Eagles Vs. Redskins - A Second Look

[WarpathHitchhiker]

Re-watched the game last night. I was able to be a little more objective than I was on gameday so here's what I saw:

 

1.) Our Offense put us in absolutely terrible positions on defense in the first 2.5 quarters. In our first 7 offensive plays we had a fumble, a dropped pass, a pick, and a safety. Sav Rocca shanks a kick in the second quarter after our offense stalls for the 6th straight posession. Our first drive in the 3rd quarter ended with a pick. We had 75 yards of offense in the first half.

 

2.) Our second drive in the 3rd quarter was against an Eagles defense that was not letting up. They were blitzing and playing the exact same defense they have been playing all game. We made them pay on that drive and did NOT REWARD OURSELVES WITH POINTS. Kai missed field goal really hurts this team.

 

3.) Our offense finally capitalizes on only its second sustained drive and gets a TD. Again, Eagles are not letting off the gas pedal on defense. They are sticking to their gameplan.

 

4.) Philly offense, although running at a slightly slower pace, is STILL RUNNING THEIR OFFENSE. This is getting lost somewhere...maybe because Eagles posters are coming here saying they slowed down completely and only ran the ball to waste time, I dunno. But they were getting plays off with 19-15 seconds left on the playclock--by no means a slow pace. They were running their zone-read game. They were giving the ball to their starters. They were forced in bad situations by our defense and there is no other way to look at it.

 

5.) Sensing some momentum, we come right out and get ourselves a turnover. At this point, the game changes completely in the 4th. We drive and score and make this a 13 point game with over 12 minutes left to go. The next Eagles Drive is 6 plays with 2 passes. Again, they are not getting off plays at a super-accelerated pace, but they are running their stuff. If not for Vick's 30+ yard scramble we force them in a three-and-out and get even more time back.

 

6.) Our next drive really, really hurts us. We go 50 some yards into their territory and we can get no points. We have a penalty on 4th-10 that makes it almost impossible for us to continue the drive. This drive sucks time off the clock with nothing to show for it.  Had kai made his field goal here OR we do not give up a safety, we can take a crack at a field goal to cut this to a one posession game. 

 

7.) Eagles finally show a huddle. They slow down the pace much more here with about 7 minutes to go in the 4th. They pass on a third down and pick it up. We had their guys covered on this third down and Vick has all day to throw and finds avant standing at the sideline all by himself. We then are forced to use our remaining timeouts. In my mind, this was kind of the end.

 

We score with about a minute left and don't get the onside kick...game over. My biggest takeaway from this is we cannot spot another team 4 turnovers in our own territory and expect to win. We cannot stall on offense for 2.5 quarters and miss crucial field goals and expect to win. We cannot bring back a lot of our big plays with holding penalties and expect to win. The Eagles still ran their stuff on Offense and Defense in the second half, and minus a first posession interception by RG3 and the ensuing McCoy run in the third quarter, we dominated the final two quarters.  I was encouraged watching the second half of the game and look forward to a much better game against the Packers.

[PlayAction]

Pretty much sums it up.  I think too many fans ripping the defense discount the number of points the Eagles earned off of turnovers AND the poor field position.  I'm not going to say that the Eagles were still tring to put the pedal to the metal but the Defense did start to work by stuffing runs (instead of automatic 10 yard gains) and getting pressure on Vick.  It wasn't pretty but with the Offense beginning to sustain drives the Skins weren't going to continue to get pounded.

[BraunMan92]

Beating the Packers would certainly point to the Eagles game being a true aberration.  Would also be a true test of whether this team has character, especially on a short week.

[emor09]

The Eagles were TIRED in the second half. They all had their hands on their hips and couldn't move the ball. I swear I'm the only person in the world that KNOWS Chip Kelly's system won't work. Vick (obviously) and McCoy are gonna get hurt. 

[BraunMan92]

Expected a much bigger game from Fred Davis and Santana Moss as well.  They seemed invisible.

[TheGreek1973]

Beating the Packers would certainly point to the Eagles game being a true aberration.  Would also be a true test of whether this team has character, especially on a short week.

Absolutely.  

 

But i just can't see a scenario where we can beat them.  We need to play mistake free football and I don't mean just not turning the ball over but putting a stop to all those idiotic penalties, especially the false starts.  Can we do this in a stadium such L-field with 80 thousand plus fans going nuts?  It would mean our receivers catching every ball even the not so perfect, because I still don't think RGIII will be perfect.  it would mean RGIII will run some option plays and have a few big runs to keep that GB D honest instead of them zeroing in on our running backs.  It would mean our D will need to make some kind of statement once in a while against what IMO is the most accurate and well rounded QB in the league.  

