I Hope 2024 Phillies Don’t Flame Out In A Familiar Script

The 2024 Phillies have been one interesting ride. After their Tuesday night victory, they matched their 87 wins from the 2022 season which ended in a National League Championship, and they got to 88 the following night. With 16 games left, it’s clear this will end as one of their most successful seasons ever.

As a refresher course for Phillies fans, here are the win totals from their last NL Championship clubs;

No matter your opinion on how things have gone since their torrid start, the Phillies will finish with one of their best regular season records ever. It’s interesting to note that any season over 97 wins has NOT resulted in a trip to the World Series.

I see some parallels between the 2023 Eagles and this team. History will determine whether my fears were unfounded. That Eagles team roared out to an impressive 10-1 start, but fizzled out when it mattered most. The gaudy early season record caused many to believe they would eventually figure things out. They didn’t. Will the Phillies? Let’s examine;

They were 29 games above .500 at 61-32 after that series. So in exactly two months they played .500 ball. Whether that means anything or not is up for debate, but in the last two seasons, they have won a total of 5 post-season series. They played considerably better in the second half of both of those years. Much like the Eagles of 2023 your inclination might be to just look at their record and say all is well.

Two and a half months is a pretty large sample size. Struggling and seeing injuries mount make the prospect of a long post season run potentially less likely than the last two campaigns. The Mets of 2024 eerily resemble the last two NL Championship clubs. The Phillies and the Diamondbacks both had to scrap and claw their way into the playoffs. They carried that grit and toughness into the October pressure cooker. We kept waiting for the 2023 Eagles to flip that switch and they never did. Will the Phillies? I’m not so sure.

This one is harder to answer. Having more regular season wins and even winning a division title has not proven to guarantee the Phillies success. Wheeler has been amazing as usual, but Nola remains inconsistent, Suárez is heading in the wrong direction, and Christopher Sanchez just pitches better at home. The offense struggles and has been no hit into the 5th inning 3 times in September! I’m not sure that winning say 97 games is going to convince us that things are looking good.

I can’t decide what I believe, and I blame this Phillies team for it. It’s been a struggle bus for months and we are hoping that injured players can return to form quickly. The Braves won those last two division titles, but that didn’t get them anything come October. Hopefully down the stretch we see more of the Phillies team that we believed were the true 2024 version.

When the Eagles got back on the plane to come home from Brazil, they did so as a 1-0 team. It might not have been pretty, at times it was downright ugly, but they beat a team they will likely be battling with for seeding in the NFC. How much stock should we put into the Eagles win in Brazil though?

After what happened last season though, ugly wins are a bit of a sore subject. They won 10 games in ugly fashion last season, eventually going into the 12th game 10-1. Many predicted it would all fall apart, others, myself included, just said a win is all that matters. The people in the former category ended up being right. There was a sickness behind that ugliness, and it eventually hurt them.

Related: Eagles Win Sloppy Game On Back Of Saquon Barkley

After starting 10-1, the Eagles finished 11-6. Then they got blown out by the Bucs in the playoffs. Nick Sirianni nearly lost his job. He kept it but with a lot of changes. He no longer ruins the offense, Kellen Moore does. Now the Eagles are running a whole new system, and Nick Sirianni is the "CEO Head Coach."

So the ugliness of course has some people worried after the week 1 win. Can you blame them? We dealt with it last year and it went poorly. It is hard to have patience through more ugliness again this season. But is it the same kind of ugliness we saw last season?

Let's take a deeper look at the game to see what the reasons for that ugliness were, and how they still managed to pull out the win. Should we be happy they got on that plane for the long flight back home as a 1-0 team? Or should we be worried that some of the issues that led to that ugliness will carry into the season, and eventually cost them wins down the road?

Let's start with the fact that it was not your typical trip. They weren't driving up the turnpike, flying to Dallas, or even flying cross country for a West Coast road trip. Those trips would all be easy compared to the flight to Sao Paulo. The flight from Philly to Sao Paulo took about 10 hours and traveled 4,795 miles. For reference, a Flight to Los Angeles and back would be 4,776 miles, and take just over 10 hours. Not one way, round trip. A flight from Philly to London takes about 7 hours, and you travel 3,545 miles.

This is one of the most brutal trips a team has ever had to take. Combine that with it being week 1, and the field being terrible, sloppiness is not surprising. That is not an excuse, it is just acknowledging the situation. The Packers went through it too, in fact their trip was e. Most people assume the Packers will be a great team, and they looked worse than the Eagles. At least the Eagles survived to learn from that mistake. The Packers not only lost, but Jordan Love will now miss a few weeks. We will see over the next few weeks how much the trip had to do with it. Maybe nothing, maybe everything. But these International games tend to be a bit sloppy. And this trip was worse than almost any other in NFL history.  

