‘What Is Your Identity?’

The Philadelphia Eagles seemingly hit rock bottom in a 35-31 loss to the Arizona Cardinals with an offense that sputtered out and a defense that put forth an abysmal performance.

On the latest episode of “Inside The Birds,” Adam Caplan and Geoff Mosher provided sourced intel on what went wrong in the latest Eagles’ collapse.

The Philadelphia Eagles offense could not put together a complete performance against the Cardinals despite a solid outing from Jalen Hurts

Offense

Geoff Mosher: “Jalen Hurts was pretty efficient and the playmakers were alright, they ran the ball decently. I don’t have a beef with the offense outside of the final drive. That goes back to what is your identity?”

Adam Caplan: “Here is their problem: a lack of explosive plays. When they do their offseason self-scout, Nick Sirianni has to swallow his pride with pre-snap motion. Hurts has been pretty efficient the last two weeks, but their inability to get the ball down the field against the Cardinals playing eight backups on defense is puzzling.”

Mosher: “I did speak to a personnel and coaching source who happened to watch the Eagles game this week. He has seen Arizona play this year and said Arizona did different things against the Eagles that he believes were because of what Jonathan Gannon knew he could do against Jalen Hurts on offense.”

Wide Receivers

Mosher: “Last year, DeVonta Smith caught everything and A.J. Brown caught almost everything. This year, going back to the Dallas game, there has just been really nice throws from Jalen Hurts that are not being caught.”

Defense

Caplan: “We can blame the players all we want, but the coaches have to help them, particularly the playcaller in Matt Patricia…it was one of the worst performances I have ever seen by an Eagles defense.”

Mosher: “Your edge setters are no longer able to, your interior linemen are getting swallowed up by double teams…this is about the front not being able to maintain its gap integrity and getting blown off the ball by Arizona’s gap and power runs.”

Secondary

Mosher: “Too much off coverage, too many guys flat-footed. One of the biggest issues that a defensive source I was talking to said was that they play terrible leverages. They are playing Eli Ricks and Kelee Ringo, young guys who are playing the wrong leverage so often. On the Michael Wilson touchdown that tied the game at 28 in the fourth quarter, Matt Patricia called a zero blitz and Ringo is one-on-one with Wilson and playing the wrong Wilson, he should be forcing him to the outside, instead he is playing leverage to force him to the inside.”

Nick Sirianni

Caplan: “When you are not worried about calling the plays, he has the ability to go to the players and the position coaches and sit down with them. With defense, if he needs to he can take a better interest in it and figure out what in the world is happening.”

Mosher: “Say what you want about Doug (Pederson), but in 2018 and ’19 when his team took some real bad losses, they rallied…I suspect the Eagles will show you a little rally in them against the Giants. If they don’t, that will say a lot.”

– Benjamin Paul is a staff writer for InsideTheBirds.com.