 

Can we do all the above?  In other words can we fix all of the above in 5 days, because we didn't do much of that last game?  Tall order.

[BraunMan92]

Absolutely.  

 

But i just can't see a scenario where we can beat them.  We need to play mistake free football and I don't mean just not turning the ball over but putting a stop to all those idiotic penalties, especially the false starts.  Can we do this in a stadium such L-field with 80 thousand plus fans going nuts?  It would mean our receivers catching every ball even the not so perfect, because I still don't think RGIII will be perfect.  it would mean RGIII will run some option plays and have a few big runs to keep that GB D honest instead of them zeroing in on our running backs.  It would mean our D will need to make some kind of statement once in a while against what IMO is the most accurate and well rounded QB in the league.  

 

Can we do all the above?  In other words can we fix all of the above in 5 days, because we didn't do much of that last game?  Tall order.

 

The New York Giants owned them last year - and we are better than the Giants.

 

The power run game needs to be established...give it to Morris 30 times minimum.  Run right at Matthews, then open up the passing game after he's been abused by our running attack.

[Commander PK]

The Eagles were TIRED in the second half. They all had their hands on their hips and couldn't move the ball. I swear I'm the only person in the world that KNOWS Chip Kelly's system won't work. Vick (obviously) and McCoy are gonna get hurt. 

 

it won't work without changing things up.  There is no way they are going to be able to sustain a "blitzkrieg" offense if they don't get up by 100 points early.  That type of play is going to require them to be almost perfect early in every game, and then hold on for the win, because even their own players are going to be exhausted.  Look at them in the second half of our game.  They were all sucking wind.      

[TheGoodBits]

The New York Giants owned them last year - and we are better than the Giants.

The power run game needs to be established...give it to Morris 30 times minimum. Run right at Clay Matthews, then open up the passing game after he's been abused by our running attack.

Think we have to make them respect the RO early to set everything else up. RG3 needs to hurt them with it in the first drive or two. Kap killed them with his arm when they tried to take it away from them last week.

[BraunMan92]

Think we have to make them respect the RO early to set everything else up. RG3 needs to hurt them with it in the first drive or two. Kap killed them with his arm when they tried to take it away from them last week.

 

John Riggins didn't need RO to run over defenders.  Neither did Clinton Portis.

 

Sometimes its just about being aggressive in the trenches more than having to resort to trickery.

 

I was disappointed by the lack of push from our offensive line in the first half. 

 

I do think we should run more RO, but I don't want our running game success predicated on it.

[TheGreek1973]

The New York Giants owned them last year - and we are better than the Giants.

 

The power run game needs to be established...give it to Morris 30 times minimum.  Run right at Matthews, then open up the passing game after he's been abused by our running attack.

 

Did they even have Matthews last year in that game.  They has substantial injuries but I get your point.  

[JimboDaMan]

Pretty much agree with the Op. Other than the DHall TD - maybe even including that TD - I don't think things could have possibly worked out better for the Eagles. Meanwhile I don't expect us to start any game as poorly as that, ever again. And with all that, if the clock had another 5-10 minutes things would have been different. I'm thinking Philly peaked 40 minutes into their season.

Having said that, there's lots we need to fix and I hated to squander that game away.

[Rodriggo]

Four turnovers in our own half is what killed us, not their no-huddle.

 

Forbath's miss killed us too b/c we would have kicked to cut it to 7 in the fourth instead of turning it over on downs.

 

Add the TD to Hankerson and they're kicking it off tied instead of going for an onside.

 

A fumbling running back and an inaccurate kicker is almost impossible to overcome but they almost did.

 

Credit the character of this team especially Griffin to make it a game.

 

The season just started, it's gonna be long and tough but this is a good team, let's get behind it.

[gortiz]

something I just posted on sportsline.com 

 

 I'm not saying the Eagles won't be good on O this year, but this game was a little misleading.  People seem to forget that the Eagles punted on three consecutive drives that first half ...

 

people also claim that the backwards pass was a not an issue, that it was a horrible play by Vick and the offense.  

 

Also, the average yards gained for all the eight Eagles drives in the first half was 40.25 - I would not consider that "marching down the field."   They had great field position all game long.  

 

The Eagles had 8 of their 14 total drives start on their side of the field, in those 8 they managed  to only score 10 points. 

[RG3Hunna]

John Riggins didn't need RO to run over defenders.  Neither did Clinton Portis.

 

Sometimes its just about being aggressive in the trenches more than having to resort to trickery.

