Adrian Fedkiw
When the Philadelphia Eagles drastically fell behind the Detroit Lions last Thanksgiving, there was no fight from them in the second half.
That wasn’t the case Sunday.
The Eagles trailed 24-7 at the half a year ago and lost 45-14. Instead of folding in the latest encounter between the teams in the Motor City, the Birds mounted a furious second-half rally after being down 21-7 at the break. Philly still lost 24-23, but like head coach Doug Pederson said, the team showed resiliency.
“I think that how we came back in this game, you know, I think it shows the character of this football team and where we are from even a year ago,” Pederson said via Philly Voice. “I think this game a year ago got out of hand and it got shut down, they got blown out. This group didn’t do that yesterday. This group was resilient; this group battled. The sideline was calm. They were — whatever adversity came our way, they were able to overcome it. … So it’s the sign of a good football team.”
Whether or not the Eagles are a good football team remains to be seen, but the fight they showed was encouraging.
“Despite everything that went on in this game — negative, positive, the whole thing — this is a different football team than a year ago,” Pederson said. “This is a resilient football team. This is a team that, when I walked on the plane last night and we were halfway home, everyone is on their iPads watching the game, watching their part. They’re correcting their mistakes. They’re wanting to get back out on the football field. And that’s great. From a coach’s perspective, that’s great to see. It’s great to see your players take ownership that way. The leaders of your team really step up and — yeah, as bad as it hurts, they understand that we let one slide.
“My message to them is that every week is going to be a challenge and every week has its own circumstances. But it was great to see the veteran guys — really all the guys back there, from Carson to Malcolm to Fletcher to Connor, Brent Celek — everybody’s back there looking at the game. So this thing, it won’t spiral. They’re taking ownership of it.”
Whether or not that was a shot at Chip Kelly I don’t know.
Pederson’s right about one thing, it’s definitely a different team than a year ago.