The move that doomed the Eagles

In Roob’s Observations: The move that doomed the Eagles originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

Ten Random Eagles Observations while we wait for minor details like … who will the Eagles’ head coach be in 2024?

1. Changing defensive coordinators after the Cowboys game will go down in history as one of the greatest mistakes in franchise history. Think about this: Going into the Bills game, the Eagles had held four playoff teams to 17 or fewer points – they beat the Bucs 25-11, the Rams 23-14, the Dolphins 31-17 and the Chiefs 21-17. All were top-10 offenses except Tampa. Through Week 11, no other NFL team had won four games holding playoff teams to 17 or fewer points. The defense wasn’t perfect, but there was a lot to like. The Eagles were 12th in the NFL in overall defense, allowing a respectable 21 points per game. The Bills game was a shootout against a very good team, and the defense got the stops they needed late to win. So really the change from Sean Desai to Matt Patricia was the result of the games against the 49ers and Cowboys. And the 49ers game was an awful performance by the defense, but the Eagles did hold the Cowboys without a touchdown in the second half and thanks to the Eagles’ terrible offense the Cowboys needed a bunch of short fields and 59- and 60-yard field goals to get to 33 points. In retrospect, changing coordinators after one disastrous game and one poor game was an astonishing over-reaction. The defense had done some good things throughout the season, but the change made things so much worse in two ways: 1) First of all, just changing from one system and one philosophy and one set of terminology to another in midstream is virtually impossible even if the new coach is a genius. Especially on a defense with so many new guys still trying to learn Desai’s system. As Haason Reddick said after the Arizona loss, “It’s hard. It’s extremely hard.” 2) Compounding the change was just the simple fact that Patricia had no…

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Author : NBC Sports Philadelphia

Publish date : 2024-01-20 16:02:36

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