 

I was disappointed by the lack of push from our offensive line in the first half. 

 

I do think we should run more RO, but I don't want our running game success predicated on it.

Unfortunately our offensive line wasn't built to push defenders like say a power blocking scheme Joe Bugel installed in his amazing years here. You'll never see our offensive line bully the D-line, instead we move laterally and attack the edge of D-lines allowing huge cut back lanes for running backs.

 

We lost this game because we fell behind so quickly and couldn't establish the run like we wanted too. Kudos to the eagles they played a tremendous game, hopefully we pull the upset against the packers like the eagles pulled the upset vs us. 

[TD_washingtonredskins]

Thank you. I appreciate the objective analysis a couple days later.

 

It makes total sense that the Eagles would still be trying to score in the 3rd and early 4th quarter. Especially once we cut the lead to 13 with so much time left...it would be ridiculous to think that someone like Chip Kelly would turn into Joe Gibbs from 1985.

 

I do believe that our 2nd half comeback was just a matter of our defense figuring some things out and our offense finally pulling their weight. The Eagles won this game in the 2nd quarter when we were down 10-7 and 12-7 and continued to give them the ball back. Our key drive was the one you highlighted. We were moving the ball well and had a shot to make things VERY uncomfortable for Philly.

 

To me, the key play on that drive was the 3rd down incompletion to Hankerson. Griffin looked like 2012 Griffin there, moved around in the pocket, broke contain and had Hank open for a first down but they couldn't connect. I think the throw could have been better, but a great catch there could have meant more to the team than Hank's last-minute TD.

 

Anyway, I do think we'll see a much better performance on Sunday. It's a tall order to win in Lambeau, but if I see improvement and reason to believe we're righting the ship I won't panic at 0-2.

[Airyx]

The Eagles ran the Oregon offense with almost no modification.

 

The Inside Zone Read, was by far, their most frequently run concept, along with a number of complementary plays.

 

The Outside Zone Read was also run several times, mostly to setup other plays.

 

They ran a bunch of Package Plays...one of which turned into Kerrigan's FF, and DHall's fumble return. The 'skins baited that one. Kerrigan lined up like he was going inside, making Vick's pre-snap read the screen to his side, but instead, he went wide into the throwing lane. Give Haslett some credit for that.

 

The Eagles were not able to sustain the hurry-up offense for the full game, but longer then I expected. It wasn't just that they were running the clock, there were obviously out of gas.

 

The Redskins knew the IZR was coming, and did a lot fo scrape-exchange, but Vick saw the scrape defender coming around, and handed inside anyway, even though Orakpo or Kerrigan was crashing. In other words, the ILB or closing safety was the read instead of the outside rush guy. Interesting approach.

 

Overall, the 'skins scheme had players in the right position, but there were too many failed tackles.

 

I only counted two Read-Option plays by the 'skins, and both were IZRs. They didn't want RG3 running into traffic.  RG3's footwork was off, and the cause of all his sailed, and/or behind throws...he was not driving off his back foot, and rotating his hips through his throwing motion. It got better later, but he did not show the crisp precision he had last year.

[darrelgreenie]

Some questions I have:

 

Who decision was it start Biggers at SAF as opposed to Pugh or Doughty?

Wouldn't it make more sense to have the most experienced SAF in Doughty on the field in the face of a no-huddle offense where knowledge of the defense is at a premium?

 

Rambo struggled last night, tackling and coverage mistakes (big ones), will there be any thought of playing Pugh or Gumbs or Doughty and letting Rambo work his way back onto the field?

[Warhead36]

We win the game if Cousins and Helu are starting over RG3 and Morris.

 

Sounds crazy, but it's probably true.

[NoCalMike]

This thread was needed so certain visitors to our board can slow their role a bit.

 

In the first half of the game just about everything that could go right for the Eagles did.  In their dream scenario, they score quick and get the ball back right away to go back to work.  They got that scenario over and over and over in the first half due tio the 'Skins offense imploding (for reasons we don't need to get into in this thread so much)

 

I will be interested to see what happens when the Eagles can play a team that can go score for score with them, or even shuts them out of points on a drive or two while scoring.

 

Some are claiming Chip took his foot off the gas and then he later said that he wants the pace to be quicker next time. Well from what I saw, between the pace they were running and the hits Vick was taking, they had no choice but to slow down the pace.  Did you see Vick after that long run of his that ended with the hit? It looked like he didn't even want to get up and would have rather just stayed down to take a nap.  Someone else pointed it out in another thread but on any given NFL team you have players anywhere from 25-35, with a few possible skill players under 25.  These aren't 18-21 year olds with a sideline full of teammates that can be endlessly rotated in.

