Eagles News: Enough with the pearl-clutching about Philadelphia’s Week 17 loss

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

6 winners and 2 losers from Week 17 in the NFL - SB Nation
My God, am I sick of people clutching pearls over the sanctity of the NFL over this decision. I get it, you’re really, really bitter, Giants fans — but if winning football’s worst division, in a pandemic-riddled season, when the best team on your doorstep (Dallas) was stricken with injuries is a “win,” then perhaps it’s time to recalibrate your expectations. Perhaps if you wanted New York to win the NFC East they should have won more than six games. Maybe sticking with a football dinosaur in Dave Gettleman and his mediocre “gut-feeling” quarterback Daniel Jones isn’t the answer. You shouldn’t be mad at Philadelphia, you should be thanking them. You should be bringing Eagles fans bundt cakes of questionable quality they won’t eat, and instead accept gleefully before throwing them in the trash can, because the Eagles just saved your ass.

Week 17: Odd Season Ends On Weirder Note, a Wild-Card Peek and 20 People Who Defined NFL In 2020 - FMIA
Washington 20, Philadelphia 14. WFT wins the NFC East at 7-9. Fifteen minutes after the game, I got veteran Giants DB Logan Ryan on the phone. I’d hoped he’d come out with barrels blazing. “Wish I could give you the explosive stuff you wanted,” Ryan said a few minutes before midnight. “There will be a lot of opinions about whether they were trying to win. You want to play the game to win, but I don’t play for the Eagles, I don’t coach for the Eagles. It’s their team. Winning six games doesn’t give us much right to get pissed off about this. We didn’t play consistent enough all year to earn it.”

2021 NFL Mock Draft: First-round picks for all non-playoff teams - BGN
6 - Philadelphia Eagles - DeVonta Smith, Wide Receiver, Alabama. Without knowing whatever craziness the next four months have in store, DeVonta Smith makes the most sense as the clock strikes triple zeroes on this season. DeVonta Smith was the Crimson Tide’s leading receiver in 2019 when he was splitting targets with Henry Ruggs III and Jerry Jeudy, yet he decided to come back to school. That turned out to be a great idea as he is probably going to win the Heisman after catching 20 touchdowns and being one of the most dynamic receivers in the country this season.

The Kist & Solak Show #220: Tank-A-Thon Decides the East - BGN Radio
Michael Kist & Benjamin Solak GET THEIR TANK ON! Powered by SB Nation and Bleeding Green Nation.

Handing out 10 awards from the Eagles-Washington game - PhillyVoice
8) The ‘Worst Lies Ahead’ Award. The Eagles’ 2021 offseason is likely going to be a wreck. The team is projected to be almost $70 million over the cap, and they can’t even cut a bunch of guys to be cap-compliant. They’re going to have to restructure a bunch of older players’ contracts, committing to them for years down the road, and the roster will likely continue to be bad, old, and expensive, for the foreseeable future. Forget teams like the Chiefs, or the Bills, or the Packers. The Eagles should be envious of teams like the Jaguars and Jets, who at least have maneuverability to get better. The Eagles have a least a year or two before they can even get to where the Jaguars are now.9) And Howie Roseman will still be in charge despite putting the the team in that situation. 10) And Jeffrey Lurie doesn’t seem to understand why that’s a problem.

Carson Making Moves? - Iggles Blitz
From my perspective, this is not a good look for Wentz. He’s trying to dictate terms to the Eagles after he had a disastrously bad season. Wentz needs to show legitimate accountability. You can’t fix a problem until you acknowledge that it exists. Wentz says the right catch phrases in his press conferences, but his actions don’t show a player learning from his mistakes. He keeps repeating them. It seems to me that Wentz needs tougher coaching. He was close to Frank Reich, but John DeFilippo was the QBs coach on the Super Bowl team and he was tough on Wentz. Press Taylor has been the QBs coach the past few years. He’s not much older than Wentz and you wonder if Taylor is the right guy for Wentz. They are reportedly very close, but that’s not always what you want. Some players need hard coaching, even if they don’t like it. What a mess this has become. Ugh. I thought the Eagles had their QB for the next decade. Now he might be gone after five years.

