Eagles News: Carson Wentz is the third highest graded quarterback through three weeks

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

Rankings: NFL Quarterback Rankings following Week 3 - PFF
3. Carson Wentz, Philadelphia Eagles. Armed with the best weapons in the league on paper coming into the year, Wentz has not had the same supporting cast we expected to see. Injuries have depleted a deep receiving corps, though they showed flashes of big-play ability in Week 1. Wentz has been better than his stats would show, mostly due to four big-time throws falling incomplete compared to just 17 such instances for the rest of the NFL. Wentz ranks fifth in the league in big-time throw percentage, and he’s tied for third with a 92.9 grade on throws targeted 10 or more yards downfield.

Eagles vs. Packers Game Preview: Five questions and answers with the enemy - BGN
The Philadelphia Eagles (1-2) and Green Bay Packers (3-0) are set to play at Lambeau Field on Thursday Night Football. In order to preview this Week 4 matchup, I reached out to our associates over at Acme Packing Company. The jovial Jason B. Hirschhorn (@by_JBH) kindly took the time to answer my questions about the upcoming game. Let’s take a look at his answers! (Also, don’t forget to check out my side of the Q&A exchange over at APC.)

Are the Eagles Not Good? - BGN Radio
Jimmy Kempski and Brandon Lee Gowton get you prepped for Week 4 in their Eagles-Packers preview show with extra thoughts on the heartbreaking loss to the Lions PLUS NFL picks! Powered by SB Nation and Bleeding Green Nation.

Eagles vs. Packers: 5 matchups to watch - PhillyVoice
The Eagles’ secondary might actually be better after an obviously not 100 percent Ronald Darby went down last week against the Lions with a hamstring injury. He should be out a few weeks. That means that Sidney Jones and Rasul Douglas will start on the outside against a pair of talented wide receivers in Davante Adamas and Marquez Valdes-Scantling. Adams is one of the best wide receivers in the NFL. In 2018, he caught 111 passes for 1,386 yards and 13 TDs. He has yet to get in the end zone this season, but from 2016-2018, he had 35 receiving touchdowns, second-best in the NFL over that span. Meanwhile, on the other side, Marquez Valdes-Scantling is a 6-foot-4 receiver with 4.37 speed. Jones and Douglas will have their hands full.

Game Preview – PHI at GB - Iggles Blitz
The Eagles offense will be in for an interesting night. While the Packers have the #2 scoring D, they are 25th in run defense and allow 4.9 yards per carry. This could be the perfect week to feed Jordan Howard, Miles Sanders and Darren Sproles the rock. Let the OL tee off and let those guys run. The Packers know their run defense is an issue and you can bet they’ll be doing whatever they can to fix it. Doug Pederson has to have a good plan for throwing the ball. Luckily, Alshon Jeffery has practiced this week and is expected to play. Dallas Goedert, too. The Eagles won’t be at full strength, but they’ll be better than the previous two weeks. Pederson said he designed the gameplan with the idea Jeffery would play.

Nine questions, nine answers: Trying to find fixes for the struggling Eagles - The Athletic
My initial reaction was that people were making too much of the drops. No receiver is perfect, and every quarterback has to deal with dropped passes. Then I looked at the numbers. The Eagles have dropped 11.8 percent of their catchable passes this season, which ranks 29th. No team has dropped more overall passes (10 total). So my first reaction was wrong. The drops are a problem even when compared to league average, and it’s not just one player. No Eagle has more than two. There is no magical fix here, although a woman at my mechanic’s shop yesterday suggested the Eagles use some type of super-glue substance on their hands (you know, just in case anyone wants to pass that along to the coaches). Pederson said it best when asked by reporters Monday what the teaching points are to avoid drops going forward. “Teaching points? Catch the ball.”

How to fix the NFL’s struggling (but super-talented) offenses - ESPN In$ider
Philadelphia was better on film in the Week 3 loss to the Lions, but I want to see more quick-game pass and run plays on early downs. While rookie Miles Sanders has versatile upside at the position -- and the juice needed to be a really good player in time -- he is still developing his running style at the pro level and learning how to stay on a downhill track before bouncing outside. Veteran Jordan Howard, who has some limitations, gives the Eagles a north-south runner between the tackles, with a slight upgrade in vision. The Eagles also have to get better on the fundamentals -- I want to see much more consistency in sustaining blocks up front and catching and protecting the ball. It will help to have key pass-catchers DeSean Jackson and Alshon Jeffery back on the field after injuries, as Eagles receivers dropped seven of Wentz’s 36 attempts against the Lions, an unacceptable 19.4% drop percentage. Wentz needs his playmakers to finish plays.

