‘Just Overall Bad’

The Philadelphia Eagles were exposed on several levels in their 22-21 loss to the Atlanta Falcons.

On the latest episode of “Q&A,” former Eagles standouts Jason Avant and Quintin Mikell talked about what went wrong in the Monday night collapse.

GETTY IMAGES: The Philadelphia Eagles run defense put on a poor showing against the Atlanta Falcons on Monday night.

Run Defense

Quintin Mikell: “It was a big mixture of bad scheme, bad play, bad tackling, bad timing on the calls. Just overall bad. I’m not a huge fan of the defensive front the Eagles were playing…you have defensive ends that are getting single blocked and pushed around. You have linebackers falling down, cornerbacks and safeties getting blocked. It was all across the board an undisciplined defense, a badly coached defense.”

Jason Avant: “Giving up 150 yards a game in the first two games as far as rushing is concerned is not Eagles football at all. To not make the adjustments is just asinine. Usually when you’re getting the ball ran on you like that, you normally go to an over front or a five-man front. We didn’t see that much at all.”

Quinyon Mitchell

Mikell: “That final drive, they took advantage of Quinyon Mitchell, they attacked him. Two of the biggest plays they got were on his side…The only thing I wished would have happened is if they put C.J. (Gardner-Johnson) on Quinyon’s side.”

Pass Rush

Mikell: “They tried calling stunts toward the end of the game. Even when you’re doing stunts you have four men against five.”

Avant: “We better be on the phone with a veteran, we better be trying to get Fletcher (Cox) out of retirement…we need to find an older veteran player or somebody that we can trade for.”

Dallas Goedert

Avant: “What Atlanta would do is essentially rush four people and drop seven. It’s hard to do that because that turns into seven on seven in the pass game, the linebackers drop a little bit deeper and there’s more people in the middle of the field. And guess where the quarterback is going to go away from? If the tight end’s in the middle of the field and there’s a lot of people, I’m going to stay away from it…so how can I get Dallas Goedert involved in the gameplan? I use him like George Kittle, Travis Kelce is being used: make him the ‘X’ backside, essentially.”

Saquon Barkley

Avant: “Barkley played an outstanding game except for one play. It was a huge play, I’m not minimizing that play, it’s the easiest pass to catch offensively…Any of you saying we should have ran the ball, they had nine defenders in the box, you’re not getting any yards with nine defenders in the box…Saquon was trying to run up the field before he catches the ball not understanding the situation, the situation just calls for a catch. Yards after catch is obsolete after this moment.”

Jalen Hurts

Mikell: “He tries to play hero ball a little bit. I feel like, especially when he leaves the pocket early, just throw it out of bounds. You don’t need to try to force every ball in tight coverage…I think he’s pressing a little bit.”

Avant: “He doesn’t always just takes what the defenses gives him. There’s multiple times where he could have just hit a checkdown right to Saquon and he ended up running right. You’re just making yourself tired for no reason.”

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