Roob’s observations after Eagles finish miserable season in tanking style - NBCSP
I like Carson. He’s a good guy, does a ton of work for charity, made a lot of incredible plays here, won a lot of games. The Eagles don’t win the Super Bowl if he doesn’t go 11-2 in his 13 starts in 2017. From 2017 through 2019, the dude threw 81 touchdowns and 21 interceptions. He was really good. But for crying out loud, I’m not sure I even want a quarterback whose only reaction after getting benched is to demand a trade. I want a guy who wants to fight for his job. A guy who believes so much in himself that he has no doubt that he’ll beat out Hurts or anybody else in a fair competition, and if there isn’t a fair competition, that if he keeps working hard, he’ll eventually get another chance and make the most of it. I want a QB who’s going to compete, who’s going to battle. Not just give up and want to leave. I find the whole “trade me” thing really disappointing.

The Winners and Losers of NFL Week 17 - The Ringer
One crappy team was sitting at home agonizing, hoping against hope that an even crappier team would beat another crappy team. Instead, the crappiest team in the division put their crappiest quarterback in. The Giants begged their most hated rival to simply care about the game they were currently playing; their rival gleefully declined. And in the most critical moment of the most critical week of the NFL regular season, a team voluntarily opted not to play its best player at the most important position. There were no other games on to distract us. Everybody had to watch a coach pretend to evaluate a quarterback he already knew sucked. It was anti-football, a middle finger to the concept that any of this matters. It was perhaps the most captivating end to a regular season I can remember.

Ron Rivera, Cleveland Browns Punch Playoff Tickets in Week 17 - MMQB
Philadelphia Eagles: GM Howie Roseman and coach Doug Pederson are likely to remain, but I don’t think anything’s fully determined yet, and there will be change at some level. Defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz is on his way out, going on his own volition with the chance that the Eagles would’ve let him go if he hadn’t. And there’s been an expectation that Pederson will look at hiring an offensive coordinator, after previous shufflings of the offensive staff haven’t worked. Either way, there’s a lot to sort through here.

Philadelphia Eagles’ Doug Pederson says he was ‘coaching to win’ against Washington, wanted to get Nate Sudfeld some reps - ESPN
Wentz plans to ask for a trade because his relationship with Pederson is fractured beyond repair, league sources told ESPN. If the Eagles move on from Wentz, they must make that decision by the second day of the 2021 league year — sometime in mid-March — because on the third day of the league year, his $22 million base salary for 2022 becomes fully guaranteed and his 2021 roster bonus of $10 million is paid out. Hurts, the Eagles’ second-round draft pick last year, started the last four games of the season. Philadelphia went 1-3 in those games. “I was granted the opportunity to lead the team,” Hurts said. “I had every intention of making it to the postseason. ... That will sit on my chest all offseason.”

Sam Darnold, Carson Wentz … Tua Tagovailoa? 10 NFL QBs who could change teams - The Athletic
Carson Wentz, Philadephia Eagles. Contract: $32 million APY (through 2024). If you’re looking for a quarterback who has proven he can stay healthy, produce consistently, weather criticism in a tough market and galvanize an NFL locker room, Wentz might not be your guy. What Wentz has done, though not lately, is perform well enough for a good team to have a great record, while making throws not every quarterback can make. Last offseason, NFL coaches and evaluators were high enough on Wentz for him to rank 12th in my 2020 Quarterback Tiers survey. Will he crack the top 20 or 25 this coming offseason? That could depend where Wentz lands. Indianapolis possesses some of the components that helped Wentz succeed in the past, notably a strong offensive line and head coach Frank Reich, who was the Eagles’ offensive coordinator (but not their primary play caller) during Wentz’s first two seasons.

