Eagles Pull Off Comeback To Beat Jaguars 34-17
PHILADELPHIA, PA (CBS) — Nick Foles slammed the ball down on the Lincoln Financial Field turf in anger, frustrated over getting sacked again, frustrated at himself for not seeing things he knows he should have.
Foles couldn't do anything right. He didn't see open receivers down the field, and the ones he did manage to see, he either under threw them or overthrew them. He held the ball too long. He looked unsure.
The only lift Foles received in the first half of Sunday's season opener against the Jacksonville Jaguars came from the Jags themselves. After a second-quarter sack, the Eagles' quarterback uncharacteristically showed irritation, pounding the ball down before receiving a pity boost back up to his feet from Jacksonville defensive end Red Bryant.
Otherwise, no one was going to help Foles. Certainly not the frothing Eagles' fans that booed Foles and the Eagles as they left the field at halftime.
Give the third-year quarterback some credit. Foles cooled off and pushed through. He rebounded from the near-disaster he created into a 34-17 comeback victory over Jacksonville.
"We weren't hitting open receivers, we weren't putting the ball on people, we weren't running the ball the way we like to normally run the ball, our run game wasn't working, pass game wasn't working and the guy calling the plays wasn't working," Eagles' coach Chip Kelly said. "We got straightened out in the second half."
When asked if there was any chance he would have pulled Foles in favor of Mark Sanchez during the first half, Kelly said, "We didn't talk about that at all. Bill [Musgrave, the Eagles' quarterback coach] talked to [Foles]. I talked to him a few times. I can see why he was frustrated. I was frustrated. I think everybody was frustrated. I heard a few fans that were frustrated, too. Go figure. But they had every right. I was booing myself.
"It's everything. I don't think you can lose your mind out there. You have to have composure and understand that it's a long game. Things were there. It's not like things weren't there. We had plays. We didn't change anything. There wasn't a huge change from a play call standpoint in terms of what we were doing in the second half to what we were doing in the first half. We weren't throwing chairs or anything during halftime. We were, 'Hey settle down, this is what they're giving us.' They did exactly what we practiced and exactly what we trained for. They played a lot more zone than man, but we trained against it and it was just a matter of executing. We didn't execute very well in the first half. Fortunately for us, we executed in the second half."
Foles finished 27-for-45 for 322 yards and two touchdowns in responding to a 17-0 halftime hole that Foles helped dig—with 34 unanswered points. Foles was 15 for 21 in the second half for 183 yards and two touchdowns.
"The first half, we played horrible," Eagles' left tackle Jason Peters said. "I was [frustrated] in the first half. I just have to block longer. The receivers, I guess, we're getting covered up. I just had my blocks longer. I have a certain timer in my head if it's a certain protection. I had to block longer for Nick and keep them off of him. He was getting hit pretty good back there."
A stagnant offense produced two lost fumbles, an interception in the end zone, four punts and a turnover on a loss of downs on the Eagles' first eight possessions. If not for the Eagles defense, which denied Jacksonville a third-down conversion in the first half, it could have been far worse.
"Our defense and special teams played really, really well," Kelly said. "I said at some point in time we're going to have to rely on everybody to win games and those guys kept us in it, because it could have been a lot worse. We blocked the field goal and we put them on a short field. There's a lot of real good teaching points when we get these guys back and ready for the Colts' game."
The Eagles changed the course of the game by scoring on their first two possessions in the third quarter. Foles engineered drives of 80 and 40 yards to pull the Eagles to within 17-14 with 7:27 left in the quarter.
Darren Sproles ignited everything with a 49-yard touchdown run—Sproles' career-longest rushing TD—on a fourth-and-one play. Foles then connected with Zach Ertz for a 25-yard score that made it a game again.
On the Sproles' score, Jacksonville's defense didn't seem to be set, leaving the middle wide open for Sproles to zip through.
"We train that way and it's 17-0 and we needed to generate something and I was confident that we could hit it," Kelly said. "We did a good job of getting the front set, pointing it up and getting it ready to go. I don't they were exactly dug in and ready, but it's one of the byproducts of what we do offensively. Sometimes you can get one of those things."
With 6:59 left in the game, Foles topped off the comeback with a 68-yard TD strike to a wide open Jeremy Maclin, seeing him this time, and giving the Eagles a 24-17 lead. The closest player to Maclin was Jacksonville free safety Winston Guy, who was about 10 yards away.
The Maclin play was there. Foles just needed to find Maclin.
The Eagles ran the play "about five times, and we finally got it," Kelly said. "If you watch the film, we just run a vertical package against single-high safety, and they lean to one of the vertical routes, and the second vertical route got down the field in Mac and Nick spotted him. We hit it. We did hit it when we needed to hit it."
Cody Parkey nailed a couple of field goals, a 51-yarder that tied the score at 17-17 with 10:55 left, and a 28-yarder that sealed it with 1:57 remaining. Defensive end Fletcher Cox put on the clinching touch with a 17-yard fumble return for a touchdown and a 34-17 Eagles' lead.
It was a victory that won't be classified in the pretty department, considering the Eagles lost starting All-Pro left guard Evan Mathis, who went down with a left knee injury, and starting right tackle Allen Barbre, who was lost with a right leg injury. Both went down in the second quarter—when all seemed lost.
"I just made mistakes," Foles said. "I really just have to get the ball out a little faster. It's as simple as that. It's on me."
ANDREW GARDNER AND DAVID MOLK ANSWER THE CALL
THE EAGLES' CALM RULED THE DAY
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