That’s all true, and yet…they’ve been consistently bad. They’ve had camp, pre-season, and 7 games, and they aren’t even sputtering to life like a cold engine.
All fair and true, but remember that one of the problems with the defense last year early on was that under the new CBA, installs take longer. Less practice time. Combine that with having a lot of new and young players and the thing gets compounded.
I think it’s a combination of things. These are just my best guesses/hunches. —>
Versus last year, I think a young and inexperienced line will be up and down and capable of being worse at times than a veteran line with injured starters. I also think compensating for that line means cutting back on things the offense can do. In terms of the numbers, if I recall, the sack rate this year is lower but the hit rate is higher.
I also think Foles has flaws, but even with that, is capable of playing well. He can be a good qb. But getting pounded on makes him worse, for obvious reasons.
Why did most of the receivers drop off? Well they’re not great receivers in the first place but they have played better, all of them (except Tavon who clearly improved). I think Quick is still reeling from the injury mentally and isn’t back to what he was last year before being injured. Plus Foles and Quick don’t have much chemistry yet. In general this reminds me of 2011, where the issue was being comfortable in the new offense. Players making mistakes because they’re pressing and not confident.
Cignetti? First time coordinator. Schott was a coordinator since 2006—he was capable of fixing things overnight sometimes (example: in 2012 they didn’t like the redzone offense so changed it at the bye, and from then on the redzone offense stayed fixed). I wonder if it’s true that Cigz does the passing game and Boras the running game.
But either way, to me it;s everything at once. Like the defense for the first bunch of games last year. Just not in sync yet.
I don’t think Foles became worse than 2014, I think he’s in a worse situation than 2014. But then just like the defense last year, the situation can get better.
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