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Plenty of things went right for the Philadelphia Eagles in week one of the NFL season, but they had one glaring issue: the defense. Sure, the Eagles won on the road, the division-rival Cowboys lost, Jalen Hurts looked excellent, and no starters were injured (although the Eagles did lose a key lineman for the year).
But the Birds also gave up 35 points to the Lions, and were gashed on the ground for 181 rushing yards on 28 attempts. That has defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon’s seat rising in temperature after just one game, with talk of possible replacements should he be fired after (or even during) the season.
That seems a bit premature, though, and there are plenty of reasons to give Gannon a bit of a pass on the opener. The Eagles were integrating several new pieces on defense, the newest of which started with just 11 days to prepare after being traded to Philadelphia.
While safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson played pretty well in the opener, his top cornerback, Darius Slay, said after the game that they can do a better job of communicating on the field.
“It was great, you know, communication we’ve just always got to do better with that, but other than that man he did was he’s supposed to do: come out here and execute, play hard, that’s all we’re looking for out of him,” Slay said of Gardner-Johnson’s debut with the Eagles. “He only got here 10 days ago, we just knew he had to have great effort, you know run to the ball, see ball, get ball kind of guy. So we just tried to make it simple for him.”
Two parts of that quote stand out. The first indicates that there may have been some communication issues on the back end for the Eagles. While they did well against the pass, holding Jared Goff to 215 yards on 21 of 37 passing, with 2 touchdowns and an interception, they struggled against the run. Typically that wouldn’t involve communication issues in the secondary, but you never know.
The second part is the last sentence, which hints that Gannon may not have had the full playbook available to him. If the Eagles simplified the defense to get Gardner-Johnson on the field, that could have impacted the types of alignments they were able to use. As a result, it could have impacted their ability to defend the run.
The Eagles also tackled poorly, and Gardner-Johnson pointed that out himself.
“Get better at tackling,” Gardner-Johnson said after the game when asked about his performance. “Everything else, keep everything in front of us. We gave up what, one deep ball today? I mean, like I said, it’s football. They get paid, we get paid.”
Darius Slay Says Eagles Will Get C.J. Gardner-Johnson Up to Speed
Slay expects Gardner-Johnson to be more fully integrated into the defense in the coming weeks, and knows the Eagles will be hard at work on that when they get back on the practice field.
“During this week we’ll just continue to keep trying to improve him, catch him up on the defense and understand each one of us as a player so we can go out there and execute at a high level,” Slay said.
That should open up more of the playbook to Gannon.
Slay Blames Penalties and Execution for Eagles’ Struggles
The Eagles took a cringe-inducing 10 penalties for 61 yards, and allowed the Lions to convert 9 of 14 third downs and their lone fourth down attempt. Those areas need to be cleaned up if the Birds want to be one of the top defenses in the league.
“We just gotta minimize penalties, we had a penalty, we gave up a third and like 12 run, stuff like that,” Slay explained. “That’s stuff we just gotta clean up, you know, details. That extended the drive because a lot of times we should have been off the field on third down, we all know that. We just gotta execute our jobs better. That’s on us as the players, cause we out there on the field, coaches give us a call and we just execute it. We’ve just gotta make the play.”
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