Eagles
The Eagles had their first preseason game on Saturday night. Sure it wasn’t the best product as a football nor Eagles fan but it was football. That’s good enough for me. We’re going to take a look at the game and break down what I saw while watching it. Remember to take any of these with a grain of salt, media members always have their own biases including me. For example, I like the team, so while I’ll list the negatives, I’ll also look for positives.
We’ll start with where the game started, Andy Dalton. There’s a bit of a logjam at the QB2 position. Some people like Tanner McKee, others trust the experience of a veteran like Andy Dalton. Regardless of how you feel, we can agree it hopefully shouldn’t matter outside of a Week 18 rest-your-starters game. That should be even more solidified by watching both of them play last Saturday. They went a combined 9-16 with 110 yards and no touchdowns. Not great for a brand new offense. While that does raise a little concern, I’ll try and keep your hopes up besides just stating that it was a preseason game.
But yeah, the offense looked slow and disjointed. The Eagles didn’t get a score until just before the 2-minute warning in the fourth quarter. Here’s the spin. It was a brand new system being displayed for the first time with quarterbacks that aren’t the right fit. Neither Andy Dalton nor Tanner McKee have the skill set that Jalen Hurts does. That’s not much of a debate. If either of them escape the pocket and have open space, I’m not looking for them to run and get easy yards. It’s hard to really judge a system without seeing the starters in said system. If you tell me you can cook a steak but are only presented with a container of Spam, I’m not going to judge you too harshly.
While the offense had its struggles, the defense didn’t perform much better. This partially can be blamed on the offense not being able to hold the ball. The bigger issue in my opinion was the passing yards they gave up. The Ravens had 298 yards in the game. I define a bad game as 300 yard passing, which this is close enough. A lot of people will look at Kelee Ringo as the main culprit. They might say things like, “he’s bad,” “not good enough to play in this defense,” or “couldn’t cover a receiver if he had the routes given to him.” I won’t say these things but I did overhear it. Also the same thing goes for the defense as the offense where the stars weren’t on the field.
But again, I won’t keep it all negative. The defense didn’t perform but did have two turnovers. This includes a pick by Kelee Ringo. Good thing I didn’t say anything about him when covering the bad defensive performance. They also had a fumble recovery. This led to one of the best things in sports, yelling “BALL!” at the TV ideally before anyone else. Turnovers can change the pace of the game. If your defense is going to give up yards, it’s nice when they get turnovers. Of course you’d like to see the offense turn that into points but we’re not going to dig up old points. Let’s look for something new.
There’s also something I wanted to see but did not, besides better offense, defense, scores, a win, and one of the players mentioning my writing. That would be a Jake Elliott field goal attempt. He’s been struggling these past couple of years. He went from 93.8% in 2023 to 77.8% and 74.1% the next years respectively. Not great which is exactly why I wanted to see a couple field goal attempts. Kickers can make or break a team. The only thing worse than your team giving up a game-winning field goal is your team to miss a game-winning field goal.
I’ll close out by highlighting two players that I did enjoy watching even if the game in totality was not enjoyable. The first is Willie Lampkin. While he does have the perfect name for an offensive lineman, he doesn’t have the measurable on paper for it, 5’ 11” 279 pounds. Guess what? Willie Lampkin doesn’t care. He’ll pancake you and play till the end of the whistle. Offensive line depth is a premium most teams cant afford. When a youngster comes in and starts turning heads, you should be rooting for that guy.
The other player is Jeremiah Trotter Jr. Older Eagles fans will remember his father and were excited at the prospect of his son starting. Well this preseason game helped build that narrative. While I think the job is Jihaad Campbell’s to lose, depth always helps. Trotter made a couple of great players in the Ravens game that should get you excited about him as a prospect.
At the end of the day, football is back. We got to watch our Philadelphia Eagles play and organized game against another team. While it was certainly one of the preseason games of all time, it was a game. We’ll look to see the Eagles build a better performance in their next game against the Patriots. It should feature some fun stories going into it with a run-in with our old friend AJ Brown.
Sources: RossTuckerPod on X, Eagles on Instagram, NFL on X, JClarkNBCS on X, https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/E/ElliJa03.htm
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Hello, I’m a greater Philadelphia native writing mostly about the Eagles and the rest of the NFL. Articles aren’t … More about Kyle Lavin
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