Dave Spadaro Eagles Insider

By DAVE SPADARO
Eagles Insider

When the Eagles blitzed Green Bay in the third game of the preseason and quarterback Sam Bradford completed 10 passes in 10 attempts and threw 3 touchdowns, the performance set off the kind of expectations for an Eagles offense not seen since the Terrell Owens-mania offense of 2004. It was off the charts.

The media dramatically upgraded its expectation of the Eagles. The fans were drunk with giddiness.It seemed, for sure, that the sky was the limit.

“We are going to do great things with this offense,” wide receiver Jordan Matthews said with great gusto.That may still be the case, for an NFL regular season is a marathon and we’re only one quarter of the way through the 16-game schedule. But the giddiness turned to concern, then to panic and now pure uncertainty over the offense that looked so cohesive and explosive and balanced in the summer months.

The Eagles have a lot of work to do on offense, that much is clear. The explosiveness the Eagles expected to have has been reduced to more of a dink-and-dunk approach in the passing game. The running game fueled by free-agent signees DeMarco Murray and Ryan Mathews has been stopped more than it has started. The offensive line, which changed out its starting guards, struggled through three games blocking for the run, and took a hit when right guard Andrew Gardner suffered a foot injury in the win over the Jets and was placed on season-ending Injured Reserve two days later.

Bradford? He is among the lowest-rated quarterbacks in the league. He’s gotten little going down the field throwing to wide receivers who haven’t been able to create a lot of opportunities for big plays in the passing game.

No doubt, it has been a massive struggle. As the Eagles get into the second quarter of the season, the question is where do they go from this point forward? “We’re going to keep working and getting better,” Bradford said. “I don’t think there is much else we can do. We haven’t been at our best, but we all have confidence that we’re going to get there. You just
keep working, correcting mistakes and building off of that. It takes some time.”

Maybe that’s it, then. Maybe we all overreacted based on the preseason instead of stepping back and understanding that the Eagles have a new quarterback (Bradford), a new backfield (Murray and Mathews) and a rookie trying to help replace the production at wide receiver created when Jeremy Maclin (85 receptions in 2014) left in free agency and signed with Kansas City. Oh, and don’t forget those changes along the offensive line at the guard positions.
Maybe it just takes time.“We’ve got to execute the offense better and that’s the bottom line,” tight end Zach Ertz said. “That’s what it comes down to. We have the talent. We have the offense. We need to make it work, 11 of us on the same page at the same time. We haven’t done that enough and that’s when you see breakdowns.”

In the course of the first month, the suggestions outside the NovaCare Complex have been more
demanding. There is the whisper out there that opposing defenses have a bead on Chip Kelly’s tempo-based offense and, in fact, that they may even have been tipping off plays. The Eagles shrugged off that notion.

But there are questions. Kelly made sweeping changes to the offense in the offseason, trading Nick Foles to St. Louis for Bradford, dealing running back LeSean McCoy to Buffalo for linebacker Kiko Alonso, using the team’s first pick in the NFL draft on wide receiver Nelson Agholor and signing Murray and Mathews in free agency, and the Eagles are still waiting for everyone to mesh and for the offense to live up to the expectations. “It’s going to happen and that’s what we’re working for,” Matthews said. “You just have to trust each other and look yourself in the mirror and know you’ve done everything you can to improve every day. I
feel like we’re almost there. We just need consistency.”

The NFC East is wide open and each team has flaws. The Eagles aren’t alone. They also know that they’ve got to be urgent with their approach and go with what is working that week. Finding weaknesses in defenses and exposing them is the line of attack. “The pieces are here,” Ertz said. “I have no doubt it’s going to come together.”