It has come to that time in the pro football season when teams are hunting for a coveted spot in the NFL playoffs and a shot at bringing the Lombardi Trophy back to their fans.
The Philadelphia Eagles, at the bottom of the pack, are still in the race for a playoff spot. To make the playoffs, the 5-7 Eagles need to win all four of their remaining regular-season games, including a Week-16 battle against their archrival, The Dallas Cowboys, who decimated them 37-10 earlier this year. The odds are against this team, but it’s not over until it’s over.
So, what happened? According to a lot of people, including the Eagles’ star tight end Zach Ertz, this team is more talented than the roster that brought the Lombardi Trophy to Broad Street in 2017. The hype going into the season was all for nothing: fans quickly realized that this team is light years away from where they were just two short years ago.
At Haverford, it seems that all hope is lost for this football team and that people are just ready to move on and hope for a better result next year.
“Just… disappointing”
Brendan Sullivan ’22
“Just… disappointing” was all Fourth Former Brendan Sullivan had to say.
Like many people, he was anticipating another great team like the one from 2017, but what we got was much worse. Whose fault is it? Why are they so bad?
Fourth Former Pranav Dixit thinks it is Carson Wentz’s fault and that “he can’t make a playoff run.”
Wentz, the leader of the offense, has played horrendously in recent weeks and is one of the reasons they lost two big games against Seattle and New England. The Eagles defense pulled it together for both of these games and held both teams to 17 points each.
Carson Wentz completed only 50% of his passes against New England and turned the ball over four times in the game against Seattle. Though Wentz’s poor play in these games did not help, many more issues explain the disappointing season.
The most notorious problem is the poor play of the wide receiving core, with Alshon Jeffery struggling with injury, DeSean Jackson out for the year, and Nelson Agholor seemingly forgetting how to catch a football. The defense has lost its identity, especially in the most recent game where they allowed nearly 40 points against the 3-9 Miami Dolphins’ abysmal offense.
Lastly, the offensive line, while it has provided very good blocking for running backs, has already allowed more sacks than they did all year in 2017. This may be a sign that they are regressing as they get older.
Fourth Former Will Levenstein summed up the season beautifully, saying it was “very underwhelming, especially after Carson Wentz’s performance [in a 31-37 loss to the Dolphins]; they probably won’t make the playoffs playing like this,”
Another explanation for the team’s decline would be the departure of many talented personnel. Since offensive coordinator Frank Reich took a head coaching job with the Colts, the offense has never looked the same.
Now the underdogs once again, we can only hope for another miracle as the season comes to a close.
The team has also lost productive players like speedster Torrey Smith, the bulldozer LeGarrette Blount, and Mychal Kendricks, who was charged with insider trading. Or, maybe teams have adapted to coach Pederson’s style of play, and we have to face the hard truth that the team needs to make changes if we ever want to see the men in midnight green hoist the Lombardi trophy again.
Now the underdogs once again, we can only hope for another miracle as the season comes to a close.
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