Five Big-Picture Takeaways From Eagles Week 12 Loss Vs Lions
By Somers Price
Nov 26, 2015; Detroit, MI, USA; Philadelphia Eagles head coach Chip Kelly during the fourth quarter of a NFL game on Thanksgiving against the Detroit Lions at Ford Field. Detroit won 45-14. Mandatory Credit: Tim Fuller-USA TODAY Sports
The Eagles did very little this Thanksgiving to dispel the rumors that there are serious issues within the NovaCare Complex. Save for a second quarter touchdown drive, there was almost nothing positive to take away from a 45-14 Lions win that moved the Eagles to 4-7 on the season. Detroit did what they wanted, when they wanted to for the most part against a listless opponent. The Eagles will have an extended stretch of time off to stew over their latest catastrophe before heading to New England to face perhaps the best team in the NFL.
What took place on the field in Detroit goes beyond the box score or individual plays. Prideful men allowed a Lions team, left for dead, to walk up and down the field against them. Offensively, Chip Kelly’s insistence upon sticking with a talent-lite personnel group allowed for the Lions to make quick adjustments and stifle the Eagles for the better part of the entire game. This was a showing by a team that had no faith in what their coaches were preaching and felt no reason to put themselves on the line to make their decisions look like smart ones.
Instead of diving deeper into the performance on the field and how it translates toward the rest of the season, this edition will focus more on areas of major concern that have turned this team into the laughing-stock of the NFL. No one expected things to get this bad, and yet it has happened almost formulaically. I don’t pretend to be an expert on the NFL, but here’s some of what has stood out to me over the course of the 2015 season through 11 games.