Eagles News: Jalen Mills’ return has helped Philadelphia’s defense

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Jalen Mills, the man who saved the Eagles’ secondary - NBCSP
The Eagles are 22-8 over the last three years when Jalen Mills starts and 15-6 when both Ronald Darby and Mills start. Mills missed over a year with a foot injury. Darby missed the stretch run last year with a torn ACL and then four games this year with a hamstring injury. Let’s take a look at the Eagles this year with and without Mills. The difference is astonishing.

Eagles are somehow favored against the Seahawks in Week 12 - BGN
The 5-5 Philadelphia Eagles are favored against the 8-2 Seattle Seahawks this week, according to DraftKings Sportsbook. Huh? The line actually opened with the Eagles as standard 3-point home favorites, which didn’t make much sense. Accordingly, the line has since shifted to the Eagles only being favored by 1.5 points. This movement tells us a lot of money is coming in on the Seahawks’ side. And who could blame people for betting on Seattle? Not me. There are a number of things in their favor.

The Kist & Solak Show #147: Love Him to Death, They Should Cut Him - BGN Radio
Michael Kist and Benjamin Solak have reviewed the film and reveal there’s just about nothing sunny in Philadelphia regarding the offense, but there is some hope on the defensive side of the ball. Get your Eagles-Patriots film fix! Powered by SB Nation and Bleeding Green Nation.

Eagles vs. Seahawks: Five matchups to watch - PhillyVoice
While the Eagles were only able to sack Tom Brady once last Sunday, they were able to get him off his spot with consistent pressure, leading Brady to throw more incomplete passes in the first half of a game than he ever has in his long career. The Eagles will face another injury-weakened offensive line this week. The Seahawks’ OL currently looks like this:. Joey Hunt is a backup who has had to fill in for Justin Britt, who is done for the season with an ACL tear. Hunt is thought of as a good technician, but at 6’2, 300, with extremely short 30¼” T-Rex arms, he is player that a healthy Fletcher Cox should be able to feast on if he get the opportunity to do so. If the Eagles can get pressure up the middle, that would be ideal against the similarly height-challenged Wilson.

Is the ghost of Nick Foles haunting Carson Wentz? - Inquirer
“He’s going to carry around the fact that he wasn’t the starting quarterback in that Super Bowl run until he makes his own Super Bowl run,’’ said Fox Sports analyst Charles Davis, who, with partner Kevin Burkhardt, will call Sunday’s Eagles-Seahawks game. “To me, that’s part of the pressing. He wants to prove that he’s that guy,” Davis said. “It’s always going to linger there. Because you have all of these people saying, ‘Oh, yeah, he’s great. But Foles won the Super Bowl.’ I don’t care who you are. Being human, that’s going to affect you. This is a kid who cares. This is a kid who wants to be great. But he’s dealing with a lot of stuff. To me, it’s like the baseball player that wants to hit the five-run homer. You can’t do it. It’s just not possible. You’ve got to hit the ones in front of you, though. And he missed a few of those on Sunday.’’

Carson Wentz, soft schedule: Keys to an Eagles playoff push - ESPN
Wentz will ignore the proper read at times, instead trying to generate chunk plays. Given that he was down several of his top playmakers Sunday, it’s understandable that he was anxious to kick-start a sluggish offense against one of the league’s best defenses. But that can also be counterproductive: Wentz’s completion rate was 69%, and he boasted a 105 QB rating when he was getting the ball out in less than 2.5 seconds against New England, according to NFL Next Gen Stats. Those numbers dropped to a 42% completion rate and 61.7 QB rating when he held on to it longer than 2.5 seconds. That inefficiency in search of the big play proved detrimental. ”Even though he touches the ball and he is the quarterback and we ask him to do a lot, just let the offense kind of work and let the guys around you make the plays. I think that’s a takeaway,” Eagles coach Doug Pederson said. “I think maybe as the game progressed, we all maybe felt like there was a little bit of ‘pressing’ going on. We were trying to make ‘that’ play against that great defense, and you really don’t have to do that. Just let things unfold.” The injury-depleted Eagles are going to need some hero plays out of Wentz down the stretch. But the key will be recognizing when the moment calls for the spectacular and when it calls for the perfectly ordinary.

