Doug Farrar of SI.com wrote a piece on each of the 4 playoff teams that lost. He posed a question facing each team heading into the offseason. For the Eagles, it was about the defense.
• Philadelphia Eagles: Can the defensive improvements hold up next season?
And on the other end of the spectrum, there are the Philadelphia Eagles, who also came into this season with a first-year defensive coordinator. Things started out rough for Billy Davis as he tried to merge his personnel and schemes, but it all started to come together right about the time that Chip Kelly found his franchise quarterback in Nick Foles. From Weeks 1 through 9, Philadelphia ranked 30th in FO’s metrics, but they vaulted to 12th in the season’s second half. The strongest improvement came against the run, where the Eagles improved from 22nd to fifth.
That held up for the most part in the postseason, even though Philly lost to the New Orleans Saints 26-24. Drew Brees threw two picks and was limited to 250 passing yards. Mark Ingram ran for 97 yards and a touchdown on 18 carries, which certainly went against type, but Davis and the Eagles have a lot to look forward to with this defense. The front seven is excellent minus a top-tier pass-rusher, the secondary can be tweaked from good to great with a few new moves and it’s clear that Davis is in sync with his players. To his credit, it was the coach who took the blame for deficiencies in the run defense.
“That’s on me,” Davis said. “I made the calls for the passing game, to make sure we keep the big plays off of us … I could’ve called more of a run-heavy defensive game.”
It speaks well for the future of this defense that Davis’ players weren’t having any of it.
“We shifted our attention, obviously, to their passing game,” linebacker Connor Barwin said. “We went ‘coverage’ a lot, because we felt like we could hold up in the run with six guys, five guys in the box. And we did at times, but we didn’t enough,”
The Eagles should be seen as a potential force contender in 2014. That won’t take any of the sting out of this season’s end, though.
