Staff Blog
The Eagles Are Shooting Themselves in Their Feet
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| Ron Cortes | Staff |
Greg Cosell, writing for the Sporting News, penned an article last Friday blaming the Birds’ fundamental strategy for their struggles. Cosell lays out what he believes to be the Eagles’ fatal flaw: they don’t care about the ground game, offensively or defensively. Money quote:
Essentially, the Eagles are one-dimensional in their belief system on both sides of the ball. The pass is primary, the run secondary.
Think about that for a minute, especially as it pertains to the offense. The Eagles choose to be one-dimensional. They do not even pay lip service to the idea of a balanced offensive approach that integrates both pass and run.
What do defensive coordinators always strive to do?: Take away one facet of the opponent’s offense. The Eagles do that for you. They make it easier for the defense to match up schematically. Sure, Brian Westbrook has shown in a given game the ability to make a dynamic impact as a runner, but there’s no sustainability or commitment to his role as a week-to-week feature back.
Dating back to 2000 the Eagles are 9-23 in games which they finished with less than 20 rushing attempts. Yesterday, in a game that lasted five quarters, they managed just 18 attempts. The mean may be unable to run the football, but they are certainly unwilling, which is a problem in and of itself.
This is a stat I cited this morning, and I’ll probably cite it later today, but yesterday
the
Eagles had eighteen third downs, and all eighteen times they passed the ball. Coming into the game the Bengals were allowing
opposing teams to convert 50% of third downs – the predictable Brids converted
three.
