Nick Piccone
The Eagles lost in pretty embarrassing fashion – yet again – at MetLife Stadium earlier today to the Giants. Despite the many mistakes made on the field and questionable play calls by head coach Doug Pederson, the Eagles were still in position to possibly win the game at the end. They’ve been in every game so far this season and have had the chance to win each one. However, after their latest loss to the Giants, Malcolm Jenkins thought it was evident the team needed a message. And he was the one to give it to them. [NJ.com]
After a 28-23 loss to the Giants on Sunday, Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins called the team together for a meeting between players and coaches.
His message?
“Stay together,” defensive end Brandon Graham said. “Stay together.”
The Eagles’ once promising season hit a major road bump on Sunday, as they are now 4-4 following their mistake-filled loss to the Giants.
“We’re a methodical, boring but effective team,” Jenkins said of his message to the team, “when we all play together.”
In addition to two interceptions by quarterback Carson Wentz, the defense had a number of big breakdowns in the secondary, three of which led to touchdowns through the air by quarterback Eli Manning.
“Make sure that we fix the mistakes that we made,” Graham said of what Jenkins said emphasized. “Biggest thing was to just stay together. We got eight games to go, and we can still put ourselves in a real good situation and turn things around fast. We just have to get a couple on the road, and win out at home.”
The Eagles don’t face an easy task at home next week, as they take on Julio Jones, Matt Ryan and a 6-3 Atlanta Falcons team who are really, really good. Then again, the Eagles are undefeated at home, so maybe the Falcons will run into a buzzsaw.
Maybe.
The players are at least still on board with Pederson, as they gave him a vote of confidence after the game.
Jenkins:
“No,” Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins said, when asked if he fears the team is running out of time to turn this season around. “We’re halfway through. We have a lot of football left to play. The good news is we’re coming back home. If you look around the league right now, obviously we’re not in the spot where we’d want to be, but we’re in a good spot right now.
“We just have to take it one game at a time. The good thing is in all of these games we’re in a position to win at the end. We just have to find out sooner, before that last drive and those final plays that we have to make between then and there.”
Jordan Matthews:
“Those calls, in football, those are the ones that you always say if they work ‘oh, great you’re playing aggressive’ and it doesn’t work you’re like ‘oh, that was stupid, you should have taken the three points.’ Offensive guys, we’re not asking for the field goal team to come out and kick it. We want to go for it on fourth down. That’s our mindset. If that’s what we’re asking for, that’s what we want to do, we just have to go out and execute it. That’s the bottom line. It’s black and white.”
Brandon Graham:
“Coach is going to make the call. I really respect it because he knows what his defnese is going to do. He knows in any situation, we’re up for the challenge. There’s no pressure on us. We just go out there and try to get the job done. We just didn’t want to miss out on any opportunities where we could go for it. He was going to be aggressive today. We knew that going in. We were ready for it. We just couldn’t make the plays at the end of the game to win. I do like where we are as far as staying together.
“We’re an aggressive team. He wants to be aggressive and go out there and win games. We all do, too. This week was just one of those weeks where we had to be aggressive. Whatever the coach wants to do, I’m down for whatever. I’m sure I speak for everybody and we’ll do whatever coach wants to do. We went out there and just played hard. We controlled what we could and that’s going out and making plays.”