NFL Week 12 Preview: Players to watch, fantasy football advice and betting projections - PFF
Per our matchup chart, the Eagles are giving up the fewest fantasy points per game to opposing slot wide receivers and the eighth-fewest fantasy points per game to opposing tight ends. However, for the third consecutive season, they’re giving up the most fantasy points per game to opposing outside wide receivers. That means we should probably expect a below-average performance from Tyler Lockett (70% of his routes from the slot), while D.K. Metcalf and Josh Gordon should take advantage of the softer matchup on the perimeter.

QB Carson Wentz: ‘I’ll be walking that fine line my entire career’ - PE.com
“Stay ahead of the chains, be efficient on first and second down, don’t try to do too much, trust the guys around me,” Wentz said. “I feel I have done that well at times, I feel at times you try to be greedy and make plays and force the ball and that stuff happens. I have to trust what the coaches are saying, and we’ll be just fine.” Wentz uses the word “trust” a lot, particularly when he’s speaking about a receiving corps that is quite a bit different than the one the Eagles presented at the start of the season. Injuries are part of the equation, for sure, but that’s the nature of the NFL. The lack of production in the passing game, and down the field, has hampered the offense, limited Wentz, and increased the level of frustration for this 5-5 team.

2019 Fantasy Football Rankings: Running backs for Week 12 - Fake Teams
20 - Miles Sanders: Jordan Howard could be out for an extended period of time with his stinger. Sanders will operate as Philly’s lead back against a bad Seattle defense.

How Eagles’ Ken Flajole almost joined the FBI: ‘Think football is exciting, wait until you rack a shotgun on a drug bust!’ - The Athletic
The comment that kept Ken Flajole in football came in 1986 from an FBI official, not a coaching clinic or fortune cookie. “If you think football is exciting,” he was told, “wait until you rack a shotgun on a drug bust!” It came during Flajole’s in-home interview to become an FBI agent. A job awaited him; all that remained, he said, was a trip to Quantico, Va., for a physical and training. But Flajole’s wife, Teri, didn’t share the FBI official’s excitement. She heard the agent’s comment, looked at her husband and said “no way.” The prospect of a shotgun at a drug bust wasn’t enticing for a married couple with two young daughters. Suddenly, a Thursday afternoon meeting about third-down defense didn’t seem so burdensome. “After that, I made a career choice to stay in coaching,” said Flajole, who was a 32-year-old defensive backs coach at UTEP at the time.

The Drive: My huge bummer post about Jadeveon Clowney - Field Gulls
Jadeveon Clowney did not impress me. He could do what he could do, and what he did was sometimes very exciting, but the Seahawks pass rush was performing very poorly. No one owned that failure like Clowney. I feared we as fans, we as media, were anchoring ourselves to Clowney’s reputation. That we were in that mode in which excuses substituted for honest analysis. Pressure may be production as someone said recently, but pressures and quarterback hits are not equal to sacks. Entering Week 7, Clowney was on pace for 2.5 sacks in 700 or so snaps. Good run defense, pressure but very few sacks, that’s production befitting Darryl Tapp. In fact, if we prorate Clowney’s season to date, we end up with a season very much like Tapp’s one season starting 16 games.

Jaguars face do or die game against most hated rival - Big Cat Country
Jaguars starting quarterback Nick Foles laid an egg last week against the Colts and his box score looked a lot better than the actual on-field performance, but he has to rebound this week against a tough Titans defense. This is why you paid that money to Foles and why you made the switch from rookie Gardner Minshew II back to Foles. Foles is supposed to win these types of critical big moment games. Not only is it a critical game for Nick Foles, but really it’s a critical game for the Jaguars franchise as a whole. If you blow this game, while you’re still “in” the playoff hunt, for all intents and purposes you’re out of the playoffs and certainly staring down another losing season and perhaps another double-digit losing season and spiraling out of control, again.

Mike Mayock’s Debut Draft Class Is Already Transforming the Raiders - The Ringer
From Josh Jacobs to Maxx Crosby, nearly all of Oakland’s rookies are producing. The youngsters have helped propel the team to a 6-4 record, and now Jon Gruden’s squad is the most surprising playoff contender of the year.

NFL picks 2019, Week 12: The best slate all year has our experts excited, but nervous - SB Nation
Week 12 is just the fourth time ever that there will be three primetime matchups between teams with winning records.

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