Philadelphia Eagles: An NFC East downtrend In Week 4’s Power Rankings

Week 3 exposed all of the Philadelphia Eagles’ weaknesses.

This one is going to sting for a while with ‘Birds’ fans. How could the Eagles squander the opportunity to get their first win of the 2020 season versus the lowly Bengals? They didn’t lose but they didn’t win either and the fact head coach Doug Pederson robbed the team of yet another chance to come out victorious makes the tie very disappointing.

Pederson’s explanations for punting the ball to end overtime didn’t make much sense at the time, but in hindsight, it might have been the right call. It was also puzzling that Miles Sanders wasn’t more involved in the offensive gameplan, but we later learned that he was ‘battling through fatigue’. That’s reasonably understandable. Did you see the beating he took?

Oh, and speaking of a lack of conditioning, left tackle Jason Peters left the field towards the end of the game because he was ‘feeling tired’. That may sound like something straight out of a comedy sketch, but it happened. ‘The Bodyguard’ demanded more money to play left tackle just to tell the coaching staff he doesn’t have enough stamina to finish a football game. Surely, you have to see the humor in that. We can’t make this stuff up.

Even though Philly’s offensive line has played significantly better since giving up eight sacks in Week 1, left guard Nate Herbig was flagged for offensive holding on a key drive that could have led to points, and right guard Matt Pryor committed a false start penalty in the team’s last overtime drive that, in essence, knocked Philly out of field goal range.

All of that led to Pederson’s decision to punt the ball on fourth down to close this one. Again, can you blame him? Are you certain that the defense could have delivered a stop to keep Cincy out of an opportunity to kick a game-winner of their own? The bleeding has to stop in Philly. Things have totally gotten out of hand.