Eagles Dominate Patriots With Perfect Performance

[time2rock]

Eagles Dominate Patriots With Perfect Performance

Posted: September 10th, 2023 | Author: Tommy Lawlor 

That’s what happened right? Unfortunately not even close. Sloppy play matched the sloppy weather and the Eagles had to hold on for dear life. They led the entire game, but never could put the Patriots away.

The Eagles jumped out to a 16-0 lead. It was easy. Too easy. Things settled down after that and New England took control of the game. They made it 16-14 at the half. The Eagles won the second half 9-6. They had a couple of chances to seal the game, but didn’t get that done until the final seconds.

This game wasn’t much fun outside the first few minutes. We wanted to see Jalen Hurts work his magic and lead the Eagles to big plays and points. Did not happen. Hurts struggled. I’ll get into why he struggled in a later post. This wasn’t one person or thing. It was a combination of factors. Hurts still did enough to lead the team to a win. He made some key plays.

There was a fumble late in the game that gave NE another chance. That could have been a killer, but the defense bailed him out.

Let’s make sure we give the Patriots a lot of credit. That was a Top 10 defense last year and they added impact rookies in CB Christian Gonzalez and DL Keion White. Bill Belichick then had the entire offseason to come up with a creative gameplan to slow down Hurts and the Eagles. You hate to give the hooded one credit, but he definitely deserved it today. Their scheme really affected Hurts.

Dallas Goedert only had one pass thrown his way and it wasn’t very close. The Pats did a good job on him at times and Hurts just missed seeing him at other times. Tony Romo showed a few plays where Goedert was wide open for huge plays. Hurts just missed him. The coaches should have done a better job of forcing the ball to him with screens or quick routes.

The Eagles defense gave up 382 yards, which isn’t ideal. They limited NE to 20 points. The defense did have 2 takeaways that led to 13 points. Big Play Slay had a pick-six that got things off to a great start. The defense came up with a couple of sacks on key plays that helped to stop the Pats. NE did a great job of getting the ball out quickly, which limited what the pass rush could do.

STs was a mixed bag. There were a few sloppy moments, but Jake Elliott did go 4 for 4 on FGs and that proved to be the difference in the game. He hit from 56 and 48 yards, which is especially impressive on a rainy day.

That’s one thing that does make me nervous. Christian Elliss replaced him and was up and down.

Josh Jobe had to replace James Bradberry late in the game. Jobe ended up pushing the WR out of bounds before he could get his second foot in on the Pats final play. It was great to see the backup come up big in a critical situation. That’s good team football.

The Eagles got a big win on the road. That’s good. There are a lot of issues to clean up. You’d rather learn tough lessons in a win than a loss. Nick Sirianni is a tough, critical coach so he’ll make sure all the problems are addressed. It may take more than a week to fix everything. The coaches now have game tape to study so they can figure out what’s going on and what needs to be done.

On Saturday I wrote about how the Eagles would be tested and that would be a good thing. This was a perfect example. A blowout would have been a lot more fun to watch, but having to fight and claw against the Pats will serve the team well in the long run.

The Eagles have a short week as they host the Vikings on Thursday. We’ll have to see how much they can get fixed before then.

http://igglesblitz.com/2023/09/dominate-patriots-performance/

[UK_EaglesFan89]

They’ve got to clean some things up but they got it done in the end. And yes in the end they were clinging on but that was in large part their own doing with sloppy play.

[birdman#12]

When a good team plays lousy and still wins, it becomes a tool for evaluation and consistency.

They now have a short week to get that crappy game out of their heads and prepare for minnesota.

[UK_EaglesFan89]

I’m taking the positives. We played badly and won. Other teams played better and lost. Other teams played badly and lost. 

[birdman#12]

Offensive line played poorly

The use of the RBs was lousy

The pass rush was not as expected

Special teams were shaky.

Plenty to work on.....

[eggs]

When you don’t play your starters in preseason and have limited hitting in practice, that’s what happens - like last year. I think they will recover from the slow start to be a dominant team.