Eagles News: Philadelphia has actually been the worst team in the NFL out of 12 personnel

Let’s get to the Philadelphia Eagles links ...

This is why the Eagles offense is so thoroughly broken - For The Win
Despite everything I just said, though, the real reason this passing game is struggling might be because what should have been a strength has become a weakness: The two tight-end sets featuring Zach Ertz and Dallas Goedert. Here’s what I thought heading into the year: With two athletic tight ends, the Eagles would be able to confound defenses with their versatility. If a defense matched those 12 personnel (1 RB, 2 TE) sets with base defense (4 DBs), Philly would have an advantage in the passing game because either Ertz or Goedert would be matched up with a linebacker. If the defense matched with sub personnel (5+ DBs), the Eagles would have a blocking advantage in the run game with a cornerback forced to join the run fit. It all sounded good on paper. Here’s the problem: The Eagles haven’t been very good out of 12 personnel. OK, that’s not 100% accurate. Per Sports Info Solutions, the Eagles have actually been the WORST team in the league out of 12 personnel in terms of expected points added. The passing game has been especially bad out of 12 personnel, ranking dead last in total EPA. On a per-play basis, the Eagles have been slightly better, ranking 31st. Only the Dolphins have been worse. That would be less of a concern if the Eagles weren’t using 12 personnel at a league-high rate. Coming into Week 13, Philly had used 12 personnel on 45% of its snaps; no other team was above 34%.

6 thoughts from the Eagles’ embarrassing loss to the Dolphins - BGN
As for Roseman, well, I’m not sure what the solution is there. Outside of 2017, the Eagles are 71-73 (including playoffs) since he first came to power back in 2010. Of course, you can’t just not count the Super Bowl year when evaluating him, that’s kind of a big deal. Roseman absolutely deserves credit for building that championship team. But was that season the outlier for Roseman? Did he just happen to push all the right buttons? Can he help the Eagles sustain success or are the Eagles doomed to be mediocre under his reign?

From the Bleachers #8: The Type of Team That Gets Flexed - BGN Radio
Shamus Clancy has an axe to grind with Ronde Barber and a lot of other Eagles related disappointments ... Powered by SB Nation and Bleeding Green Nation.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia - Iggles Blitz
I would love for Lurie to tell Doug that the Dolphins are a bad team. 3-9 isn’t an accident. But they were better than the Eagles on Sunday and what does that say? There is a need for honesty and accountability. Lurie needs to let Pederson know that he’s got two tasks right now. First, getting the Eagles into the postseason. Second, a brutally honest evaluation of the players and staff. Changes must be made in the offseason. What we’re seeing isn’t good enough. As for Howie, Lurie has to do that evaluation himself. The Eagles have made some moves that looked great on paper, but aren’t working out that way. What has gone wrong? How do you fix it? And the Eagles need more from the draft. What has gone wrong there? Changes won’t come until the offseason, but the discussions behind closed doors need to start now.

Jeffrey Lurie can’t ignore what Eagles have become - NBCSP
This isn’t a tweak. This isn’t a quick fix. This team needs an overhaul. There’s no ignoring it now. And it doesn’t start with Howie Roseman rolling up his sleeves and figuring out what moves to make. What former Eagles to bring back this time around. No, it has to start with Jeff Lurie being truly honest with himself and examining whether the personnel department needs a major restructure. Lurie will never fire Howie. But would he transition him into a role where he focuses on contracts and salary cap while a GM comes in and gains final say over personnel? It’s not unthinkable. It couldn’t hurt at this point. And Lurie won’t fire Doug Pederson, not yet. Doug still has at least another year of equity built up from that 2017 season that seems so far in the past. But certainly every assistant on the staff needs to be honestly evaluated. Some need to be replaced. Whether it’s Howie or someone else making the calls, this roster needs reconstructive surgery. The Eagles just don’t have enough impact players on either side of the ball. Their best players are linemen and most of them are older players. The Eagles need playmakers. Desperately.

No Changes Coming Now for Eagles, Why the Jaguars Are Starting Minshew - MMQB
“I’m disgusted, I’m mad, I’m angry, and I’m probably more so mad at myself,” the Philly coach said. “They wanted this a little more than we did and they made the plays and we didn’t.” That’s as strong a public indictment as you’ll hear from a coach on his team, and it’s well-placed, given the situation the Eagles are in now. So what tangible change will it lead to moving forward? That remains to be seen. I’m told in the short term, there won’t be staff changes, but the longer term could be a different story. Rumblings in midseason in 2018 held that the Eagles weren’t happy with the offensive staff following the departures of Frank Reich and John DeFilippo, and that changes could come. Then, Philly won five of six, and advanced a round in the playoffs, and coordinator Mike Groh and the rest of the offensive coaches made it through, in part, thanks to Nick Foles helping to rally the team again. We’ll see if the idea of change is revisited at the end of this year. Obviously, much will ride on how the next four weeks play out.

