Yes on the bolded. Missed opportunity there. 

Blake probably could have run for the first on that late fourth down as well. 

On the zone stuff, they didn't really play it that much, but man was it ugly a few times. I hope they make some adjustments there moving forward. I'd like more aggressive press coverage more often too.

It would be prudent if they can come up with a mixed man/zone coverage to keep the opposing offense off-balance, not just man-exclusive or zone-exclusive setups. But if zone were to work, we need a penetrating edge rusher, DE or LB.

They could have run more rollouts or option plays, but they didn't. I hope this game will serve as a lesson burned into their memories and use it for improvement. 

Like in chess - you don't get stronger by finding stronger moves, you get stronger by getting rid of your weaknesses.

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I hope they will adjust but I'm doubtful, at least with Wash as DC.
I'm not saying he's done a bad job, the team is well prepared. I just don't get it why we stop being "ourselves" and let the D be more aggressive when we are up with a lead. Even against the Steelers the cushion we were giving them was absurd.
It wasn't that bad today but definitely not enough.

I can understand Hackett having to scheme around our QB weaknesses and therefore getting too conservative (still should have been more creative) but Wash literally has all the talent to be more aggressive and I hope they improve that.

Bortles didn't do a bad job, but I was expecting more play-action to help him out.

You do realize that eliminating Bortles' weaknesses is the main reason that they are so limited on offense when they haven't crossed midfield, right? 
In terms of the defense and this concept, I couldn't agree more.  They need to play aggressive from start to finish.  Watching Telvin drop with Cooks 4 or 5 times was ridiculous.

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Umm,  maybe because both of those are cold hard facts?

So air it out and put it on our perceived below average quarterback's shoulders? No thanks. I prefer what was used and what worked to get us here.


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Were they "airing it out" in the first half when everything seemed to be working well enough?

They made "halftime adjustments" to go completely conservative mode and hoping the tiny lead we had was gonna be enough.

13 first down plays in the 2nd half, 10 runs for 23 yards. S.C.A.R.E.D.

Playing not to lose against the Patriots, you might as well just call the game and get home early for dinner.

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Bortles was in his comfort zone. Don't change what you're doing until it's late in the fourth quarter and you can run out the game clock. Everything was set up for our success.....even the weather. Not cold.....even more important for Blake.....no wind.

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You answered your own question.

Again outside of that single play I felt like we had a great game plan offensively. People are too emotional trying to get on here and cremate Blake and Hackett. As for the why Blake doesn't just run around like a crazy person for first downs (bc apparently that's what ppl think should happen) Pats DEs sat on every zone read run and did not allow Blake to use his legs.

Ppl say we are too conservative, but are the same ppl that say Blake is not good. That makes no sense to me. We controlled the line of scrimmage for the first half, so naturally we should continue to plan for positive first down plays to avoid 3rd and longs with sure passing situations. Give the pats credit for making adjustments in stopping the run. This loss is not on Nathaniel Hackett despite that being the easiest person to blame this for people who don't know much.


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I'm not emotional, just calling it how I saw it. How a lot of people saw it. It absolutely is Hackett's fault for not adjusting to the Pats adjustments on us. We kept making the same plays up the middle even though it wasn't working for example. Why didn't Hackett go a different way? So yeah, it's kind of his fault.

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So air it out and put it on our perceived below average quarterback's shoulders? No thanks. I prefer what was used and what worked to get us here.


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Were they "airing it out" in the first half when everything seemed to be working well enough?

They made "halftime adjustments" to go completely conservative mode and hoping the tiny lead we had was gonna be enough.

13 first down plays in the 2nd half, 10 runs for 23 yards. S.C.A.R.E.D.

Playing not to lose against the Patriots, you might as well just call the game and get home early for dinner.

10 plays 23 yds so averaging 2 yds on 1st down putting you in a second and 8. Again i just look at it differently than you do. To me that puts us in a managable position to move chains, and we were great on third downs the majority of the game. The last drive was an incomplete pass followed bu the sack putting us behind the sticks. We arent built for that


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BTW......I was on the PATS message boards and everyone there was in complete meltdown the first 3 quarters. They thought it was over. They couldn't stop Bortles and our offense. What a pleasant surprise for them when we went conservative on offense.......a defense (zone).

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BTW......I was on the PATS message boards and everyone there was in complete meltdown the first 3 quarters. They thought it was over. They couldn't stop Bortles and our offense. What a pleasant surprise for them when we went conservative on offense.......a defense (zone).

Tell me about it. I was on mine the whole game and they were already giving up. it was dismal but I kept saying its not over yet. I mean, ask the Falcons. But totally agree, some Pats fans are very laughable.

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The players didn't help. On the last touchdown gipson went out of his way not to push amendola out of bounds

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The players didn't help.  On the last touchdown gipson went out of his way not to push amendola out of bounds

I noticed that also, they folded.

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Hack Job needs to be let go. I hate his "prevent" offense that he calls. You know... Run the ball up the middle for 1 yard, to prevent Bortles from making a mistake. Scared, ineffective, conservative, and pathetic. If he goes though, that means Bortles has to learn the system of yet another OC. But something has to give. It reminds me of a kid in little league that won't swing at the ball for fear of striking out. He's hoping to get the walk.

But I do believe there is another factor that affected the conservatism:

Arrogance.

We have a great defense, and I think Marrone/Hackett might have just been a little too over - confident in the defense's ability to stop the Patriots. We let up on being aggressive offensively, thinking our defense could win us the game. And it cost us. You don't pump the brakes on the Patriots. You don't assume you'll keep the GOAT's at bay. You keep coming for 60 minutes

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Maybe some blame is to be given to Wash as well. Jalen seemed pretty pissed that they played mostly zone instead of man in the second half.

