Eagles Survive Rams, 34-28, But Alarming Trends Continue
PHILADELPHIA, PA (CBS) — The St. Louis Rams dared them. They brought their linebackers in close. They brought their safety up. They bunched the tackle box with everything they could, playing almost a goal line defense the entire game.
The Rams dared the Eagles and the Eagles blinked, making what appeared to be an easy game much harder than it should have been.
With 2:15 left in the third quarter, the Eagles were yukking it up on the sideline, high fiving over their largest lead in any game this year, seemingly in command of the woeful Rams.
That's when the 2014 Eagles decided to arrive. You know them well. You should after five games. It's a group that has a tendency to make everything difficult. And it's exactly what happened on Sunday at Lincoln Financial Field against a second-rate team on its third quarterback with a penchant for self destructing.
The Rams made what appeared to be a leisurely stroll into a scary sprint, as the Eagles staved off 21 unanswered points to win, 34-28, and improve to 4-1.
The Eagles needed special teams and defense to bail themselves out. In the last eight quarters, five of the Eagles' seven touchdowns have come from special teams and defense. This season, the Eagles have scored 7 non-offensive touchdowns, the highest in the NFL, and 11 offensive touchdowns.
The Eagles became the first team in NFL history to have both a defensive and a special teams touchdown in consecutive games. With seven non-offensive touchdowns this season (four special teams, three defensive), the Eagles are one shy of tying the team record set in 1952 and are the only NFL team since the merger in 1970 with seven such touchdowns through five games.
Those are nice byproducts of a strong special teams and an advantageous defense. But this is a team that has a higher standard to uphold--and offensively, it's not doing it. They know it. To a man throughout the Eagles' locker room on Sunday no one seemed pleased.
And though the win did drive the Eagles' record to 4-1 in early October (a month ahead of last year, when the Eagles didn't win their fourth game until Nov. 4), the victory revealed numerous flaws.
With :42 left, and the Rams out of timeouts on their 47, Rams' quarterback Austin Davis, who seemed to suddenly channel Kurt Warner in the fourth quarter, tossed a floater to no one that enabled the Eagles to survive.
The Eagles, however, continue to produce alarming trends. Like Nick Foles failure to hit open receivers, and LeSean McCoy's east-west running style, which has yet to produce a 100-yard game this season.
How long can the Eagles rely on special teams and defense to produce touchdowns against a more competitive team, say the Dallas Cowboys? Does it bode well that Cedric Thornton, Fletcher Cox and Malcolm Jenkins have as many TDs as Shady McCoy?
"We're not pleased with the way the offense is going, we need to play better," conceded receiver Riley Cooper, who caught four passes for 33 yards, including a 9-yard TD strike in the second quarter. "I'm not sure what it is. We're not playing like we're capable of playing. I don't know what it is. We have to get back to the drawing board and see what we're doing wrong and what we're doing right. But as long as we're winning games, it doesn't matter."
It could later.
A Darren Sproles' fourth-quarter, 25-yard run up the gut saved the Eagles with just less than three minutes to play. It extended a drive that chewed up valuable time.
The Rams schemed the Eagles much differently than what Chip Kelly and the Eagles expected.
"They did, they stacked the box, which has been happening to us a lot," Sproles said. "But this was different. We have to keep being patient. We have to take those two yards sometimes, take those two yards, take those two yards. Because the big play is going to come. We have to be patient and we're not. They played us different, bringing the linebackers close up to plug up the holes, then they brought the safety down really stacking the box, like a goal line defense."
Center David Molk, playing in place of the injured Jason Kelce, concurred.
"The defense was playing us as if they threw everyone into the box, it seemed," Molk said. "I thought we found our holes and we made them. I felt a lot more comfortable [than last week]; a lot less nervous going into the game. But they did some things defensively that we hadn't played seen or played against all week. They really played differently up front than how our guys played and what you would normally see. It was awkward at first.
"They did play us in a goal-line defense for most of the game. They played us in 'Bear,' which is a goal-line defense. When they played us with four down linemen, they played with their backers tight, so it was tough running, without a doubt. We adjusted. Certain plays worked against it, certain plays didn't. You have to find your angles and I thought as we went through this game, we found out what could work and what will work."
The Rams dared Foles to beat them. To an extent, he did, completing 24-of-37 passes for 207 yards, two touchdowns and an interception (giving him 8 TDs and 5 INTs in 2014). What's hard to ignore is the third-quarter pass Foles under threw to a wide open Jordan Matthews that probably would have resulted in a touchdown (Foles did hit an open Jeremy Maclin for a 24-yard TD on the following play).
The win may have jump-started McCoy out of his doldrums, rushing for a season-high 81 yards against a Rams' defense that was ranked 30th against the run, giving up an average of 155 yards rushing a game. But it's the fifth-straight game in which McCoy has failed to break a 100, the longest stretch he's gone without 100 yards in a game since his rookie year.
"They're stacking the box, last year, this was something new, they really didn't know what our offense was about, so our inside zone was a big part of our offense last year, we averaged a bunch of yards with it," said right tackle Lane Johnson, returning for his first game after serving a four-game suspension. "We'll probably throw a few more wrinkles in there, a lot more outside zone, more power. We'll mix it up next week. The only thing we did different [this week] was the tackle-over stuff. We had some success with that, because they hadn't seen it. That helped us in the second half.
"Teams are trying to take out the inside zone. We're not really where we want to be [offensively]. We had a better game than we had last week rushing. As far as what we did last year, that's going to be tough to match. But we're going to try. Teams are a lot more prepared this year than what they were last year."
Another shadowy harbinger is the Eagles' three turnovers—giving them a combined total of seven turnovers over the last two games.
Yes, the Eagles won and improved to 4-1, but unless they can correct some serious flaws (Foles' accuracy, McCoy's east-west running, ect.), you get the inkling that it's a hallow 4-1.
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