The interesting news of the day is that Jalen Ramsey began practicing today. He won’t be playing this weekend, but it’s good that he’s out there working.
We don’t want to rush things and get him hurt again, so we’ll see where this goes. Our D has been the weak link this season, so hopefully he lives up to the All-Pro hype, if and when he takes the field.
Next up, we travel to the NFC Champion Eagles. I hear a lot of talk about the Eagle defense, and I know they are formidable, but I don’t know if they are THAT good. I think the Buffalo D is better, and we matched them score-for-score early on, until Mike McDaniel got cute and made no adjustments after the Bills started coming after Tua.
If the Eagles try that same tactic, and if McD learns a lesson and helps Tua, we can reach at least 30 points. Again.
Can our own D stop Jalen Hurts? (By the way, how many Jalens are in this game?) We probably cannot stop him, because we haven’t stopped anyone lately. But if our D bears down and gets a few 3-and-outs, we can capitalize. The Eagles will score. We just have to ensure they don’t score every single drive. If that works out, we can pull off a road upset.
What do you guys think?
In other news…I have a good friend who is a diehard and knowledgeable Rams fan. He called me today to ask my take on Myles Gaskin, who the Rams just signed. I was kinda thinking that Miami would have re-signed Gaskin this week with Brooks and Achane both out, and Jeff Wilson not quite ready. But the Rams snatched him first.
I told my friend that Gaskin was small but fast/shifty. Too small to be a good blocker, but he was loyal and never whined about playing time. We cut him because we didn’t have room, not because his playing was poor. We wish him the best in L.A.
The game will come down to if our D can stop the Eagles run game. That has me scared. If we can stop the run this week then it should be a win for us.
I am agreeing with you…for now. The Eagles WRs are formidable, but they are a bigger and a bit slower than some of the others we’ve faced. So their RBs are a bit scarey. Overall, our defense is suspect, and Vic Fangio has not proven any value yet. So I think it’s important to keep the foot on the offense gas pedal and simple outgun the Eagles. Our offense has done this before, and scored at will on days when the defense didn’t show up, like Week One at the Chargers. Will have to do so again.
The one thing I feel good about is that the Eagles have not been tested by a good offense since the Super Bowl.
This season, they’ve played offensive doormats like Washington and the Jets and the Patriots. They haven’t even come close to facing a fast offense like ours.
We’ve faced one tough defense this year, and we lost…but we did put up 20 points on those Bills. Wasn’t enough, but it shows me that we can score against good D’s. In the past, any decent defense would hold us to like 10 or 13 points. This year we can double that.
I’ve said this before and it’s worth noting that Mike McDaniel’s main weakness so far is lack of adjusting. When the Bills began to slow us down, after we scored TDs on both of our first two possessions, he didn’t do anything. If the Eagles’ D is able to slow us down, then McD must recognize that immediately and pull out some wrinkles.
McDaniels didn’t only not make adjustments he started calling cute plays rather than slants, outs and seams. He ran and got stuffed and panicked and tried cute plays that didn’t work and he lost his balance. After halftime there was almost no adjustment and it was over! No cute/trick plays just line up and beat them with speed and timing!
I would like to see Berrios used more for our running game. He isn’t mentioned much, but always seems to be making big plays. I also would like to see Waddle catch more yards. Seems that Tua just likes to throw to Tyreek all the time. We need to put up at least 30 points in this game. Hopefully McD collaborates with Welker to draw up some get open plays. Does anybody know if X is playing this game for sure or not? All the reports I’ve seen just act like he’s questionable.