Five Big-Picture Takeaways From Eagles Preseason Game Two
By Somers Price
The Eagles are a team that is catered to succeed in the preseason. Their practice-style prepares second and third stringers for extensive action significantly more than most of their opponents and they generally face a defense that does not necessarily gameplay for their high-tempo, blitzkrieg attack. Though it never gets old watching them throttle their exhibition opponents, taking these types of outcomes with a grain of salt is likely in the best interest of Eagles fans once the regular season gets underway.
All that having been said, there is something to a team that is able to make the opposition look as overmatched as the Ravens did on Saturday night. Less than a week after doing the same to another AFC team with Super Bowl aspirations, the Eagles simply outclassed their opponent from the opening gun. John Harbaugh is one of the great coaches in the NFL and will almost certainly put his team through a rigorous week of practice after his primary offensive, defensive, and special teams units came up noticeably small against the team he cut his coaching teeth with.
It’s rarely an easy task to try to highlight elements of a preseason game that could conceivably translate to the regular season slate. Unless a team looks especially bad, which some Ravens fans could label Saturday’s performance under that category, most evaluations carry with them the ‘it’s only preseason’ caveat. More often than not, I’ve worked under the notion that if I feel the same way after a preseason game than I did going into it, then the exhibition could probably be considered a success. Saturday’s win over Baltimore would fall into that category.