All photos by Hunter Martin of PE.com staff…
The mistakes and missed connections on offense have been a little painful to watch for Eagles fans, but even the Eagles players are getting frustrated, too, and it shows in these quotes compiled after the loss to Carolina:
“It sucks, man,” right tackle Lane Johnson said. “We had a chance. The defense got turnovers for us, 30 yards out and we gotta score touchdowns. We can’t settle for field goals. There are a bunch of times when that happened. You play good teams like Carolina and it’s going to cost you and it did [Sunday night]. You gotta score touchdowns.”
“I felt like we were really prepared coming in here with a great game plan,” center Jason Kelce said. “As long as we executed, I thought we would be fine. But we didn’t execute. The slow starts, mistakes. I don’t know what the reason is. We had mistakes across the board. Everybody takes turns. I shouldn’t be making mistakes at this point in my career. I should be on top of my stuff. It’s getting old real quick. We’ve got to put a whole game together for our defense. Our defense is going out there and doing a great job. We’ve got to put them in a better position.”
Here’s wide receiver Jordan Matthews regarding the strange rash of dropped passes, including the one that popped into the air and was intercepted:
“I can’t pinpoint one thing,” Matthews said. “There is no rhyme or reason to it. It’s new to me. I’ve never had this situation. I didn’t have a lot of drops last year. I didn’t have a lot in college. It’s just something I have to work through. Our team needs me to make plays, so it hurts me to come off the field knowing that I’ve left something on the field. I have no other solution other than to keep working at it.”
“We’ve got to do a better job catching the ball for Sam (Bradford),” TE Zach Ertz said. “He’s doing all he can out there. The protection isn’t perfect. The throws aren’t perfect, but we’ve got to do our job when the ball is in the air and as a receiving corps, we’re not doing that. We’re not helping our quarterback now.”
That’s the understatement of the week.
“The bye comes at a good time for us,” Ertz said. “We need to come back strong from the break and play our best football. I think we’re going to come back strong. It’s a lack of focus, I guess. I don’t know.”
“We have a long season ahead of us,” safety Malcolm Jenkins said, “but it’s on us. We have to win games. It’s right there for us. We have to find a way and we’re not doing that on a consistent basis right now. It’s everybody. Everybody is responsible for this.”
“I think we’ve shown flashes just about every game of moving the ball and doing things well and running the offense the way that we want to,” QB Sam Bradford said. “But then there are other times, whether it be a various assortment of self-inflicted wounds, we kill ourselves. It happens too often.”
“I think when we play the way we’re capable of then yes, we’re capable of beating anyone. But, we have got to eliminate the mental errors, the self-inflicted wounds. We’ve got to stop beating ourselves. I think if we can stop beating ourselves and not have to beat us and the other team, I think we’ll be alright.”
“A game like this, we knew it was going to be a battle. We knew it was going to come down to the fourth quarter,” Bradford said. “Obviously, if we could have converted a couple of those field goals into touchdowns, the game might be a little bit different.”
And a lot easier for we fans to watch, too!
Chip Kelly: “I go back to the drops and the penalties, (those) are the things we need to clean up if we want to be a successful football team,” he said. “We had a drive going and then we get a hold. We had a real good punt and have them pinned down inside the 20, and then we get an unnecessary (roughness) penalty on the punt. And you can’t do that against a good team like Carolina and expect to win.”
