Philadelphia, PA
- It wasn’t as easy as expected, but the Eagles did get the job done last week against the Redskins.
Week 1 Eagles vs. Redskins Recap
The Redskins got out to a hot start, with Case Keenum picking apart the Eagles’ secondary, throwing a pair of touchdown passes, and helping his group build a 20-7 lead at halftime. The Skins’ defense, meanwhile, shut down the Eagles, stymying the ground game and forcing inaccurate passes and pressure on Carson Wentz.
The boo birds were out early for Philly, but they would quickly go away when Wentz unleashed a beautiful downfield lob to DeSean Jackson, who enjoyed a very nice debut in his first game with the Eagles this season. He would rack up over 150 yards and two touchdowns, showing great route running prowess and speed during the game.
The Eagles did run for over 100 total yards with their stable of running backs, but it was still an overall disappointing output from a group that was expected to play much better than last season.
Defensively, Philadelphia was slow out of the gate but would pick it up in the second half and allow just seven second-half points. Against better teams though, the defense is going to have to play more consistently during the game.
Week 2 Matchup on Sunday Night Football
This week, the Eagles will head south to Atlanta to take on the Falcons in a Sunday night spectacular. The Falcons looked far from spectacular last week though, getting trounced by the Vikings on the road. In that game, Dalvin Cook ran all over and through Atlanta with over 100 yards and two touchdowns. Kirk Cousins threw just ten passes on the day -- that’s how dominant the Vikings’ ground game was, there was no reason to go away from it.
If Philly can get even a little bit of the success that the Vikings got against the Falcons, then they could be in a great position to win. It will be a test defensively, as the Falcons have a scary offense on paper and are playing in front of a hungry home crowd.
The biggest key for the Eagles will be to start fast out of the gate. It’s hard to recover from a slow start, especially when the opponent can make you pay for early mistakes. They were fortunate to sneak away with a home win a week ago, but they cannot head into Atlanta and lay a goose egg offensively at kickoff.
Overall, I think the Eagles will get the job done and improve to 2-0, but it will be close.
