Well, after digesting everything, the Eagles treated last night's game like it was the 4th preseason game when we had 4 preseason games which is unfortunate. I would imagine the life was taken out of them when Hurts when to the hospital so they just mailed it in. I am not sure how much we can take from the game given it was a glorified scrimmage
Not sure I agree with this take, at least not to the extent you're laying it out here. I'm not sure about the "mailing it in" factor - I didn't really detect that, and everyone involved has every motivation to bust ass to make their team/spot. More concretely, Hurts was out, but Flacco isn't exactly a typical WhoDat backup. He's not what he was, but he knows the game and is a good decision maker. Other than Hurts it looked like the first team offense, more or less. The stars of the defensive line weren't in there, and a few others.
but here goes:
- People are looking past what I think was the best sign from Jones, which wasn't his arm strength, but his ability to shrug off pass rushers while keeping his head focused downfield. That's something were the quality of the opponent isn't as determinative, and it's a good sign for the future. Which brings me to ...
- I don't know if Jones is a better NFL player than Cam as of today, but I do know that he's currently doing much better at the fundamentals of the game. I still expect BB to make Cam the week one starter however, if Mac starts to get time with the 1s in practice than watch out, he could be the starter vs the Fins. Fingers crossed!
I think any questions about Mac's knee, along with Cam's performance, pretty much sealed this up. You can't sit Cam, have Mac tweak the knee, and have Cam come back in. That would be a total disaster for a bunch of reasons. And if Cam's the starter, you don't need to worry (much) about Mac tweaking the knee, so you can still make sure he gets his reps.
- I am depressed over Nordin. Bill defended him after the game and said he bounced back but we are royally screwed at the second most important position on the field behind QB if Folk does not heal in time for the season.
No chance it's the 2nd most important position on the field. I don't know if we're screwed with Nordin - I think we could probably use him and even get good production out of him for awhile if necessary. But I highly doubt we'd really trust him any time in the near future.
- Love the running game. Love the Oline.
Yes, but not as much based on last night, except in terms of the depth. I don't think the starting OL really showed us much last night because it was matched up primarily against 2s. Certainly we can say it wasn't much of a test.
- We do not have decent third TE which is worrisome as both of our starters are hurt and may also get hurt during the season.
We only learned that we don't have a decent 4th TE. LaCosse still exists, and as TE depth goes he's not the end of the world. As a TE1? Not so much. We definitely need Smith and Henry back, though. Having strong 12 personnel will open up a lot of things for this offense.
- I feel bad for Harry. I am not sure why he dived for that ball when he could have just kept running and caught it. Not sure if he misread Mac's throw and did not except it to be out in front of him but it looks IR is his future. A real bummer.
- I would talk about the defense but honestly playing against Flacco and his bionic arm snapper was a joke.
I think we can talk more about the defense than the offense, since those were mostly starters as far as I could tell. Starting WRs, TEs, and RBs, starting OL.
I thought the DBs generally had good coverage, and the front 7 provided a pretty solid rush. I wasn't psyched about some of the gashes we took in the running game in the first couple series. But it wasn't
horrible, they got it under control, and in the preseason you're looking at very vanilla defense without any real aspect of game-planning, so it's hard to judge as a whole. Individually, I didn't see anything that frightened me.
I was hoping Barmore would jump off the screen at me, and he didn't much. Especially in a vanilla defense where he can not think and just play balls-out, I was hoping to see some major flashes from him. Judon continues to look nasty, and the angles that Hightower and KVN take are consistently really, really pretty. Such a difference.
Jackson was steadier and less flashy than is typical for him. If Williams can develop, his size can be a real weapon. I was pretty pleased overall with Mills, Williams, and Duggar in coverage - really good to see Duggar with a PBU - against some very solid skill players. I'm hesitant to take too much from it because while Flacco is heady, at this point in his career the ball takes an extra quarter second to get there compared to many of the QBs they'll face, and I worry that our DBs will end up being a half-step short when it's Allen or Mahomes gunning it in there. But I think they were positionally better, and I wonder how much of that stems from having McCourty back at the helm. I'd definitely like Gilmore back sooner rather than later - I hope he can get himself into real game shape in time for the Dolphins - and I'm really hoping Jones is not seriously dinged up. He makes a big difference against "1st down machine" slot guys. But Mills did alright for himself.
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