Eagles head coach Chip Kelly pulled this game out of his hat with a defense that toughened up in the second half and an offense that started to click. Photo by Andy Lewis/contrastphotography.com

They say when your fan base boos you, it is a sign that they care about the team. If indeed that is the truth, then Eagles fans care very much about their football team.

In the opener of a season that has tremendous expectations, the Eagles were flatter in the first half than the Earth in 1052 AD.

The Birds, thanks to two fumbles by quarterback Nick Foles and a secondary that was still rubbing sleep from its eyes, staked the Jacksonville Jaguars a 17-0 lead at the half. The Jaguars looked like a team hell-bent on an upset.

Someone must have played Bill Conti’s “Gonna Fly Now” in the locker room at intermission…or something… because the Eagles – to a man – came out inspired and pasted a second half, 34-point barrage on the Jags, winning going away 34-17.

“I’ve never been part of a game like that,” Eagles rookie defensive tackle Beau Allen said after the game. “But it feels good. At the end of the day, as long as you get that ‘W’ going into the locker room. I don’t think too many people care how you got there. We finished the game strong and that is all that matters.”

During OTA’s Allen talk about how at Wisconsin, he did not pile up a lot of statistics. His job was to clog the middle and create opportunities for the linebackers to make plays – mostly against the run.

Allen and his teammates including starting nose tackle Fletcher Cox and Mychal Kendricks, held the Jaguars to just 64 yards rushing on 25 carries for just 2.6 yards per carry.

In the air Jags quarterback Chad Henne was 12 of 17 for 167 yards in the first half, including touchdown passes of 34 and 21 yards to Allen Hurns.

In the second half Henne was ineffective throwing for just 99 yards on 12 of 26 passing.

Obviously the defensive line had a lot to do with that.

“I haven’t seen any of the film obviously or the stats, but I think we did a good job of limiting their rushing game,” said Allen, who credited with one tackle. “We did a good job of stopping the run.”

The Eagles start to the game could not have been worse. Foles looked anything like the signal caller who finished 2013 as the highest rated quarterback in the NFK.

The third-year player coughed up the ball on on the Birds first two possessions. Both fumbles resulted in touchdowns for the Jaguars.

The Eagles faithful did not hold back how they felt about the play of their team.

Head coach Chip Kelly was asked if he talked to Foles to get him on track and if he could hear the crowd displeasure.

“Coach [Bill] Musgrave [Quarterbacks Coach] talked to him a few times,” Kelly said at his post-game press conference. “I talked to him a few times. I can see why he was frustrated. I think everybody was frustrated. I heard a few fans that were frustrated too. Go figure, but they had every right. I was booing myself.”

Defense looked solid for most of the game. Photo by Andy Lewis/contrastphotography.com

LeSean McCoy said there was no one person to look at for the first half funk the Eagles were in.

“It was bad,” said McCoy who finished with 74 yards on 21 carries and 41 yards receiving on six catches. “We just weren’t executing. We made mistakes and they caught us by surprise. We practiced hard and smart, we just didn’t execute early.”

McCoy was asked if Kelly was calling the same plays in the second half.

“He called the same plays,” McCoy said. “We just executed. We made the right reads, blocked and ran to the right spots. We just played better. You can have the same calls, but if you don’t execute, it doesn’t matter.”

McCoy down played his quarterback’s poor play in the first half.

“I think we all struggled,” McCoy said. “I don’t think it was just Nick. I don’t think I played my best game. I didn’t make the plays I usually make. In the beginning of the game, we were all struggling, not just Nick.”

Nick Foles fires what turned out to be a 68-yard TD pass to Jeremy Maclin. Photo by Andy Lewis/contrastphotography.com

Foles admitted that his teammates look at him during the game to see how he is dealing with the turnovers and overall poor play that led to a 50.5 quarterback rating at halftime.
“You just have to keep your composure,” said Foles, who finished the game with a rating of 87.5. “Coach Musgrave and the other quarterbacks were great. We were talking through everything. We go through the play sheets and it’s very critical to recognize what went wrong while seeing how the defense was moving around on the pictures. Then going to talk to my teammates and just communicating with one another, everybody sticking together. We came in at halftime and made corrections and just knew that it was a new game in the second half. We went out there and played Eagle football, played team football.”

A big plus for the Eagles and their faithful was the play of wide receiver Jeremy Maclin, who has fought back from a serious knee injury that sidelined him for all of 2013.

Maclin caught four passes for 97 yards including a back-breaking 68-yard bomb from Foles that put the Eagles up for good with 6:59 left in the fourth quarter.

Jeremy Maclin hauls in 68-yard TD pass from Foles. Photo by Andy Lewis/contrastphotography.com

Maclin was asked how long the ball was in the air on that play and to be so wide open.

“A long time,” Maclin said. “A lot of the time, those are some of the toughest catches to make when you are that wide open. But it was a good play called and a good job of Nick finding me and the rest is history.”

Probably the biggest scare and now concern came in the first half when the Eagles lost both All Pro guard Evan Mathis (knee) and Tackle Allen Barbre (ankle) for the game.

Rookie David Molk came in at left guard and veteran Andrew Gardner stepped in a tackle. After slow starts, both held down the fort well enough for the Birds offense to start to dominate.

“The big thing is that I love those guys and I’m going to go check on them as soon as I’m done with this [press conference],” Foles saod. “We just kept playing. We were playing for those guys. Those guys fight for me every single day and I was just going to keep grinding. The guys that came in – Molk and Gardner – did a great job. They really gave me some protection and opened up some seams in the run game. They were fighting for those guys that went down. We have a great group of guys.”

Barbre’s injury did not seem nearly as bad as the injury to Mathis looked.

Evan Mathis is helped off the field after a knee injury sidelined the veteran lineman for the game and probably a lot longer. Photo by Andy Lewis/contrastphotography.com

Probably the biggest play came on the Eagles came on the first drive of the third quarter. The Birds stalled at the Jaguars 49-yard line.

On fourth and one, Kelly decided to go for it – all up tempo – and the result perfect and set the tone for the rest of the game.

Darren Sproles, the tiny running back brought in from New Orleans, exploded through the line and raced 49 yards for touchdown. For the Jaguars, it was downhill from there on.

“We knew that they were getting tired, so we tried to hurry up on them,” Sproles said. “They were not even set and left a big hole in the middle of the field. That is what you want to see as a running back.”

Sproles was asked if he thought his touchdown run was the turning point in the game.

“Yeah, we started slow. But, I think that that was the turning point. That got us going.”