Eagles Suffer Another Embarrassing Loss, This One to Raiders
LAS VEGAS – Ten days off to prepare for the Las Vegas Raiders.
It didn’t matter. The Eagles got dusted anyway, 33-22, at Allegiant Stadium on Sunday, making the Raiders look like the three teams that won Super Bowls when they played in Oakland.
Las Vegas didn’t even have one of its top weapons, tight end Darren Waller, who was a late scratch with an ankle injury.
It didn’t matter. It was the same old Eagles, except one game worse than when the weekend began with a 2-5 record.
Don’t be fooled by the final score. This one wasn’t close, like the game 10 days ago against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who led 28-7 late in the third quarter but won, 28-22.
"Any time you lose like that, everybody’s gotta look at themselves in the mirror," said head coach Nick Sirianni. "It just wasn’t good enough execution. It wasn’t good enough play calling on both sides of the ball. We just weren’t good enough, and that starts with me … I just wasn’t good enough and everyone else followed suit."
The Eagles once again fell hopelessly behind early with an offense that ran out of answers after one scoring drive to start the game and a defense that gave up a 96-yard drive midway through the second quarter.
It was a bad showing from both sides of the ball. Throw special teams in there, too.
The Eagles tried an onside kick to start the second half, but Jake Elliott overran the ball after it traveled the required 10 yards and Alec Ingold made an easy recovery to set up the Raiders at Philadelphia’s 41-yard line.
That led to a touchdown and 24-7 lead.
Raiders quarterback Derek Carr feasted on this Eagles defense. He wasn’t sacked once, rarely faced much pressure, and finished 31-for-34 with 323 yards, two touchdowns, and one interception, with Avonte Maddox picking him off in the red zone.
"We weren’t able to take his first reads away, honestly," said safety Rodney McLeod, who made eight tackles. "We weren’t able to disrupt him in the pocket. It goes hand in hand when you talk about this as a defense, the secondary and D-line working hand in hand.
"We have to do our job in the back-7 to allow those guys to have an opportunity. Understand that an efficient quarterback like Derek Carr, we have to create some indecision. We have to take away his first reads to give the D-line an opportunity. We failed to do that (Sunday)."
Running backs Kenyan Drake and Josh Jacobs had one rushing TD each, with tight end Foster Moreau scoring one and Bryan Edwards another.
It’s time to face facts: The Eagles are a bad football team.
This is a snapshot of what bad teams look like: on third-and-goal from the two-inch line, Jalen Hurts lined up in shotgun then dropped the snap. The Raiders recovered with 2:53 to go in the third quarter.
Not that it would have mattered, it was already 30-7 at that point.
Hurts padded his stats late, as his tendency, finishing 18-for-34 with 236 yards and two touchdowns. He added 13 runs for 61 yards.
There seem to be winnable games left, beginning next week in Detroit and against the Jets much later in the season, giving the Eagles a decent chance to at least equal their win total from a season ago at four.
But are the Eagles any better than them?
It’s an easy answer starting with ‘n’ and ending in ‘o.’
The Eagles led 7-0 after their first possession, but after that, they did nothing.
Hurts got sacked near midfield on third-and-eight inside Raiders’ territory that would have been third-and-three if not for a false start penalty by Landon Dickerson.
Hurts had a 23-yard scramble wiped out in the Eagles' first possession of the second half, already trailing 24-7, on a 15-yard face mask penalty from Jordan Mailata.
"All the stuff that may go wrong, all the stuff that may not look right or crisp or whatever it is, I have to be better and make it right," said Hurts. "I know I’m capable of that. My coaches know I’m capable of that.
"And playing at a high level all the time in the midst of little things that may go wrong, in the midst of something that may be broken upfront. When little things go wrong, a guy can make it right. It’s something I have to do and do it consistently."
There isn’t a single impactful player on either side of the ball. Javon Hargrave was that guy in the first five weeks but has been a non-factor in the two recent losses. Nobody has stepped up, either.
Same with the offense. DeVonta Smith had three drops before making a nice catch along the sideline. He ended with five catches for 61 yards.
Miles Sanders was never given a chance to make an impact. Now, he’s hurt after suffering an ankle injury that required him to be taken by a cart into the locker room before the first quarter was over.
In his place was rookie Kenny Gainwell, who giveth then taketh away.
Gainwell gave the Eagles their brief lead with a 13-yard TD catch, but his fumble late in the first half allowed the Raiders to kick a field goal with two seconds left in the second quarter to take a 17-7 lead into halftime.
Gainwell contributed five runs for 20 yards and four catches for 41 yards.
Boston Scott, who had played four snaps in the first six games, also added a score for the Eagles as did Jalen Reagor, whose first catch of the game came late in the fourth quarter and was a 17-yard TD.
Tight end Dallas Goedert had three catches for 70 yards.
Sanders left with six carries for 30 yards, so, yeah, it was evident he was going to be part of the game plan, finally, in Week 7.
The Eagles ran the ball 32 times for 135 yards, a lot of those Hurts scrambles.
Ed Kracz is the publisher of SI.com’s Eagle Maven and co-host of the Eagles Unfiltered Podcast. Check out the latest Eagles news at www.SI.com/NFL/Eagles or www.eaglemaven.com and please follow him on Twitter: @kracze.