 

Chip Kelly's offense without modification will work under 1 circumstance, they get off to a 30 point lead every game and attempt to coast to a victory.

[darrelgreenie]

We win the game if Cousins and Helu are starting over RG3 and Morris.

 

Sounds crazy, but it's probably true.

I would add Pugh and Doughty.

[McMVP]

Chip was asked if he slowed things down too early...he answered 'yeah, maybe'

When he was asked what he felt about the tempo, he said it was too slow. But he obviously referring to the first half here.

As for everything possible going right for the eagles in the first half, I think you are forgetting the lateral call. That's a call that literally could have gone either way. If the the call on the field would have been incomplete, there wouldn't have been a recersal...just too hard to tell.

So I'd say the skins getting 7 points early that could easily have been 7 for the eagles was a fairly large 'negative.' Any skins fan that is being honest about that first half knows the score wasn't as bad a it could've been.

[thewagen]

Re-watched the game last night. I was able to be a little more objective than I was on gameday so here's what I saw:

 

1.) Our Offense put us in absolutely terrible positions on defense in the first 2.5 quarters. In our first 7 offensive plays we had a fumble, a dropped pass, a pick, and a safety. Sav Rocca shanks a kick in the second quarter after our offense stalls for the 6th straight posession. Our first drive in the 3rd quarter ended with a pick. We had 75 yards of offense in the first half.

 

2.) Our second drive in the 3rd quarter was against an Eagles defense that was not letting up. They were blitzing and playing the exact same defense they have been playing all game. We made them pay on that drive and did NOT REWARD OURSELVES WITH POINTS. Kai missed field goal really hurts this team.

 

3.) Our offense finally capitalizes on only its second sustained drive and gets a TD. Again, Eagles are not letting off the gas pedal on defense. They are sticking to their gameplan.

 

4.) Philly offense, although running at a slightly slower pace, is STILL RUNNING THEIR OFFENSE. This is getting lost somewhere...maybe because Eagles posters are coming here saying they slowed down completely and only ran the ball to waste time, I dunno. But they were getting plays off with 19-15 seconds left on the playclock--by no means a slow pace. They were running their zone-read game. They were giving the ball to their starters. They were forced in bad situations by our defense and there is no other way to look at it.

 

5.) Sensing some momentum, we come right out and get ourselves a turnover. At this point, the game changes completely in the 4th. We drive and score and make this a 13 point game with over 12 minutes left to go. The next Eagles Drive is 6 plays with 2 passes. Again, they are not getting off plays at a super-accelerated pace, but they are running their stuff. If not for Vick's 30+ yard scramble we force them in a three-and-out and get even more time back.

 

6.) Our next drive really, really hurts us. We go 50 some yards into their territory and we can get no points. We have a penalty on 4th-10 that makes it almost impossible for us to continue the drive. This drive sucks time off the clock with nothing to show for it.  Had kai made his field goal here OR we do not give up a safety, we can take a crack at a field goal to cut this to a one posession game. 

 

7.) Eagles finally show a huddle. They slow down the pace much more here with about 7 minutes to go in the 4th. They pass on a third down and pick it up. We had their guys covered on this third down and Vick has all day to throw and finds avant standing at the sideline all by himself. We then are forced to use our remaining timeouts. In my mind, this was kind of the end.

 

We score with about a minute left and don't get the onside kick...game over. My biggest takeaway from this is we cannot spot another team 4 turnovers in our own territory and expect to win. We cannot stall on offense for 2.5 quarters and miss crucial field goals and expect to win. We cannot bring back a lot of our big plays with holding penalties and expect to win. The Eagles still ran their stuff on Offense and Defense in the second half, and minus a first posession interception by RG3 and the ensuing McCoy run in the third quarter, we dominated the final two quarters.  I was encouraged watching the second half of the game and look forward to a much better game against the Packers.

Well, I guess we have to have a "Glass Half full" view of this. As per Coach Shanahan, we lost Round 1 of a 16 Round fight. No need to start throwing Haymakers hoping they connect. Even if we lose Round 2, I think we get postured for Rounds 3-16 with an "All Systems Are Go for Takeoff" regarding RGIII. One thing lost in this was: In the first half, a "RUSTY" RGIII missed 4 or 5 WIDE OPEN WRs, and if caught, would have probably netted at least another 100 yards. He hit these passess in stride last year in his sleep, it's not a skill that goes away completely fro no reason other than RUST, and WILL COME BACK. I'm looking for the GBay game to be the Game of the week!

