While the Eagles’ pitiful defensive performance Sunday amid a 42-30 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs leaves that issue at the forefront of head coach Nick Sirianni’s concerns, there are other brewing problems which threaten to send the club spiraling out of any playoff picture even before any midseason assessments could be made.
Since neither team had to punt Sunday at the Linc, it’s clear this wasn’t exactly a banner defensive day on either end. Then again, Chiefs quarterack Parick Mahomes accounted for five touchdowns while the Eagles accounted for three would-be touchdowns negated by penalties.
Through four weeks, there’s your Philadelphia Eagles alone at the top – and by a lot – in NFL team penalty taking. The Eagles have committed 44 of them, which in grade school math and first-year coaching equates to 11 per game.
Turning it up to 11 isn’t something that either new head coaches or the screaming fans like as part of the act.
“Obviously, it’s impacting games a lot,” Sirianni said of the penalties and other miscues. “Our number of penalties is definitely very high, but yesterday we had, what, 49 yards in penalties and I think the Chiefs had 46 with less. I think we ended up being minus-3 in the penalties yesterday, minus three yards in the penalties.”
Yeah, but that’s not really the issue. It’s more about how the penalties are costing the Eagles touchdowns and cutting short would-be drives, a troubling coda which began before this loss to the Chiefs.
Sirianni said Sunday “self-inflicted wounds have to stop.” That’s obvious. What isn’t so obvious are the repeated mistakes on both sides of the ball that clearly can be traced to lack of discipline, which can evolve easily for teams with a new coaching staff and mix of players.
Some veterans, however, seem to be too often in the sloppy mix. Witness Derek Barnett, who in four-plus seasons has racked up some 24 penalties, nine of them personal fouls. This after repeatedly issuing the standard “gotta clean that up” line about his penalty taking.
The latest personal came against the Chiefs, when he was flagged for a roughing the passer, Mahomes later expressing his gratitude with a touchdown pass on the drive.
“Again, my job is to make sure this team is better in every aspect and penalties is an issue right now,” Sirianni said. “We’re doing the necessary steps to take. … Today, it was a little bit rougher conversation when we went in there. It was just a little bit harsher conversation with how the penalties need to stop and what we need to do to make the penalties stop.
“I’m not sure there’s many teams spending as much time on this as we are. But here’s the thing … when you have penalties called on you and when you’re committing penalties, because we’re committing them, it’s not like we’re … they’re happening and we’re doing them. When that’s happening, right, it kind of can snowball into a sense that – the referees next time or the coaching staff next time is going to come out and tell you, ‘Hey, these guys have an issue with this. They’re off-sides here, they do these things a lot.’ Now they’re looking for that thing.”
Oh.
Well maybe that’s their jobs.
And it might have something to do with the way the Eagles have been flagged 10 more times than the second-worst NFL offender, the Tampa Bay Bucs.
“We’ve got to get it fixed. We have to get it fixed because we know that teams are looking for it and they’re going to take advantage of it,” Sirianni added. “They’re going to hard count us on third down, they’re going to mess with us on first and second down. So, we know we got to get things better. What I can tell you is that we’re working and trying every approach we know how to try to get things better.”
In other problem areas, the Eagles were said to have fared surprisingly since they are now missing four starting offensive linemen.
The Eagles were already missing Brandon Brooks (long-term with an Achilles) and Jordan Mailata (knee) when Isaac Seumalo went down last week for the season with a Lisfranc sprain in his foot requiring surgery. Then came the news that Lane Johnson wouldn’t be available to suit up for KC due to “personal reasons.”
Sirianni on Monday did not offer much news on on Johnson, except to say, “he’s going through a personal matter and we’re just going to keep it at that for right now. I have no new update.”
That said, replacement linemen Jack Driscoll (right tackle for Johnson), Nate Herbig (right guard) and rookie Landon Dickerson (left guard) all won kudos for their work against the Chiefs.
Of course, it also helps that Jalen Hurts knows how to scramble for his life, so going forward this is yet another worrisome area for the Eagles. It also means trouble for running back Miles Sanders, who is still trying to get untracked this season but doesn’t seem to be finding the holes that once were available to him.
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