Monday Night Ugliness!
Boy, what a waste of time that was! I kept waiting for the Eagles to get off the bus and show up at Soldier Field but, aside from a solid second quarter, that never really took place. Sometimes it just isn't your night. Let's break things down a bit:
THE REALLY BAD
Launch the screen game into the sun already. Coming out of halftime trailing just 10-7 and carrying some momentum, my hope and expectation was that the Birds would keep things up on the offensive side, roll down and either tie the game or take the lead. Sure enough, they handed the ball to Barkley and, like he had the entire first half, he cut right and gashed the Bears for a seven yard gain, setting up second and short. In those situations, the entire playbook is available to an offense, so what did Philly do? Take a deep shot? Run Barkley again? Spread the formation and let Jalen try a QB draw?
Of course not; they chose to dump a RB screen to Barkley that was poorly blocked and gave Saquon no chance to build forward momentum. The play lost two yards, set up third and long and an eventual three and out.
Of course, the defense allowed a field goal and the Birds got the ball back still just down six points. After a one yard Barkley gain, what did Philly try? A wheel screen to Lemon that I could see before the ball was even snapped. If a fan sitting on his couch could see where the ball was going before the play started, what do you think the Bears defense could figure out? Lemon never had a chance, was tossed for a three yard loss and the drive was on life support from there. Goodbye momentum; Philly gave up a touchdown on the next drive and the game was effectively over at that point.
My bottom line is this: STOP PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF PETE STOP RUNNING PREDICTABLE SCREEN PASSES, SWEET MOSES. Even going back to their pyrotechnical 2022 season, when the passing game could seemingly do no wrong, this team couldn't run screen passes and certainly can't now. This is one man's opinion, but those two play calls are as responsible for killing the Birds' chances at a very winnable game as anything else you could point to.
Too many Bears receivers running wild. The three lowest graded Eagle defenders (by PFF) were all defensive backs, and no surprise: it's been a few years since we saw so many open WRs in the Eagles' secondary. Certainly some credit goes to Ben Johnson and the Bears, who would have put in extra work to scheme guys open without having Caleb Williams' mobility in their back pocket, but that was a rough outing; so rough, it's hard to feel TOO bad about it. Can it possibly be repeated? I think that's a legit question.
Pass rush really needs to finish. I lost count of how many times the Birds were around Keenum but somehow never sacked him once, despite finally getting Greenard in the rotation and throwing in random blitzes throughout. This is not just a one game thing; as others have observed, both Jayden Daniels and Cam Ward rarely got knocked down in those games. Philly's 14 total QB pressures through three games are the second lowest in the NFL so far. I get that the team doesn't blitz much at all (so far the fewest blitzes of any team in the league), but you still want to see more success knocking down a relatively immobile 38 year old QB.
BAD BUT WON'T NECESSARILY BE REPEATED
Case Keenum had the game of his life. By passer rating and Total QBR, this was "only" a top ten performance for the veteran but it's hard to imagine there's a game in which he really played better; how many times did he bail out their offense by hitting the open WR in perfect stride milliseconds before the pass rush got home? I spent the week leading up to this game wondering if Keenum was actually a worse matchup for Philly than Williams would have been. The book on beating a Fangio defense is to stay patient and run the offense within the constraints of what the defense gives you. I had real questions about Williams' ability to do that for 60 minutes, but a longtime veteran system QB? That's a different story. It should be pointed out that PFF scored Keenum with two turnover-worthy plays, although it felt like he had five or six. However that might be, the Bears somehow skated through with no turnovers. Speaking of which...
Chicago recovers both fumbles. There were two official fumbles scored in this game and the Bears recovered both of them; a statistically unlikely event. One recovery prolonged an eventual touchdown drive; the other set the Bears up on the Eagle 15 yard line.
Officiating tilted in a certain direction. I try to avoid talking about the zebras too much in these columns; it's rarely if ever a meaningful excuse and a game like this is not tilted by a couple buggy calls. That said, more than a few of the calls against the Birds were tacky beyond belief, and a few seemed to come at high leverage moments. Philly's first drive was strangled by that grounding penalty; their second was hamstrung by a tacky holding call against Steen. The Philly D managed to hold up on this drive, but the defensive holding call against Woolen that set the Bears up with first-and-goal on the Eagle 6 was not a good call either. Of course, the crew saved their worst for the highest possible leverage moment...
Cheap shot on Jalen costs Philly a touchdown. We all saw this sequence in painful real time, but to recap:
Jalen scrambles to the right on a busted play; 48 on the Bears crushes him on his way out of bounds, an absurd cheap shot that would have gotten the LB tossed in the college game.