NFL Week 17 PFF ReFocused: Washington Football Team 20, Philadelphia Eagles 14 - PFF
Neither offense averaged more than five yards per play in the game. Hurts completed just 7-of-20 passes for 72 yards and a bad interception to Washington rookie Kamren Curl, but Alex Smith wasn’t all that better. Smith completed 22-of-32 passes for 162 yards, two touchdowns and two interceptions. In fact, Hurts finished with a higher PFF passing grade than Smith on first review of the game. Sudfeld, on the other hand, earned a sub-30.0 PFF grade on the few snaps he took for Philadelphia.

Season ends with a 20-14 loss and a lot to talk about - PE.com
3. Hurts played three quarters and he managed things pretty well, leading the offense to 14 points. Hurts recognized when Washington brought pressure and he was decisive when he left the pocket. Hurts also threw the ball well from the pocket and, despite the threat of Washington’s speed and attacking defense, Hurts kept his composure and moved the offense. He threw an interception when tight end Zach Ertz couldn’t untangle himself from coverage. Hurts, in his fourth start, had a most impressive performance, given everything the Eagles had going on with the shifting personnel on offense.

Washington Football Team Defeats Philadelphia Eagles 20-14, Clinches NFC East Title - Hogs Haven
They didn’t make it easy, and it certainly wasn’t pretty but with a 20-14 victory over the Philadelphia Eagles, the Washington Football Team are the 2020 NFC East champions. Washington will advance to the playoffs for the first time since 2015, and the franchise’s third division title since 2012 is unquestionably as improbable as it was at times inconceivable. Washington finishes the season with a 7-9 record and will face Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers next Sunday in the first round of the playoffs.

Giants-Cowboys ‘Kudos & Wet Willies’ review: No help from Philly edition - Big Blue View
Doug Pederson — Passing up a chip-shot game-tying field goal? Even worse, basically handing Washington the division by playing Nate Sudfeld at quarterback in the fourth quarter? To think, Giants fans actually gave up sleep in the hopes that the Philadelphia Eagles would defeat Washington on Sunday night.

The Cowboys season is officially over, but what does the future hold for this team? - Blogging The Boys
Defensively, things remain very challenging. Many suspect Nolan’s days in Dallas are over, so regardless of how that plays out, the Cowboys will be facing a lot of uncertainty of whether the defensive coaching gets better. Not only that, but the team will enter the offseason with several key defensive backs hitting free agency. The 2017 draft class of Awuzie, Lewis, and Xavier Woods are all unrestricted free agents. So, what’s next for this Cowboys team? It’s hard to know for sure as there are reasons for optimistic, but also reasons for pause. At least we can finally throw dirt on this dreadful 2020 season.

Justin Jefferson sets new NFL rookie receiving yardage record - Daily Norseman
In an otherwise dismal 2020 season for the Minnesota Vikings, one of the bright spots was provided by rookie wide receiver Justin Jefferson, and in the Vikings’ season-ending victory over the Detroit Lions he put himself into the record books. With his nine-catch, 133-yard performance at Ford Field, Jefferson finished his rookie season with 88 catches for 1,400 yards. That yardage total surpassed the Vikings’ rookie record of 1,313 yards that had been set by Randy Moss in 1998 and the NFL rookie record of 1,377 yards that had been set by Anquan Boldin in 2003 for the most yardage for a wide receiver in the Super Bowl era. The 133 yards for Jefferson on Sunday marked the seventh time this season that he had gone over 100 yards in a game as well, extending both the team and the league record for Super Bowl-era 100-yard games that he had set earlier this year.

2021 NFL playoff bracket officially set for Wild Card round - DraftKings Nation
The NFL has wrapped up the regular season, which means the 2021 NFL Playoffs are upon us! The postseason will culminate on February 7th with Super Bowl 55 coming to us from Tampa, Florida. The league expanded the playoff bracket from 12 teams to 14 teams. An additional playoff team in each conference makes one particularly big change: there is only one first round bye instead of the two we have had in years past. That No. 1 seed offers that much more value than in years past.

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