Live from Wisconsin, Eagles focused on a huge moment - PE.com
Pederson is 3-0 in Thursday night games in his head coaching career. How that matters this week, well, remains to be seen. But he has stressed moving on from the loss to Detroit, wiping minds and focusing on Green Bay. That has to happen for the Eagles to win. “I think it’s just being able to focus on this week’s opponent and whatever happened the week before, we just kind of push that aside and focus on the next week. We don’t dwell on the past, and we move forward,” Pederson said. “Guys really handled their business well this week. Sometimes, too, your game plans are a little simpler, maybe. You kind of get back to core stuff and maybe that’s a wake-up call for us as coaches to keep that in mind as we go. It’s a credit to the players though for how they handle this week both physically and mentally.”

Ranking the Rookies: Week 3 - Rotoworld
9. Miles Sanders — The Eagles were down Alshon Jeffery and DeSean Jackson against the Lions, with Dallas Goedert hobbled. Three playmakers who needed to be replaced. And from the first snap, the Eagles looked to Sanders to be a major part of their formula. Sanders split far left with the Eagles in empty and saw a target go incomplete. The Eagles again lined up in empty on the second snap, this time with Sanders wide right, and the result was a 40-yard gain deep down along the sideline. Those opening plays are often scripted, so the Eagles belief in Sanders’ receiving skills continues to grow. Later he ran down the seam from his traditional backfield alignment, burned the linebackers and ended up with a 33-yard gain. He’s yet to hit a big play between the tackles, but that should come. What Sanders must fix is his fumbling. He fumbled 10 times on 308 touches in college. In this game, he fumbled another two times, losing one. Winning the turnover differential is a pillar of winning football games. Contributing to failure in that area is a major negative for a rookie.

Packers-Eagles Injury Report: Za’Darius Smith is questionable, Ronald Darby out for TNF - Acme Packing Company
The biggest concern for the Packers heading into Thursday is Za’Darius Smith. In Tuesday’s practice he suffered a knee injury, and it is serious enough to have him listed as questionable. Za’Darius Smith has been a leader on this defense and if he is not in the game it will be noticeable. Hopefully he will be ready to go come game time.

Aaron Rodgers Is the Least Impressive Part of the Packers’ 3-0 Start—and That’s a Good Thing - The Ringer
Building around a great quarterback is the easiest thing to do in football. Having one solves the hardest question in the sport. Without one, everything has to break right at the 21 other positions—see the Jaguars with Blake Bortles from two years ago. Even with a great quarterback, it’s possible to get lost in the wilderness. Drew Brees and the Saints went 7-9 for three consecutive years before the 2017 draft class brought them back into the NFL’s elite. If there is any pattern to football, it’s that success usually finds great quarterbacks. They are the easiest and quickest route to contention. It’s also easy for a team to screw up having a great quarterback. Because quarterbacks can solve so many problems, teams often leave it up to them to do so, which brings us to the 2019 Packers, who appear to have not screwed up the fact that they have Aaron Rodgers. In fact, they have built a team so good that the offense is the weak part.

An Eagles Fan Passed Away After Suffering a Heart Attack During Sunday’s Game - Crossing Broad
Spare a thought today for the family and friends of Marco Bianchi, an Eagles fan who died after suffering a heart attack while watching the game from section 131 this past weekend. Bianchi was just 38 years old, a Wilmington native who graduated from Archmere Academy and St. Joe’s University.

Inside the first-ever NFL broadcast in 4K HDR - The Verge
Fox Sports is distributing Thursday Night Football in 4K HDR for the rest of the season, which means September 26th’s matchup between the Green Bay Packers and the Philadelphia Eagles marks the first time an NFL game will be delivered in ultra high definition. It’s a big day for Fox Sports, which has been testing and preparing its 4K HDR distribution system for several weeks dating back to the preseason. Tonight marks the first time that system will be put to the test, and it’s during a national prime-time game between two very popular teams. And Fox Sports tells us that some MLB postseason games will also be in 4K HDR, so there’s a lot more to come from other sports as well.

NFL Panic Index 2019: It’s hard out here for bird teams - SB Nation
On the other hand, the Eagles aren’t that far off from being 3-0 either. The margins in their two losses were close: four points to the Falcons on the road, and three points to the Lions. They could’ve won both games on their last possession, and maybe should’ve, if not for self-inflicted wounds like drops and penalties. They are also dealing with so many injuries that they canceled practice one day last week. Still, Philly is two games back of Dallas in the NFC East standings, and the schedule doesn’t get any easier from here. In the next five weeks, the Eagles hit the road four times: against the Packers, Vikings, Cowboys, and Bills. Through Week 3, those teams are a collective 11-1. Panic index: You know who else lost to the Lions in Week 3 to slip to 1-2? The 2018 Patriots. Maybe the jawn isn’t falling after all, Eagles fans. There’s still time to turn things around.

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