The Philadelphia Eagles throw a game in awful fashion during OT vs. the Tennessee Titans in Nashville.
Introduction
In this post I will be focusing on the three key reasons why the Eagles threw away a win in overtime against the Titans this weekend. The Eagles had some bright spots in the offense with Alshon Jeffery coming back after his injury, Carson Wentz, and Zach Ertz. The glaring issues from the first three weeks with our secondary defense, shaky offensive line, and killer penalties have not been resolved still. These problems keep showing that the Eagles might be still in the Super Bowl hangover state, because they do not look like the team that just won a Super Bowl even though most of the roster has stayed intact. Eagles were up 17-3 at one point then lose 23-26 in OT.
1. The secondary week after week is being exposed.
Another week the same old story of the Eagles secondary just being picked apart from the opposing teams QB. Seems like a regular occurrence, but Jalen Mills is still a really bad corner back. So there have been two consistencies this season so far for Jalen Mills and that is, one being beat by every single double move a wide receiver puts on him, and/or second he is committing a pass interference call that results in giving the opponent great field position or big chunks of yards because it was a 20+ yard penalty down field. So until the Eagles move Jalen Mills to a safety position from corner back and let Sidney Jones play on the outside in a corner role nothing is going to change. Next is the OT drive that the Eagles lost the game on. The Titans were able to convert on three 4th downs on their game winning drives. The first 4th down was surely the downfall of the game and looked like it pretty much sealed the Eagles fate in this game because it was a 4th and 15. The only thing our secondary needed to do was play contain defense make Marriota throw the ball short of the 1st down marker and tackle the wide receiver and the game would have been over, but of course it’s Philadelphia sports we liked to just throw games away like it’s nothing. The secondary just stood still and didn’t even react to a wide open receiver for the Titans who caught the ball and easily went out-of-bounds for the 1st down. The following 4th and 4 was just handed to the Titans because the secondary was flagged for a pass interference. Then finally a 4th and 2 was easily converted for a big gain from a screen pass to the Titans running back giving the Titans all of the momentum and setting up the game winning TD pass in the dying seconds of overtime.
2. Offensive line was non-existent along with questionable play calling from a usually aggressive Doug Pederson.
So, this was the 2nd game back for Carson Wentz after his ACL recovery and he looked sharp. Alshon Jeffery finally came back from his rotator cuff injury and some virus he had leading up to the game this past Sunday which kept him out of practice, but it didn’t even matter he became and instant impact in the offense and had great chemistry with Carson. Alshon made some fantastic catches throughout the game and had one TD along with his first game with 100+ yards receiving for the Eagles (Next Gen Stats, 2018). Zach Ertz also had a great game with 100+ yards receiving (Next Gen Stats, 2018). Unfortunately that’s pretty much all of the good from the offense this past Sunday because the offensive line was awful. The offensive line let so many free rushers come in and hit Carson Wentz and really not give him any help of holding onto the ball in the pocket. Having Carson hit that many times is not really ideal when our franchise QB comes back from a season ending injury. Doug Pederson is an aggressive play maker and decision maker, but it looked like that was flat-out missing on Sunday. The calls just seemed so safe and reserved instead of going for chances to put away a game that was being handed to us by the Titans blown opportunities and mistakes themselves. Right before halftime Marriota threw a really bad interception and gave the Eagles prime field position to get points on the board before half with all their timeouts left. The Eagles played so passively that they just ran the clock down and used a timeout to kick a field goal instead of taking chances to move the ball and get a fresh set of downs and taking shots at the end zone. The next passive moment that hurt them was kinda the same scenario right before half was in the dying moments of the 4th quarter where DeAndre Carter had a very good punt return to put us in the Titans half of the field with 2 timeouts and plenty of time to score a TD. Once again the Eagles just wasted two downs for shots into the end zone instead of utilizing timeouts and moving the chains and getting closer to try for a TD into the end zone. They settled on a field goal to bring it to OT and déjà vu the drive in OT ended the same way as the other two questionable drives did.
3. Let the yellow flags fly again!
The Eagles are now the 2nd highest penalized team in the NFL through the 2018 season. This past Sunday the Eagles had 8 penalties for 77 yards (Team Rankings, 2018). The Titans gained three first downs off of penalties yesterday and all were due to pass interference’s and holdings in the secondary (NFL.com, 2018). The first one was a killer with Jalen Mills getting a pass interference on a 3rd down incomplete pass that put the Titans in our red zone and allowed them to convert on a touchdown after that penalty. The next one was also a killer with the 4th and 4 pass interference in OT that kept the Titans alive to go down the field and win the game.
Sources
https://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/penalties-per-game
https://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/penalty-yards-per-game
http://www.nfl.com/gamecenter/2018093007/2018/REG4/eagles@titans#menu=gameinfo%7CcontentId%3A0ap3000000967783&tab=analyze
http://www.nfl.com/gamecenter/2018093007/2018/REG4/eagles@titans#menu=gameinfo%7CcontentId%3A0ap3000000967783&tab=ngs
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