Chip Kelly once said “We’re from Philadelphia, we fight.” He had me. This guy was one of us. He had the heart of a Philadelphian, he was a coaching revolution and he was our guy. Two off-seasons, an 0-2 start, a gutted roster, high priced players vastly underperforming and poorly designed plays that apparently a division rival knew were coming.
So now we come full circle, the honey moons over and Eagles fans aren’t happy. I couldn’t watch it on Sunday and I was watching this pathetic performance with two Giants fans for god sakes. Our offensive genius couldn’t even get our team into the plus side of rushing yards in the 3rd Quarter against a hated division rival and had -19 overall rushing yards at one point. This was quite frankly the worst performance I’ve ever seen out of an Eagles offense, against a very beatable Cowboys team. Let’s look at the numbers:
Total Yards: Cowboys 376
Eagles 224.
It looked a lot worse, but our defense actually played really well considering how bad the offense kept leaving them hanging.
3rd Down Conversions: Cowboys: 4-12
Eagles: 2-11.
Both teams were terrible but the Eagles had no running game and was in obvious passing downs to many times.
Turnovers: Eagles 3
Cowboys 2
Need to win the turnover battle, especially if your team was as inefficient as the Eagles were all game.
Time of Possession: Cowboys 40:30
Eagles 19:20
This is a very misleading stat. Yes the Cowboys dominated the clock, but that’s not the concern here. Let me explain. The time of possession is always going to favor whoever plays the Eagles due to the uptempo system they run as we all know. The Cowboys huddle so this stat is going to be skewed. What matters is Number of Plays Run. The Cowboys ran 70 plays to the Eagles 55. That’s 15 more opportunities with the football. The number of plays a defense faces is much more tolling than a running clock on a possession.
What happened on Sunday is the Eagles couldn’t get any offensive continuity and it affected everyone. Chip moulded this team into his vision. He wanted to shop for the groceries and now they’re not responding. Remember our 2012 Eagles (I greatly apologize for the reminder)? The defense had consistent trouble adapting to a new system in the wide 9 defense and it suffered miserably. The saying went we line up wide and you run for 9. It resulted in Luis Castillo getting his walking papers from Big Red, Andy Reid. Ultimately it cost Andy his job too.
Rumor floating around is the Cowboys noticed a pattern that the Eagles only use a few select number of running plays and stacked up to the power side of the Offense and attacked the ball. It seemed to be the case when back to back plays the Cowboys blew up the backfield for huge negative yard plays. Chip needs to get back into the lab and show this team he envisioned is worthy of being a representation of Philadelphia. Were from Philadelphia, we fight. Instill that in these players Chip, the fan base is cheering with their heart, now we need you to lead with yours.