Absolutely.  

 

But i just can't see a scenario where we can beat them.  We need to play mistake free football and I don't mean just not turning the ball over but putting a stop to all those idiotic penalties, especially the false starts.  Can we do this in a stadium such L-field with 80 thousand plus fans going nuts?  It would mean our receivers catching every ball even the not so perfect, because I still don't think RGIII will be perfect.  it would mean RGIII will run some option plays and have a few big runs to keep that GB D honest instead of them zeroing in on our running backs.  It would mean our D will need to make some kind of statement once in a while against what IMO is the most accurate and well rounded QB in the league.  

 

Can we do all the above?  In other words can we fix all of the above in 5 days, because we didn't do much of that last game?  Tall order.

The good thing is that it's a natural grass field. AMorris does better on grass. The real focus is one guy on defense and one guy on offense for the 'G-helmet' men: Block CMatthews, and pressure ARogers. I'm HOPING this is Orakpo's ComeToGeeezuuss meeting at the QB! GBay will focus on Kerrrigan after his perfromnce Monday night, which should allow Orakpo to wreak terror!

Unfortunately our offensive line wasn't built to push defenders like say a power blocking scheme Joe Bugel installed in his amazing years here. You'll never see our offensive line bully the D-line, instead we move laterally and attack the edge of D-lines allowing huge cut back lanes for running backs.

 

We lost this game because we fell behind so quickly and couldn't establish the run like we wanted too. Kudos to the eagles they played a tremendous game, hopefully we pull the upset against the packers like the eagles pulled the upset vs us. 

The Redskins line isn't built to Bully...it's to move quickly, get the DLine moving in one direction to setup the cutback run. A Staple in all of Shanahan's offenses.Well, at least it won't be a FROZEN TUNDRA Sunday!!!

[thewagen]

This thread was needed so certain visitors to our board can slow their role a bit.

 

In the first half of the game just about everything that could go right for the Eagles did.  In their dream scenario, they score quick and get the ball back right away to go back to work.  They got that scenario over and over and over in the first half due tio the 'Skins offense imploding (for reasons we don't need to get into in this thread so much)

 

I will be interested to see what happens when the Eagles can play a team that can go score for score with them, or even shuts them out of points on a drive or two while scoring.

 

Some are claiming Chip took his foot off the gas and then he later said that he wants the pace to be quicker next time. Well from what I saw, between the pace they were running and the hits Vick was taking, they had no choice but to slow down the pace.  Did you see Vick after that long run of his that ended with the hit? It looked like he didn't even want to get up and would have rather just stayed down to take a nap.  Someone else pointed it out in another thread but on any given NFL team you have players anywhere from 25-35, with a few possible skill players under 25.  These aren't 18-21 year olds with a sideline full of teammates that can be endlessly rotated in.

 

Chip Kelly's offense without modification will work under 1 circumstance, they get off to a 30 point lead every game and attempt to coast to a victory.

Kinda like his Oregon Days? This is THE NFL CHIP, you'll eventually realize it. "Coming Back Down to Earth" is an NFL ComeToGeezuuss certainty!

[NoCalMike]

Chip was asked if he slowed things down too early...he answered 'yeah, maybe'

When he was asked what he felt about the tempo, he said it was too slow. But he obviously referring to the first half here.

As for everything possible going right for the eagles in the first half, I think you are forgetting the lateral call. That's a call that literally could have gone either way. If the the call on the field would have been incomplete, there wouldn't have been a recersal...just too hard to tell.

So I'd say the skins getting 7 points early that could easily have been 7 for the eagles was a fairly large 'negative.' Any skins fan that is being honest about that first half knows the score wasn't as bad a it could've been.

 

When the game was 12-7, the following 'Skins drive that starts on their own 40 when they finally started putting a drive together, Paulson was called for a very ticky-tacky holding call that derailed the drive.

 

Then the following drive for defense, Hall did that idiotic horse collar, which was totally uncalled for, but it should have been offsetting penalties since D-Jax pushes Hall down to the ground pretty forcefully as Hall was trying to get back up, which was right in front of the refs.  Not sure why that would be allowed since it was after the play was over.

 

Look man, all I'm saying is that the 'Skins had plenty of chances in the first half to get back into the game when it was a one possession game before the defense wore down and were basically rag dolls.

 

Once the game got to 33-7, then yes of course it was over for all intensive purposes, but go back and watch the next few series once it was 12-7 and even 19-7, and tell me that the 'Skins defense didn't settle down a bit and give the offense plenty of chances to get back into the game.