Celtics vs Sixers tonight.  Don't report me 

1 hour ago, bpac55 said:

Why in the world would they want to trademark the phrase?

Money

2 minutes ago, garingovt2000 said:

Celtics vs Sixers tonight.  Don't report me 

Banned

14 minutes ago, RLC said:

JPP is washed.

Maybe as a full time starter, but it would be nice to have another BG-esque player that could give us 10-15 quality pass rushing snaps from DE.

We've got Barnett and Nolan Smith and Im not sure either are going to contribute this season.  

18 minutes ago, Iggles_Phan said:

If teams weren't able to move the ball down the field at will in the closing moments of games with impunity... I might agree that its overblown.  But, a 70+ yard TD drive by Washington with under a minute off the clock is very telling.  Dallas moved from their own 14 to our 6 in about 30 seconds, with no timeouts. Granted... they had some help by penalties... but the Eagles didn't shut down the passing game either until they got that one sack by Sweat at the very end.  THEN... it collapsed.

 

I'd feel more confident in the D if they stopped teams from moving the ball so easily at the end of games.

This is absolutely an issue. The pass D does seem to fail at the end of games, though we have also put games away with the pass rush at the end of games.

10 minutes ago, NCiggles said:

Money

watch out, money is also green, they may file a trademark for that too.

Assuming Goedert is headed to IR, he opens up a spot for Jurgens to come back. If we are going to sign Suh or JPP, then I'd think Josiah Scott is gone (signed to PS) assuming Roby is healthy. I really want to see Slay/Bradberry/Roby/Byard/Blankenship get a chance to start playing together and building chemistry.

I'm not sure we ever see Watkins activated, FWIW.

Found it again after 10 years. always loved this episode because they brought an NFL Qb in to talk to him. Don’t think they ever did that before

 

EDIT: looks like they cut it early before Brad Johnson comes in and talks about Foles being his comp. Can’t find a full version

2 minutes ago, twistr said:

This is absolutely an issue. The pass D does seem to fail at the end of games, though we have also put games away with the pass rush at the end of games.

I feel like a lot of that is scheme related, as Desai goes soft when trying to hold a lead. The one time he seemed to play man to man was the PI on Bradberry, and then he got scared into the soft zone, don't get beat over the top BS. I can live with that before they cross the 50, but he called it backwards against Dallas.

Washington/Howell carved us up and went down the field in week 4. Dallas -- we basically escorted them to the red zone with penalties.

15 minutes ago, Mike31mt said:

Maybe as a full time starter, but it would be nice to have another BG-esque player that could give us 10-15 quality pass rushing snaps from DE.

We've got Barnett and Nolan Smith and Im not sure either are going to contribute this season.  

They should bring him in to see how he looks.  He would be a reasonable depth signing and could probably give a few good pass rush snaps.  

27 minutes ago, Iggles_Phan said:

If teams weren't able to move the ball down the field at will in the closing moments of games with impunity... I might agree that its overblown.  But, a 70+ yard TD drive by Washington with under a minute off the clock is very telling.  Dallas moved from their own 14 to our 6 in about 30 seconds, with no timeouts. Granted... they had some help by penalties... but the Eagles didn't shut down the passing game either until they got that one sack by Sweat at the very end.  THEN... it collapsed.

 

I'd feel more confident in the D if they stopped teams from moving the ball so easily at the end of games.

Right, usually forcing an offense to be so one-dimensional in such constrained circumstances is advantage, but not for this defense apparently.

 

 

 

 

 

5 minutes ago, NCiggles said:

They should bring him in to see how he looks.  He would be a reasonable depth signing and could probably give a few good pass rush snaps.  

I'd rather go with Suh.  They could then use Williams a little more at DE.  

This looks like a more manageable stretch than it did preseason or a month ago. They won’t come out unscathed but I’m still in the "we’re not stuck in there with them, they’re stuck in here with us” mentality. Despite their flaws, the Eagles are the better team on paper in all these games maybe outside of KC simply based off Mahomes. 
 

 

2 minutes ago, Cliftoma said:

I'd rather go with Suh.  They could then use Williams a little more at DE.  

Suh would be good too but if Suh wants to play, why not both? 

4 hours ago, Iggles_Phan said:

Sure.  49ers have dropped 3 straight games.  Dolphins have not beaten a team with a winning record... but both have proven to be much better than the Eagles. 

 

Winning matters and despite all the issues this team has they still are winning and are a single late INT away from being 9-0.  But there are clearly 6 teams better than them.

It's analytics, none of that matters for that ranking. I should have led with that in my other post. This team, analytically, is not a powerhouse- for the reasons I listed.

58 minutes ago, wussbasket said:

They get engagement from people talking about it. You might not have clicked it, but since there is a discussion on it, I bet some others on here clicked it or went and looked something up about it. Someone earlier posted espns football power index, that right there drove traffic to their site because of the earlier discussion on how ridiculous it was. Their click bait worked, right here.

