Eagles Analysis: Ten takeaways from Week 1 vs. Falcons

The Philadelphia Eagles began the 2015 season with a tough loss on the road to the Atlanta Falcons. It’s hard to blame or praise individual players too much without seeing the all-22 but we still have a good idea of what went wrong. Here are ten things that stood out to me from the game:

1) Chip Kelly made the wrong call

Chip Kelly has to be more aggressive on 4th and 1. Be honest, did anyone think Cody Parkey was going to make that kick? Even if he did make it, would we have stopped the Falcons passing game from getting a field goal? The Eagles paid DeMarco Murray a lot of money and had enough confidence in their offensive guards to get rid of Evan Mathis. With a healthy offensive line against that Falcons defensive line, the Eagles should be able to pick up 1 yard on a run.

2) The Eagles miss Jeremy Maclin

A lot of people will disagree with this, I’m not just saying this to make a stupid hot-take, I really believe we do right now. The Eagles had no deep threat at all in this game. For all the talk about Josh Huff and Nelson Agholor, they had a combined 3 receptions for 24 yards. That’s not good enough. The Eagles cannot rely on Jordan Matthews, Darren Sproles and Zach Ertz to do all of the work in the passing game. The Eagles outside receivers need to do a better job because right now they miss Maclin.

3) The offensive line is a concern

I hated the Evan Mathis release, I wrote about it here straight after the release. He was an all-pro guard that the Eagles should have kept. Jason Peters had a rough night but I’m not worried about him. I am worried about Andrew Gardner and Allen Barbre though. They were both bad on pass protection and didn’t do enough in the run game. Chip Kelly clearly doesn’t trust his offensive line much either considering they only ran the ball 16 times all game and kicked a field goal on 4th and 1. Sam Bradford was getting pressured way too much for my liking too. The Eagles are an inside zone team and they barely ran it last night because the guards were bad, that is not a good sign.

4) Eagles safeties made plays

Malcolm Jenkins and Walter Thurmond looked great. Jenkins would be one of the leagues best safetys if he could catch, he should have had two interceptions. Jenkins did make a couple of wonderful pass breakups and the tackle on 3rd and 1 to force the Falcons to punt was just tremendous. He might be the nickel corner a lot this year as the team clearly have no faith in Eric Rowe who I didn’t see once. Thurmonds interception was great too and brought the Eagles back in the game. Even Chris Maragos seemed to play a lot and didn’t appear to be a liability as the deep safety.

5) Linebackers made plays in the passing game

We don’t need to talk about how good Kiko Alonso‘s interception was, you already know. Connor Barwin made two great pass breakups too and Mychal Kendricks made a great tackle on 3rd down when in man coverage to bring up 4th down. Do you know who made a bad play in coverage though? DeMeco Ryans. I love Ryans but please get him off the field. Kiko and Kendricks should never be on the sideline unless they are hurt or very tired.

6) I have concerns with the secondary… again

The Eagles cornerbacks were simply not good. I’m not expecting Byron Maxwell to shut down Julio Jones because he simply isn’t good enough to do what. However, when you’re getting paid that much money, you cannot be getting beat by Roddy White on crossing routes that easily. Maxwell actually looked slow to me, I think he’s a great cornerback when he’s playing cover 3 and going up and down the field but he didn’t look good at all in man coverage. Why the Eagles were so playing so much man coverage with outside leverage I will never know either.

7) Eagles are better conditioned than other teams

The Falcons defense had nothing left in the second half. The Eagles sport science and conditioning really did come through in the second half. The Eagles offense was on fire in the second half as the Falcons just couldn’t keep up with them. Their stamina levels should help them even more as the season progresses.

8) Lack of pass rush a concern

The Eagles secondary wasn’t great but the pass rush didn’t help them much. Fletcher Cox got pressure quite frequently but nobody else seemed to. The tried to blitz Kiko Alonso a few times and that didn’t seem to work. The Eagles best three pass rushers, Connor Barwin, Brandon Graham and Vinny Curry didn’t really get any pressure at all on the quarterback.

9) The offensive gameplan was weird

I wrote yesterday about how I expected the Eagles to use a lot of three level passing concepts like switch, flood and snag but they didn’t seem to run a lot of this. Most of the completed passes were on short curls and drag routes. I don’t get why the Eagles didn’t run the ball, throwing 52 passes is quite astonishing really. How many of those throws were deep too? Sam Bradford played okay overall, this loss wasn’t on him at all and he made some nice throws in the second half.

10) The Eagles aren’t as good or as bad as some think

Before this game, the hype was ridiculous. Some members of the media seemed to think the Falcons would just roll over at home and let the Eagles walk all over them. This was Bradford’s first competitive game in a long time, I expected some rust early on. I didn’t expect the team to be so ill-disciplined and give up so many penalties though. The Eagles are still a good team, not a great team yet, in my opinion and I wouldn’t overreact over one game. Let’s hope we improve next week.

Next: Eagles comeback falls short, lose to Falcons

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