The officials rightly call an unnecessary roughness penalty, but wipe it out with a holding penalty on Lane Johnson (I went back and watched this play multiple times; getting a flag out of Lane's block takes some heavy lifting on the part of the ref).
Jalen lies down for a couple seconds but bounces up and seems OK. Following the letter of the law, the eye in the sky forces him out of the game to get checked out. This was unnecessary but understandable.
While this checkup is going on (and on and on), Philly drives to the Chicago 1, and stalls there because they can't run the Brotherly Shove with Andy Dalton, they can't keep handing to Barkley as the Bears know exactly what's coming each time, and they can't throw it because this happens when you force an ice-cold QB into a high leverage moment. To be clear, I'm not blaming Dalton or the Eagles for this for the reasons I just mentioned, and because...
...at the moment of truth, the independent neurosurgeon, instead of actually checking Jalen out in person, is outside the tent watching the video replay. Hurts had already been cleared by the people in the tent but because the process is so bureaucratic, it took longer than needed and cost Philly their QB in a goal-to-go situation. It should be pointed out here that the Birds would have had four cracks at the Brotherly Shove from the Bear 1 yard line; they score a touchdown in 99.9% of those scenarios.
Nick Sirianni deserves some criticism for not taking the timeout to give Jalen a longer runway to get back in the game (as this was unfolding live, I was hoping he'd do just that), but as Troy Aikman pointed out, communication between all parties involved is tricky in real time. It's fair to point out that it doesn't appear that anyone did their job exceptionally poorly here, but it's equally fair to point out that this sequence cost the Birds seven points through no real fault of their own. Had they had those points, they are in the lead till well into the third quarter and who knows how that changes the rest of the game?
NOT NECESSARILY GOOD BUT AT LEAST SOME PERSPECTIVE
This game was likely closer than the score made it look. Taking into account what we talked about above, let's give Philly the TD they were robbed of, let's take the ball (and the subsequent TD drive) away from Keenum on the fumble he recovered (again, Philly statistically recovers at least one of those fumbles 75% of the time), and for good measure let's give the Eagles a field goal for one of those drives cut short by penalty early in the game (the Bears never once stopped the Birds in the first half without help from the zebras, it's true): now we're looking at a 20-17 game for much of the fourth quarter. Still want to bet that Philly, known for finding a way to win games like this, doesn't get the job done?
NOTE THIS: under no circumstances am I going to write "this is a game the Eagles should have won" in my season-in-review notes. The Bears were the better team and deserved to win. I am just pointing out that the "blowout" was turned on a couple coin flip plays, and that this game could have just as easily been a nailbiter. Put another way, if this is indeed a hard fought three point loss on the heels of a 31-13 beatdown of the Titans (an easily possible result, as we pointed out a week ago), are we still as down on this team?
Big picture analysis. Philly is a 2-1 team currently tied with the Giants for the division lead. As rough as Philly has looked at times so far, can anyone say with a straight face that the other NFC East teams have looked any better? I've felt all along that the Birds will win the division comfortably and nothing that's happened so far has changed my mind. As far as the rest of the NFC is concerned, check this out:
Pretty much everyone has either looked rough or at least has had a sketchy game or two (the 49ers got by the awful Cardinals by just six on Sunday but no one's panicking about them).
Finally, here's something that's fun and that demonstrates how meaningless public opinion about teams is at this point in the season. Here are the top three teams according to ESPN's power rankings at this same point (after three weeks) in each of the previous 20 seasons:
25: Bills, 49ers, Chiefs
24: Chiefs, Bills, Vikings
23: 49ers, Dolphins, Eagles
22: Dolphins, Bills, Eagles
21: Rams, Bucs, Bills
20: Chiefs, Ravens, Seahawks
19: Patriots, Chiefs, Rams
18: Rams, Chiefs, Eagles
17: Falcons, Chiefs, Patriots
16: Broncos, Patriots, Seahawks
15: Patriots, Cardinals, Packers
14: Bengals, Seahawks, Broncos
13: Broncos, Seahawks, Saints
12: Texans, Falcons, 49ers
11: Packers, Saints, Ravens
10: Steelers, Saints, Colts
09: Giants, Ravens, Colts
08: Cowboys, Giants, Eagles
07: Patriots, Colts, Cowboys
06: Colts, Bengals, Seahawks
Teams that won the Super Bowl are in red; teams that missed the playoffs altogether are in blue. You will notice that there are five winners and six teams that missed the playoffs. The point is, no one really knows anything meaningful at this point in the season. We all need to R-E-L-A-X.
Comments