds, saying the clock should read 0:07 when it actually read 0:05. That could have allowed us to run another play before the Hail Mary and save that timeout to run a higher percentage play, use the timeout, and run a higher percentage play in the end zone instead of the Hail Mary. Doug's indecisiveness there actually could have been the difference between a win and a loss...

4 Stamina? The Eagles totally got worn down by Hunt and Kelce at the end of the game. On K.C.'s final touchdown scoring drive, the Chiefs had their way with the Eagles. Kareem hunt pushed through Beau Allen, Jordan Hicks, and various other tacklers on his extended arm TD run...Should never happen.

The Ugly.

1. Injuries. McLeod left with a hamstring injury, and he looked pretty upset as he left when Malcolm Jenkins said some words of encouragement to him as he headed to the locker room. McCleod is a very solid Safety and his presence is one of the main ways to supplement our thin corner back talent. He was also a force in run defense, and with him gone, the Eagles may be in trouble.

Jaylon Watkins also got hurt with a hamstring injury and didn't return, which normally wouldn't be devastating news, except for the fact that McCleod was already hurt, and newly acquired Corey Graham is now projected to be the starter (or Maragos?). With these two out, I doubt Jenkins will slide to the slot, which also hurts because of Darby's absence and our thin depth at CB as it was.

Cox was injured at one point as well, luckily he returned to the game. Something to keep an eye on.

2. The Fumble. Sproles can't fumble that punt 1 minute before half time deep in his own territory. He tried to do way too much and in an effort to gain an extra,measly five yards, he coughed it up and it led to points on the board for the opponent. Unacceptable. I think Sproles had a good day otherwise, and for that I put this in the ugly column and not the bad column for Sprolesy.

3. The Deep ball. Wentz looked much more sharp downfield today than he did against the Skins, but two plays in particular stood out to me. The first was the deep ball to Ertz before half. I know it ended up being a fun play, but man-oh-man it was lucky it wasn't picked. And Wentz knew it. He was seen shaking his head as he came to the sideline.

The other was the deep miss to Jeffery down the middle as Wentz extended the play. There was an offensive holding, so it would have came back anyway, but it shows that he was still a bit off. He looked like he threw it as hard as he could, and it wobbled a bit short and left, so I think it may have slipped out of his hand (he was also rolling left), because we've seen him throw further before.

The Hail Mary was nice, which is a bit of a consolation, and he made some decent throws beyond 20 yards today too.

4. The missed Field Goal. People forget that kickers are people too. With Sturgis out, the Birds signed a 5th round rookie from the Bengals, who came in and unceremoniously missed his first field goal attempt of his professional career. it was an opportunity to tie the game before half, and represented a missed opportunity to score on a big play. Not acceptable. Get well soon Caleb.

5. Whiffed Sacks. As good as the D-Line played, Smith should have been sacked at least 2 or 3 times more than he did, and 2 of them were on third down, one was in field goal range (they ended up getting a TD on that drive).

That last missed sack was complementary of Vinny Curry, who had his arms around Smith and swung himself off, allowing Smith to scramble for the first down. Another obvious missed sack came from Chris Long, who came around the edge and just couldn't catch up to Smith after stumbling to make the tackle.

These types of misses are huge. Sacks are drive killers, and some the missed sacks led to points. Come on guys, wrap up.

In fact, a few missed tackles stood out to me today. Hunt is a beast, but Corey Graham sat on his heels on the long 50+ yard Hunt run and let him run around him, narrowly missing his legs on the diving attempt.

On the Travis Kelce jumping into the end zone play, Jordan Hicks, who had a solid game, whiffed on Kelce at around the ten yard line. On the replay, they showed him read the pass coming, but he hesitated allowing Kelce to run around his tackle attempt.

Conclusion.

I'm disappointed in the outcome, of course, but then again the Chiefs are a very good team, and they have great home field advantage, and we hung in there with them. That is something to be encouraged about. It's early in the season, but there's a lot to be encouraged about, despite the frustrations.

Although I don't think it is a season defining loss, it is disappointing to see them come within reach and shoot themselves in the foot once again. It needs to get better.

Winning would've put Philly in a great position within the division, as all the other division rivals have tough games today: Dallas at Denver, Washington at LA Rams, and Giants against the Lions. If the Cowboys lose, Eagles retain the tie for first, but it could've been in their own hands if they just could've finished today.