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Maybe some blame is to be given to Wash as well.  Jalen seemed pretty pissed that they played mostly zone instead of man in the second half.

Wash absolutely deserves some blame and Jalen has every right to be upset. Brady eats Zone coverage up all day and twice on Sunday.

Wash also waited far too long before he finally let Ramsey shadow Cooks. Cooks was eating Bouye up for most of the game. They really wanted nothing to do with going after Ramsey and Bouye would have matched up against Hogan far better than Cooks to begin with.

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Maybe some blame is to be given to Wash as well.  Jalen seemed pretty pissed that they played mostly zone instead of man in the second half.

Wash absolutely deserves some blame and Jalen has every right to be upset. Brady eats Zone coverage up all day and twice on Sunday.

Wash also waited far too long before he finally let Ramsey shadow Cooks. Cooks was eating Bouye up for most of the game. They really wanted nothing to do with going after Ramsey and Bouye would have matched up against Hogan far better than Cooks to begin with.

Yea...I don't understand why Marrone doesn't put his foot down on a couple things (defense needing to stay in man for example in this game, and Hacket going run, run, pass skittish in the 2nd half).

I don't understand why Coughlin allows it either.  To me it's simple obvious stuff that should be address real-time.

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I agree with the comments regarding Hackett. The defense also choked as well. Up 10 points against a Gronkless team in the 4th... and you call yourself the best D in the game... straight up choked.

our defense is overrated

we gave up what 40 to san fran? 40 to pitt? up to 10 in the 4th and lose it to the pats

they can think they're great if they want, but they're not even in the same stratosphere as the seahawks and ravens in their prime were

hell the bucs when they won it were twice as good

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Wash absolutely deserves some blame and Jalen has every right to be upset. Brady eats Zone coverage up all day and twice on Sunday.

Wash also waited far too long before he finally let Ramsey shadow Cooks. Cooks was eating Bouye up for most of the game. They really wanted nothing to do with going after Ramsey and Bouye would have matched up against Hogan far better than Cooks to begin with.

Yea...I don't understand why Marrone doesn't put his foot down on a couple things (defense needing to stay in man for example in this game, and Hacket going run, run, pass skittish in the 2nd half).

I don't understand why Coughlin allows it either.  To me it's simple obvious stuff that should be address real-time.

Well Marrone has said that Coughlin doesn't get involved in the coaching decisions. Which he shouldn't honestly, that's not his place. Yea, he has a world of experience and knowledge, but if he's over stepping the HC in on field decisions, it could make for some big issues. Marrone has said that he absolutely leans on Coughlin though, but impacting coaching decisions isn't Coughlins job at the end of the day.

As far as Marrone putting his foot down, I think it goes back to his belief of old school football, as well the fact that he still has a lot to learn in being a HC. We'll likely never know if it was Marrone's decision to go conservative, or if it was the Coordinators.

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They had no reason not to trust Bortles. He was on fire in the first half. His diminished play was a result of poor play calling.

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They had no reason not to trust Bortles. He was on fire in the first half. His diminished play was a result of poor play calling.

Pretty much this. ^ 

Yea, we had to play the Pats and some bias officiating, but at the end of the day we beat ourselves. Our coaches flat out, out coached themselves.

The old saying.. "don't try and fix what isn't broken". Well they tried to and it bit them in the [BLEEP].

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They had no reason not to trust Bortles. He was on fire in the first half. His diminished play was a result of poor play calling.

Pretty much this. ^ 

Yea, we had to play the Pats and some bias officiating, but at the end of the day we beat ourselves. Our coaches flat out, out coached themselves.

The old saying.. "don't try and fix what isn't broken". Well they tried to and it bit them in the [BLEEP].

Yup Yup

How many times do teams have to lose like this after seeing this conservative nonsense fail repeatedly?

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I feel like we are almost better without Fournette on the field on 1st down. Our offense is creative and unpredictable when Fournette isn't in the game. When he is in the game our offense stagnates because even Bill Belichick's college roomate's dead great aunt Becky knows we will run up the middle. I feel like if we announce our first down plays to the defense, we would offer more confusion than actually pretending like we are going to do anything else. It's been this way all season. We give Leonard low percentage runs and follow them by giving Blake low percentage passes and then act surprised when the offense moves the ball at a low percentage.

Opening it up doesn't necessarily mean to start lobbing the ball all over, but we can't keep playing into the same predictable patterns. Against the Steelers we ran like 15+ lead plays up the middle? It's no wonder Pitt bit on that playaction to Tommy Bo so badly. Every team in the league would have if you run the same play exclusively all game long. All they had to do was continue to use what was working from the 1st half and maybe tweak a few things depending on how the Pats adjusted. Instead we completely blew up our offensive and defensive gameplan in the 2nd half that astonishingly had the appearance of desperation despite having a two score lead.

On defense, my belief is that Wash got scared we were going to give up a big play if we continued to play man. We had Smith and Church on Cooks and Dorsett in man more than just a few times, which should have never happened, and narrowly averted disaster several times. It's Wash's fault for an inability to disguise the defense to which Brady exploited to create matchups. Then he doubled down on scared and went to zone because of his own inability to prevent those horrible matchups. Soo... Tom Brady got to see a team change to an unscripted defense on the fly and its a zone with only a 4 man rush? I'm sure the Pats were in disbelief at their good fortune.

All that talk all year about winning lunch and our coordinators are the ones to go full fetal when the Super Bowl is on the line.

Hopefully Hackett adjusts for next season. There is a difference between mistake free football and artificially protecting the football in fetal.

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https://boards.philadelphiaeagles.com/to...t-20988030

Other message boards even see the obvious

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"Remember Red, Hope is a good thing. Maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies."  - Andy Dufresne, The Shawshank Redemption