Zone Read: Eagles-Cowboys, the Day After
***
GAME BALL OFFENSE: LeSEAN MCCOY
He carried the offense with 27 carries for 131 yards. On a key fourth-quarter drive, McCoy carried seven times for 24 yards and converted a pair of 3rd-and-1s. It wasn’t always pretty, but McCoy averaged 4.9 YPC and also added a 3-yard touchdown reception.
He is the NFL’s leading rusher and the Eagles’ all-time single-season leader with 1,607 yards. Matt Forte was second this season, 268 yards behind McCoy.
In what is often described as a pass-happy league, McCoy was the key cog in one of the franchise’s most successful offensive seasons.
GAME BALL DEFENSE: MYCHAL KENDRICKS
Even though the defense sputtered at times, there were several standout individual performances. But my award goes to Kendricks, who led the Eagles with 12 tackles to go along with a forced fumble and an interception.
Kendricks has emerged as a key playmaker for this defense with three sacks, two interceptions and a forced fumble in his last three games.
Witten went off for 12 catches and 135 yards, but a lot of that seemed to be good offense. I’ll have to re-watch, but I don’t remember many instances where Kendricks was just out of position.
Of course, the Saints have a tight end in Graham who’s capable of producing good offense as well. Coming up with a way to contain him will be priority No. 1 this week for Davis and company.
***
FIVE RANDOM THOUGHTS
1. Boykin will get a lot of love today, and rightfully so. But let’s not forget about Cary Williams. The Eagles’ starting cornerback came up with a huge pass break-up on Orton’s two-point conversion try to Bryant in the fourth quarter. A completion there ties the game. And it wasn’t just one play. In my in-game notes, I had at least five occasions where Orton took shots at Williams only to come up empty. Bryant caught eight balls for 99 yards, but the one 32-yarder was against Chung. Take that away, and seven for 67 from one of the league’s most dangerous receivers is not bad at all.
2. The Eagles’ outside linebackers came up big on a two-possession sequence in the second half that resulted in a punt and a turnover on downs. On the first possession, Brandon Graham made a great one-on-one tackle against Witten short of the first down to force a punt. On the next possession, Trent Cole made a big tackle on 3rd-and-3, and Connor Barwin came up with the enormous batted pass on fourth down. Barwin entered the game with six batted passes, per PFF, the most of any 3-4 outside linebacker, and he added to that total on Sunday.
3. I was surprised to look at the post-game box score and see that Foles had a 124.4 passer rating. The Eagles did their damage through the air in the first half, but had trouble with their passing game down the stretch. In the second half, Foles completed 5 of 10 passes for 66 yards, was sacked three times and fumbled once. The offensive line seemed to have too many issues, and Foles got happy feet at times. The performance was surprising because it did not look like the Cowboys were blitzing much. They were just using four-man rushers and mixing in stunts. The Eagles’ offensive line played well the previous week in Chicago. With the Saints possessing a productive pass-rush, this will be a key storyline all week.
4. A couple standout catches deserve recognition. Jason Avant is not someone known for winning a lot of 50/50 balls, but he made a great 22-yard leaping grab against the Cowboys’ safety in the second quarter. The reception set up the Eagles’ first touchdown of the day. And Brent Celek came up with a leaping grab of his own, coming down with a 35-yard pass from Foles after the Kendricks interception. He followed that catch up with a 14-yard touchdown that gave the Eagles a 17-7 lead. Overall, Celek was the Eagles’ leading receiver with three receptions for 71 yards.
5. I don’t have a problem with Kelly going for it on 4th-and-goal from inside the Cowboys’ 1 late in the third quarter. In fact, I think it was the right call. But I’m not crazy about the Brad Smith play on first down once the Eagles got down to the Cowboys’ 6. McCoy had run three times for 42 yards on the drive. And Foles had just found Celek for a 22-yard gain. Smith wanted to throw the ball back to Foles, but the Cowboys had that covered, so he instead fired incomplete to Zach Ertz.
It looked like Foles didn’t see an open Jackson in the flat on second down, and Jackson couldn’t quite get the ball over the goal line on third down. Tough to tell what happened on the Foles sneak, other than that he didn’t field the snap cleanly.
Something tells me if the Eagles would have lost this game, we’d be talking quite a bit about that sequence on this day after.