NFL Week 13 Team of the Week - PFF
WR Alshon Jeffery, Philadelphia Eagles. The Eagles’ receiving corps hasn’t quite lived up to the hype in 2019, but the overwhelming disappointment didn’t hold Alshon Jeffrey back in Week 13. Though they didn’t do enough to secure the victory, Jeffrey caught all nine of his catchable targets against the Dolphins, racking up 137 yards, one touchdown and eight additional first downs. He caught 2-of-2 contested targets and averaged an impressive 3.11 yards per route run, as well.

Channeling my inner-fan feeling with final quarter of the season here - PE.com
What is Pederson going to do to “shake things up” during this longer week? Not a whole lot is my educated guess. He’s going to express to his team the urgency of the moment, but that’s something the players should already know. The players are going to get it, to feel it, to be angry about it, and raise their intensity up a notch, or they’re not. The leaders in the locker room are the ones who need to set the tone during the week of practice. If players don’t buy in, they just won’t be in the plans for 2020. These are tough times, as we all know. Tough times don’t last, but tough people do, so we’re going to find out in the final quarter of the season which players really, truly want to turn this season around.

Doug Pederson says Dolphins ‘played harder than we did,’ tries to clarify it, and sounds worse - Inquirer
“As a whole, as a game, the effort, the energy level, all that was there in the game,” Pederson said. “Playing tough. Guys played hurt in the game and went back in the game, so it’s none of that. It’s the fact that there were plays to be made in that game, we didn’t make them. They wanted that aspect of the game just a touch more. They made those plays, and ultimately came out on top.” But, what is a game other than a collection of individual plays? If the Dolphins wanted those crucial plays more, played harder than the Eagles on those downs, then wouldn’t it follow that Miami wanted it more overall? Where was the distinction? One theory there would be, a coach whose calling card has always been his ability to connect with the locker room quickly realized he’d said something that could strain that bond, and he wanted to walk back his words, somehow take the sting out of them.

Beat back and forth: A guide to what we’re watching over the Eagles’ final four games - The Athletic
I’ll go with Carson Wentz’s performance. The Eagles need there to be fewer questions about Wentz going into the offseason. They should hope everybody gets sick of the offseason storyline of “Wentz’s December.” It should become as tiresome as Sam Bradford’s much-discussed “last seven games” in 2015. Because no matter what changes the team makes during the offseason, Wentz will be a constant. And the only way the Eagles will be a contender during the next few years is if Wentz is a Tier 1 or Tier 2 quarterback, to use Mike Sando’s rankings. There needs to be no debate he’s in one of those tiers. If it’s a question, it’s a concern. That means Wentz must hit his targets more consistently, avoid negative plays and play better in the fourth quarter. (Also, he must stay healthy during the final four games.) To become a 4,000-yard passer with 30 touchdowns this season, he needs to average 290 yards and 2.5 touchdowns in each of the final four games. That’s realistic. He should push his completion percentage — 62.4 percent — into the mid-60s with some high-percentage games, too. Those are statistical benchmarks to watch. But there’s also a qualitative component. We’ll see how he’s performing. The Eagles need Wentz to carry momentum into the offseason. Other than whether the team can run the table to make the postseason, this is what I’m most interested in observing.

5 biggest disappointments of Eagles’ season: Howie Roseman, Doug Pederson share blame for putrid 2019 performance - NJ.com
Wide receiver DeSean Jackson only played one full game during the first 10 weeks of the season, yet Roseman stood still and allowed the trade deadline to pass without an upgrade or comparable speed option added to the roster. Wide receiver was a need (more on that later) and Roseman felt that the best solution was to hold onto his plethora of 2020 draft picks and fix the problem with players like Greg Ward and Jordan Matthews. Those solutions weren’t bold. They were timid.

Week 13 Quick Reads - Football Outsiders
19) Carson Wentz - Wentz loses ONE-HUNDRED ONE DYAR for playing the Dolphins. All three of his touchdowns came on third downs, when he went 7-of-13 for 94 yards with a sack. All seven of those completions picked up first downs; so did his 20-yard DPI. Wentz averaged 6.7 yards per throw against Miami. Only three quarterbacks had worse averages against Miami: Sam Darnold, Case Keenum, and Brian Hoyer.

