The 5 Numbers That Tell The Story of Eagles vs Giants
By Dylan MacKinnon
What is the old saying? Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me? Whose fault is it when you have been fooled so many times you lost count? How many times can we buy into this team just for them to let us down? After they beat the Saints, they had everyone buying in. Then they lay an egg against this team? The Giants beat them in an embarrassing 13-7 game. The cherry on top was Jalen Reagor dropping what should have been the game-winning TD. What looked like a simple path to the playoffs now looks flimsy at best. Here are the 5 numbers that tell the story of how it happened.
66.666%
Jalen Hurts has failed to reach at least 200 yards in 66.666% of the games this year. That is 8 games of under 200 yards, out of 12. And in two of the games he did, it would be hard to say he played well, more just he put up some numbers late when they were out of the game. Hurts has been hugely impressive as a leader and an athlete. His arm leaves a ton to be desired though. Today his inability to make plays with his arm killed this team, and he threw 3 picks. If Hurts is going to be a “franchise QB” he needs to be able to throw like one. We have not seen him be able to do that consistently. He has 5 more games to convince the Eagles he can.
.7
The Eagles scored only 7 pts in this game. If I had told you before the game they score only 7 pts, everyone would assume the Giants found a way to stop the run. Yet, the Eagles averaged 6.3 yards per run and ran for 208 yards. That is only .7 YPC than they had pts. They dominated on the ground just as much as they did in the past several games. Even with Jason Kelce missing half the game. The difference was they could do nothing through the air. Even worse, Nick Sirianni made the baffling choice to throw at times where he should have kept running. At one point they were 3rd and 2, and threw it twice, and turned it over on downs. That led to the Giants’ only TD of the game, which made the difference in the loss. Nick Sirianni carries a large portion of the blame here. His decision-making was terrible.
10
By my count, the Eagles now have 10 TDs taken off the board because of penalties this season. Imagine what this team could look like if they had scored 10 more TDS this year. Even considering they still got FGs after some of those penalties, that’s at least 40 pts, and as much as 70 pts taken off the board. Even if you take the low end of points they have lost, 40, that difference would put them top 5 in pts scored in the NFL. This is also the second game where the pts taken off the board by penalties were greater than what they lost by. In the Chiefs game, they lost by 12, and penalties took 15 pts off the board. Today they lost by 6, and the Nate Herbig hold took 7 off the board. 7-5 would look much different than 5-7.
7
For as much grief as we have given this defense all year, this is actually the 7th time they held their opponent to a lower point total than they average the rest of the season. The Falcons, 49ers, Lions, Broncos, Buccaneers, Panthers, and now the Giants, all held to below their average pt total. Granted some of those are very bad offenses to begin with, but they score more against other defenses so something is going right. The defense did its job today. You would have liked them to make more plays, but they held their opponent to only 13 pts, under 300 yards, and made some key stops when called upon. The offense let them down today.
17.6
The Giants came into the game, 24th in the NFL, allowing 24.6 pts per game. They are not a good defense. Eagles scored only 7 pts vs them. They are now the 4th to score at least 20pts on them. The Eagles join the Falcons, Raiders, and Panthers in that honor. This was a team they should have dropped 30 on, and they couldn’t reach double digits. A team missing their two corners by the end shutdown the Eagles pass game. Not a good look for your Qb or your head coach who was a WR coach.