Eagles watch Panthers steal big win in Philly
PHILADELPHIA >> This was a strange one, even by NFL standards.
There was a fight, and then a football game broke out. The Eagles didn’t finish either of those items, although it took a lot of class on the part of their captain to take the high road.
Anyway, Eric Reid, who has a history with Malcolm Jenkins dating to the national anthem protests and the players coalition, stationed himself outside the coin flip area but within shouting distance of the Eagles’ captain during the opening toss Sunday. And Reid wasn’t on a knee. He’d ripped Jenkins because Colin Kaeperick, the face of the anthem protests, wasn’t part of the players coalition. Jenkins, hearing all the racket and full of adrenaline, gave Reid the satisfaction of a face-toface but his Panthers counterpart wouldn’t shut up.
When Jenkins walked away, Reid got physical with his own teammate — and former Eagle, Torrey Smith — who had sprinted over to intervene. All that and the game hadn’t started.
Referee Clete Blakeman didn’t throw a flag for unsportsmanlike conduct.
Guess calling a guy a sellout and cowardly, according to folks who heard Reid describe it thusly, is OK as long as you don’t lead with the crown of your helmet.
To his credit, Jenkins stayed above the trash talk when asked every which way, exactly what Reid’s problem was.
“I’m not talking about Eric Reid,” Jenkins said.
Unfortunately for Birds fans, that was the only thing an Eagles player did unfailingly after the third quarter.
The Eagles dominated the Panthers, grabbing a 17-0 lead in the first three quarters that would have been 20-0 had Jake Elliott not bricked a 36-yard field goal attempt into a 19-m.p.h. wind.
And then, just when the subject turned to who you’d be seated next to on the trip to London to play the Jaguars next week, the Eagles gave up 21 points in the fourth quarter. They were spared an even uglier ending when what was initially ruled an interception by Reid at the three-yard line was reversed by the replay official.
The incompletion didn’t matter. Carson Wentz looked like he was caught in a trash compactor on the final offensive play for the Eagles, Julius Peppers getting the sack on fourth down, the ball squirting out and bodies blowing this way and that in the wind. The wreckage in the locker room was every bit as devastating.
“When we’re up 17 points in the fourth quarter, we’ve got to win the game,” tight end Zach Ertz said. “I mean, that is the bottom line. There’s no other way to put it. I’ve been in some losses where we really didn’t have a chance. This one hurts because we freaking had it.”
It was that freaking bad, to borrow Ertz’s verbiage.g
The pass coverage was too loose at the worst possible times, cornerback Ronald Darby giving up an 18-yard scoring pass to Devin Funchess and linebacker LaRoy Reynolds misreading the game-winner, Cam Newton’s oneyard throw to Greg Olsen with 1:22 left. Yeah, we thought Cam was going to reach that ball over the goal line, too,
The Eagles’ pass rush didn’t quite get there. And when it did, the visitors got lucky. Michael Bennett almost sent Newton to the concussion tent with a clean, legal hit on fourth-and-10, the Panthers trailing by a field goal in the fourth quarter.
Smith, who earlier passed concussion protocol after a hit, hauled in what was left of the throw and ran 35 yards to give the Panthers
a first down at the 34 of the Eagles at the two-minute warning.
“I hit him like, hard,” Bennett said. “It was so frustrating. Too frustrating.”
That was the longest play of the game for the Panthers, who after gaining a little more than 100 yards in the first three quarters accumulated six plays of 14 or more yards in the final frame, five through the air.
How bad was it? Worst loss of Fletcher Cox’s career.
“We were up 17-0,” Cox said. “And they came back and kicked our ass.”
The Eagles divided the mistakes
among themselves almost equally. And when they didn’t get the breaks, they created them, Alshon Jeffery drawing a 48-yard interference penalty on cornerback James Bradberry to give the Eagles a first down at the 22 of the Panthers, moments after falling behind late in the game.
Instead of capitalizing on what they did to get the big lead, the Eagles got out of their comfort zone. Wentz nearly was picked off on an overthrow. On third down he was almost intercepted again. On fourth-and-two at the 14 of Carolina, he let himself get squeezed by the blitz.
For a chunk of the game the Eagles found ways to gash the Panthers by putting big bodies like Ertz (6-5, 250), Dallas Goedert (6-5, 256) and Jeffery (6-3, 218) on a secondary full of little people including Donte Jackson (5-10, 180), Mike Adams (5-11, 205) and our favorite, Captain Munnerlyn (5-9, 195).
Ertz had nine catches for a season-best 138 yards. Jeffrey had seven grabs for 88 yards and a score, Goedert four for 43 with a TD.
Just say the run game has had better days and that’s what the trade deadline is for.
“We feel like we had control of the game,” Jenkins said. “To kind of just stall completely as a team is just disappointing. At the end of the day, you handle what you can control.”
The Eagles lost for just the second time when Wentz hasn’t thrown an interception. They’re 9-2 in such games, both setbacks in the last three weeks.
Even the statistical good luck brought by Blakeman didn’t help. The Eagles now are 8-2 in games he’s officiated.
The Eagles, again, aren’t even sure who they are. Is it the team that dominated the first three quarters, or the outfit that collapsed?
“I think we are what we put on tape,” Jenkins said. “We’ll be critical in the way we evaluate it but I don’t think at any point it changes who we are.”