How bad are things for the Giants? Numbers tell a sad story - Big Blue View
A loss to the Philadelphia Eagles next Monday would match the longest losing streak in franchise history. The Giants lost nine straight in 1976.

Nick Foles’ Failures - Rotoworld
Just as there were reasons the Jags were willing to gamble on Foles, the same was true for why he was available in the first place. He’s a replacement-level talent, one just as capable of big plays/#QBWinz as stupefying turnovers/losing streaks. The Jags have failed to win any of Foles’ four starts. They hit on 18 before the cards had even been dealt and have a real mess on their hands. Jalen Ramsey is gone, Leonard Fournette runs like the oldest third-year pro in the league and the defense has gone from historic to mediocre in less than two years. Only the Falcons and Vikings have less 2020 cap space. Valleys are part of the Foles experience. So are peaks. It’s just hard to see where they will be coming from without Howie Roseman and Doug Pederson calling the shots. The Jags had no margin for error when they made Foles one of the league’s highest-paid players. He’s already missed the drop zone by five miles. After years of forcing the issue at quarterback — Blaine Gabbert, Blake Bortles, Foles — the closest the Jags have come to a solution is blundering into Minshew. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

How the Jaguars can navigate Nick Foles future - Big Cat Country
Yes, the Jaguars absolutely can trade Nick Foles and should be what they aggressively try to do in the offseason. Even with trading Foles you will have to eat some dead money, because of his guarantees, but it’s a lot more manageable than if you’re just cutting him. In a trade, the Jaguars would have to eat $18.5 million in dead money, but would be a net cap relief of about $4 million. The key here is, whatever team is getting Nick Foles in a trade is really only on the hook for his salary, which is not guaranteed and manageable at $15 million. If the Jaguars really felt like they needed to overall cap relief, they could also designate it a post-June trade, with a dead money hit of $6.25 million and $12.5 million in 2020 and 2021, respectively. This would give the Jaguars a net cap relief in 2020 of $15.8 million.

Week 13 NFL overreactions: The Jaguars’ Foles problem, and Kitchens will be one-and-done - ESPN
The Jaguars have major salary-cap concerns, and he’s one of them. They’d eat almost $34 million in 2020 dead money if they cut him and almost $19 million if they traded him. (And let’s be honest, they’d have to pay some of the contract if they wanted to trade him at this point.) The offseason could bring about major changes on the coaching staff and in the front office in Jacksonville, and if that’s the case, the new administration there will have major decisions to make while dancing around a monster quarterback cap number. Foles could well rebound and have a nice career in Jacksonville, but one of the main reasons they signed him was to put them over the top this season. He didn’t, and the long-range negative effects of the contract will be tough to overcome.

Dolphins sign DB Eric Rowe to three-year extension - The Phinsider
Miami Dolphins general manager Chris Grier has had a very busy 2019 season and it doesn’t appear as though he’s ready to slow down. On Monday, Grier signed defensive back Eric Rowe to a three-year, $18 million extension, per Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald. The deal comes with $7 million in guarantees.

Patriots waive kicker Kai Forbath, claim rookie defensive tackle Albert Huggins from Eagles - Pats Pulpit
Undrafted in April, the 6-foot-3, 305-pound Clemson product spent the spring, summer and early fall with the Houston Texans. The Philadelphia Eagles then signed Huggins, a two-time national champion, off Houston’s practice squad and to the 53-man roster toward the end of October. Huggins appeared in four games with Philadelphia to record three tackles. The rookie saw eight snaps on defense and two snaps on special teams against New England last month. With Huggins, New England’s active interior defensive line now stands at five. Lawrence Guy, Danny Shelton, Adam Butler and fifth-round draft choice Byron Cowart, who was ruled out ahead of Sunday’s Texans matchup due to a head injury, are in his company.

8 teams moving up, 6 moving down in the NFL Week 13 playoff picture - SB Nation
2 and 3. Dallas Cowboys and Philadelphia Eagles (but really, the entire NFC East). The NFC East is a complete wreck. The Cowboys lost to the Bills on Thanksgiving. It was ugly. And then it got worse. The Eagles have the easiest schedule down the stretch. So what did the Eagles do Sunday? They lost to the Dolphins in Miami. The NFC East might have a seven- or eight-win team hosting a home game against a 12-win team. Just wild.

...

Social Media Information:

BGN Facebook Page: Click here to like our page

BGN Twitter: Follow @BleedingGreen

BGN Instagram: Follow @BleedingGreenInsta

BGN Manager: Brandon Lee Gowton: Follow @BrandonGowton

BGN Radio Twitter: Follow @BGN_Radio