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With 2m40s left in the fourth quarter and the 11-4 Philadelphia Eagles and 3-12 Arizona Cardinals knotted at 31-all, a disgusted AJ Brown walked off the field shaking his head at his team’s lackluster offensive playcalling. The Eagles, already in field goal range a reckless onside-kick attempt gifted them winning field position, went soft. On 1st-and-20 they dialed up a designed run for quarterback Jalen Hurts despite having one of the league’s most effective rushers in D’Andre Swift. Four-yard gain. Hurts ran it again on second down, this time for a three-yard loss. Even saddled with a 3rd-and-19, most teams closing in on an NFC East title and eying return Super Bowl appearance with last year’s MVP runner-up under center, would take a shot. Not the Eagles. They called a tunnel screen to running back Kenneth Gainwell that gained, well, only four yards.
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It was a pitiful series from a playcalling standpoint. Their conservative tack against an overmatched Cardinals team that had nothing to lose after being trailing 21-6 is a quintessential example of playing not to lose.
But in speaking to reporters postgame, Nick Sirianni disagreed.
“I don’t think that’s conservative,” the Eagles third-year head coach said. “If they’re blitzing the gaps, you run a gap scheme. We could’ve thrown it, but we chose to run it, and it didn’t hit. It didn’t work. The screen, that’s gonna be tough to convert, the wind was blowing in our face there. We had to get in range.”
Philadelphia converted the field goal, but allowed the Cardinals to march down the field and nail down a 35-31 win at the death. The Arizona running back James Conner, who torched the Eagles for 128 yards and almost five yards per carry, scored the decisive touchdown.
Arizona head coach Jonathan Gannon, the Eagles’ defensive coordinator during last year’s Super Bowl run,…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/free-falling-eagles-shambles-ravens-090027487.html
Author : The Guardian
Publish date : 2024-01-01 09:00:27
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