Little Nelson Doesn’t Get His Shots
I made this comic in the 2017 offseason and 2 years later, it still works. Obviously later that season Nelson Agholor seemed like he got his act together and the Eagles actually did go on a run and win it all, but this season makes it look like an anomaly. The Eagles have problems and you could directly point to Nelson Agholor not catching an important ball on a final drive as a fairly direct cause of at least two losses this year. It might be worse, I haven’t been keeping up the with the team this season. I’ve gotten most of my information through osmosis online, so any Eagles fan can feel free to correct me and give more details.
I’m not really sure why the Eagles are struggling as much as they are. I expected Dallas and Philly’s positions to be switched. Wentz looks a bit off but he has no protection. They can’t seem to run the ball nearly as well as I thought they would (I was pretty pissed they got Jordan Howard and I expected them to be a top rushing threat this year). Why is Alshon Jeffrey bad now? Why did Nelson Agholor learn how to catch for roughly one season? The Bills are putting up slightly better total numbers and Josh Allen still hasn’t thrown for 300 yards.
Anyway somewhere out there that one hero from Philly who actually catches things is shaking his head in disappointment.
I actually surprised me when I went back to check who let the game-sealing pick go through his hands in the Divisional back in January that it *wasn’t* Agholor, but Alshon. Even Big Dick Nick can’t help it when his receivers just decide they couldn’t catch a cold.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gCUDp9hD8o
I like that Patriots logo. It’s like a trip to Buffalo for them.
The reason the Eagles are struggling is because of two things:
1. Our offensive coordinator S-U-C-K-S Sucks. After the birds lost Frank Reich and John Defilippo to other teams, rather than going out and finding the best replacements, they just had automatic internal promotions. Mike Groh was the OC for the Jeff fisher Rams teams that had an offense that a high school team could rum effectively. Shite. Groh needs to Go.
2. Wide Receivers. I leave you with this.
Nelson Agholor: 430 snaps, 18 recs, 154 yards (8.6 avg), 0 TD, 1 fumble
Alshon Jeffery: 352 snaps, 29 recs, 304 yards (10.5 avg), 2 TD
Mack Hollins: 237 snaps, 1 rec, 13 yards, 0 TD
Jordan Matthews: 64 snaps, 1 rec, 6 yards, 0 TD*
JJ Arcega-Whiteside: 63 snaps, 1 rec, 29 yards, 0 TD
DeSean Jackson: 4 snaps, 1 rec, 5 yards, 0 TD*
This is abysmal.
Also, on the subject of Agholor, 2017 was very much an anomaly. This is how PFF and Football Outsiders have ranked him every year since he’s come into the league.
PFF
2019: 124th out of 124
2018: 74th out of 108
2017: 35th out of 107
2016: 103rd out of 104
2015: 101st out of 101
Football Outsiders
2019: 66th out of 66
2018: 78th out of 84
2017: 32nd out of 86
2016: 88th out of 94
2015: 83rd out of 88
To put the icing on the cake, the Eagles are paying him 9.4 MILLION dollars for this “production”.
Abject, Total, Shite.
abysmal.
*and just to clarify those WR stats re from the past seven games.
At first, I felt inclined to blame Agholor’s drop on Wentz not having enough time to set his feet, but when you look at the film, he had about 10 yards to adjust to the ball in the air and didn’t, so he made what would have been a relatively difficult catch needlessly more difficult, which led to a crucial drop. Wentz played pretty poorly all game (he and Tom played pretty bad), but it never helps when your receivers can’t even catch one of the few dimes you throw.
Surprised you haven’t got any “Stick to sprots” comments from the anti-vax community yet …
Woohoo Dr. Swickles returns! I was afraid you’d retired her as a character, which would be a shame, because she’s awesome.
-Agholor was serviceable during the super bowl season because the offense ran through, in this order, the offensive line, ZachErtzAlshonJeffreyTorreySmith drawing every coverage imaginable, Jay Ajayi and LeGarrette Blount, and then whatever Nelson Agholor, Corey Clement, Mack Hollins, Darren Sproles, Trey Burton and the immortal Brent Celek were wide open for.
-Alshon Jeffrey has been playing injured since the Super Bowl season and is aging in dog years. He’s washed at this point. For the record, he was pretty darn good a couple seasons with da’Bears before signing with Philadelphia.
-The Eagles have been running the ball OK, but the Eagles very good offensive line always takes a maddening amount of actual game time to coalesce as a unit. They are hitting their stride, but Doug Pederson can’t shake his Andy Reid influences a lot of the time.
-Lack of any sort of vertical passing game has severely limited what both Carson Wentz and Doug Pederson are best at. Carson gets a spy, and Doug can’t seem to come up with clever plays outside a standard X/Y/Z receiver framework. Why, oh why, they’re not trying to attack defenses at the seams with possibly the best TE tandem since Gronk/Hernandez is beyond me.
-The defense is not good. DLine is underachieving, secondary will give up any and all deep passing concepts you want to employ. Good in the redzone in you’re the sort of offense willing to settle for field goals.
The problem with this team isn’t so much that they are bad, as much as they are just MISERABLE to watch play football
Reminds me of the Kelvin Benjamin affect. In 2015 Cam won MVP and did so without Benjamin who was a 1000 yrd receiver the year before. In 2016 when Kelvin came back I started to notice how many drives he would kill by either dropping the ball, running the wrong route or commiting a penalty on 3rd down. If you looked at his stats you’d think he had a decent year, but I know hes the primary reason Cam struggled in 2016.
This doesn’t explain Cams struggles now. now’s mostly injuries and after diving into an Internet hole, I’m convinced that Cam isn’t healing properly because hes on a strict vegan diet, which is fine for most people, but apperently can be problematic for 250 lbs dudes who are built like Greek gods (at least according to the dieticians postulating this theory).
It didn’t help that Wentz made three terrible uncatchable throws to get into 4th down before the Agholor miss.
God I hope Sean Payton is in comic 1000