Anthony DiBona
The truth hurts sometimes, it really does. That sting the Philadelphia Eagles and their fans are feeling right now is the result of a good old fashion reality check. Sadly and unexpectedly, that check came at the hands of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Led by lifelong Eagles fan and rookie quarterback Jameis Winston, the Bucs absolutely dominated the Eagles in the City of Brotherly Love.
But you won’t see love and the Eagles associated with each other anytime soon. Not after their embarrassing performance this season. Somehow, someway at 4-6, they’re still alive in the awful NFC East. Yet that should be the last thing on the minds of the coaches and players in Philadelphia. This was supposed to be a team with Super Bowl potential…not a team that gets embarrassed at home by a rookie quarterback.
It’s official, the Eagles have hit rock bottom. The team is on the verge of imploding and there are fingers being pointed all over the place. Is head coach Chip Kelly to blame for all of the changes he made this offseason? Are the players to blame for not getting the job done on the field? In all honesty, everyone is to blame. This team has sucked as a collective unit for most of the regular season.
Kelly apparently felt the same way and admitted the entire team was to blame for Sunday’s loss, according to Andrew Kulp of Bleacher Report:
“I told those guys, ‘You better have a short memory,’ because we’ll be back tomorrow morning at 8 o’clock.
“We all take ownership, we all take responsibility, every single person in that room contributed to that loss and contributed to the outcome of that football game. Go get some sleep, turn around and we’ll see you tomorrow morning at 8.”
While it’s nice to see Kelly finally take some ownership of Philadelphia’s struggles, where was this earlier in the season? The Eagles were losing because of poor play-calling, execution and all of that nonsense prior to Sunday’s loss but Kelly continued to sweep it under the rug. He would constantly bring up the fact that the Eagles were just a few plays from having more wins than they had. But the entire time, he was only fooling himself and his players.
Now the team is in full free fall mode and things don’t look like they’ll be getting better anytime soon. The Eagles will have to turn it around quickly as they’re set to visit the Detroit Lions on Thanksgiving. But it looks like they’ll be without starting quarterback Sam Bradford once again, as well as starting tight end Zach Ertz. Although the Lions seem like a team the Eagles should beat…didn’t all of us say that about the Falcons, Redskins, Dolphins and Buccaneers? Exactly.
Following their match-up on Turkey Day against the Lions, the Eagles will head into their toughest stretch of the regular season. First they’ll have to visit the undefeated New England Patriots, which is a guaranteed loss. Then they’ll host the 5-4 Buffalo Bills and the 8-2 Arizona Cardinals. Doesn’t that sound like so much fun!?
So let’s just say the Eagles somehow beat the Lions and lose the following three games, that’ll put them at 5-9 heading into divisional match-ups with the Washington Redskins and New York Giants. At that point, they might as well just take a page out of Sam Hinkie’s book and tank. There’s no reason to ruin their draft position for a couple of pointless wins. Screw it, maybe they should just start the tanking this upcoming week…let’s just call it “Tanksgiving!”
Although he was talking about the Eagles’ loss to the Bucs, a fan in this week’s edition of Inside the Eagles’ Nest (starts at the 0:54 mark of the video) essentially recapped Philadelphia’s regular season in just a few seconds.
“Just one of those things where, you know, you can only get but so angry and then you just kinda humble yourself to the loss. Just the disorganization of the whole team and the way everything is just kinda falling apart, it just makes you feel as an Eagles fan, ‘where am I going with this?'”
That about sums it up perfectly for this week and the entire regular season folks. Maybe we should start to ask ourselves the same question, where are we going with this?