I do a lot of NFL stats stuff every week during the season, and a portion of it involves various rating systems I've developed over the years. I don't want to say I've been doing it for fifty years, but I have more than fifty years of data. In my system that involves only wins and losses and the strength of your opponents in the current year, the Eagles rank first. In the system which sort of looks back at the past couple years but with greater emphasis on recent games, I believe the Eagles rank fourth.

But here's the thing. In the system I use which attempts to evaluate how well a team "plays" (wins and losses being excluded) based on statistics (primarily yards per play on offense vs defense, as well as turnover differential), the Eagles actually rate eleventh at this moment. A year ago at this time they ranked first and had what was sort of a historically good rating, indicating that they were very much "for real". Last year we were really, really good. This year we're winning but having issues along the way. So yeah, I can absolutely see where a stats based system would have the Eagles around tenth or so. They're a net negative in terms of turnovers. And their yards per play differential is only +0.2 (5.5 on offense and 5.3 on defense). Most good teams are better than that. Heck, last year we were +1.1.

I absolutely get it.

20 hours ago, NCiggles said:

They should have traded Wentz instead of Foles.  

Yep.  I was one of the few that was screaming to trade Wentz and keep Foles after the 2018 season.   We would have had a plethora of picks for Wentz and Foles would have been on a team friendly deal, freeing up salary cap space to sign free agents.  And Foles + Pederson = winning combination.   Good chance we would have gone back to multiple Super Bowls imo.

 

Anyway, what is done is done - and I couldn’t be happier about our current team, so that’s, that. 

3 minutes ago, Ace Nova said:

Yep.  I was one of the few that was screaming to trade Wentz and keep Foles after the 2018 season.   We would have had a plethora of picks for Wentz and Foles would have been on a team friendly deal, freeing up salary cap space to sign free agents.  And Foles + Pederson = winning combination.   Good chance we would have gone back to multiple Super Bowls imo.

 

Anyway, what is done is done - and I couldn’t be happier about our current team so that’s that. 

Foles never would have stayed healthy and they would have been drafting a new QB by the 2019 offseason. Probably would have missed out on Hurts. 

1 hour ago, Aerolithe_Lion said:

Having an argument with a guy who thinks QB is more important than Oline. It’s not even close

Probably basing his entire argument on Patrick mahomes, who is the only QB that could possibly apply to

48 minutes ago, twistr said:

Interesting enough, I've been thinking a decent amount about this and I think we're middling at pass defense. The per pass play rankings put us solidly in the middle, but teams can't run on us, so they are forced to pass. It's a problem of being so much better at one thing than the other, that people pass on us at a 70% clip and that inflates the yardage numbers since no team gets passed on as much. While I know it's frustrating for us to watch the teams converting 3rd an longs against us at a higher rate and the predominance of quick passes we see, I don't think we're horrible against the pass, just not great.

Slay has been playing well-ish, Bradberry has been ok but not good. The S position has been an issue due to injuries and revolving lineup, and as others have said the LBs coverage has been bad in general. Overall, if we can get some consistency in the S position as we onboard Byard more and more and their communication gets better, I have hopes for a better showing and to make teams more balanced against us, which will make the defense function more like it's supposed to.

I know none of this is really new thought here on the blog but the more I think about it the more it resonates.

TL:DR People pass on us because more often than not they have to and that skews the numbers to look worse than they really are.

Yup. We're middle of the pack in yards per attempt allowed. 5.9 per play, which ranks thirteenth. League average is 6.0. Last year we ranked first at 4.8, so yeah there's obviously been a big drop-off. I guessing I'm the only Eagles fan who actually liked Gannon and was upset when he left.

It's not good. And it's especially annoying watching teams routinely get big chunks in long situations (do any of us ever feel comfortable on defense when the opposing team is facing second and twenty?) But it's not ridiculously awful. Some other "good" teams are even worse. Jacksonville is at 6.0 Buffalo is at 6.0. Pittsburgh is at 6.3. Cincinnati is at 6.6.

43 minutes ago, garingovt2000 said:

Celtics vs Sixers tonight.  Don't report me 

I’m going to watch this game - it’s a bye week and HE has made an impassioned case that 6ers are worth my time.

The only thing trading Wentz instead of letting Foles walk would do is speed up the rebuild process and we might not be where we are right now and might not have Hurts either. 

32 minutes ago, vikas83 said:

Assuming Goedert is headed to IR, he opens up a spot for Jurgens to come back. If we are going to sign Suh or JPP, then I'd think Josiah Scott is gone (signed to PS) assuming Roby is healthy. I really want to see Slay/Bradberry/Roby/Byard/Blankenship get a chance to start playing together and building chemistry.

I'm not sure we ever see Watkins activated, FWIW.

So, no Goedert for the 2nd DAL game (which I’m fine with as I’ve assigned him to the playoff reinforcement bucket).

Once again I'm going to politely ask for help. Can someone with access to the game footage please let me know where the opening Cowboys kickoff of the second half landed in the endzone? It went for a touchback but I cannot see where it landed.

Oh, and for the crowd praising Braden Mann's punting against Dallas, not a single one of his four punts traveled at least 40 yards with a four second hangtime. He did get some favorable rolls however so great job. [EDIT -- I'm wrong...it's 40 yards with at least 4.1 hangtime.]