Going into the game, we were not sure what to think of Mekhi Becton. he had never played RG before, and he was coming off a bad year with the Jets. He came into camp and beat out Tyler Steen pretty easily for the job. But looking good in camp is different from looking good in a game. And Becton got a tough test in week 1 vs Packers DT Kenny Clark, a 3-time Pro Bowler.

He gave up 0 sacks, 0 QB hits, 0 Pressures, 0 Hurries. He went up against a great player and shut him down. We also saw him get into the 2nd level on run blocks multiple times. The Eagles ran the ball to the RG 12 times Friday Night. Per Next Gen Stats, those carries went for 54 yards and a TD. It was a great first impression. RG was the biggest question mark on this O-Line. He was tremendous in week 1.

Likewise, Cam Jurgens allowed 0 sacks and only 1 pressure from under center. Cam did have some snap issues. But that is something that is to be expected at first. Kelce had a few bad snaps early in his career too. We can't expect Jurgens to immediately be as good at snapping the ball as Kelce was at the end of his career.

Mekhi Becton was perfect though. Something Eagles fans can be very encouraged by.

I used 0 to make a positive point about the Eagles, now I will use 0 again to make a criticism. Bryce Huff does not only wear the number 0, it also defines his impact on the game. 0 sacks, 0 pressures.Some of that we can chalk up to the poor field conditions. On Jayden Reed's long TD, you will see him slip coming off the edge. it is also only 1 week, far better players than Huff have had weeks where they disappear.

But maybe more concerning than his lack of production, is how few snaps he played. The big knock on him was that he was a part-time player in New York. He played under 50% of the snaps there, and only in pass-rush situations. People worried if he could be a full-time player. Vic Fangio doesn't seem to think so yet, because Huff only played 45% of the snaps. Josh Sweat, Brandon Graham, and Nolan Smith all played more snaps than Huff. Milton Williams, a backup DT, played only 2 snaps fewer than him.

We can give him the pass for 1 off week on a bad field on a tough road trip. But the Eagles showing so little trust in him that he is 4th among Edge rushers in snaps is a concern for me. They need him to be an every-down player. He came here to be the Haason Reddick replacement. Edge Rush was already the biggest concern on this defense, Huff being a part-time player in week 1, takes that concern to the next level.

A big thing last year was how much the Eagles' offense struggled vs the blitz. They had no answers, and by the end of the season, teams were blitzing Hurts relentlessly. Hurts was not without fault, but I maintain that it was more on the Eagles coaches, specifically Nick Sirianni who designed the offense, than on Hurts himself. They simply did not give Hurts the tools to combat the blitz.

Cut to week 1 this year, with Kellen Moore in charge of the offense, and it was night and day. He finished 6/7 with 91 yards against the blitz, per Next Gren Stats. He was nearly perfect when blitzed.

He had his issues in the game. Those 2 interceptions were terrible decisions by him. But we saw him be great in what many considered his greatest weakness last year. That is a reason for optimism.

The lack of motion in the Eagles' offense last season was a talking point all year long. Sirianni continually denied the importance of motion, and Eagles used motion on only 35.1% of their plays, the lowest number in the league.

Now Moore is in charge. Under his leadership, they motioned on 65.8% of the plays. A big jump, but even more important is what the Eagles did on those plays. Jalen Hurts was 15 of 21 with 212 yards and 2 TDs on plays with motion. Meanwhile, he was 5 of 13 with 2 interceptions when the play had no motion. So pretty much every good pass play you watched had motion, and every bad pass play did not.

The defense had its issues Friday Night. They got beat badly on a few plays, leading to multiple long TDs. But where they impressed was in the Red Zone. The Packers got into the Red Zone 4 times. They started in the Red Zone after a turnover twice. The Eagles allowed just 1 TD in the Red Zone. A success rate of 75%.

You do not necessarily need an elite defense to win the Super Bowl. It is obviously great to have, but teams have one with offenses that are just ok, see Eagles in 2017. But your defense does need to be elite at something. They need to be elite at getting after the QB, getting takeaways, or something.

It is only 1 week, but the Eagles red Zone defense looked great. That is something you can build on. They need to cut down the big plays, and they need to get more pressure, especially off the edge. But you can win games by just holding teams to field goals. That is 12 points they kept off the board. The difference between a 5-point win, and losing by a TD.

A few people on defense are getting their flowers after week 1. Quinyon Mitchell is getting praise for an impressive debut. People have lauded Zack Baun, who looked great. But Slay deserves his flowers too. People kind of take him for granted, but even at 33 years old, he is still an elite corner.

Slay allowed 1 catch all game long. They hardly threw his way all game long. That is the type of thing I like to see from my CB1, that they are so shutdown the ball is not even thrown their way. It is why with many great corners, you see their takeaways go down. Teams stop throwing their way. Slay took his side of the field out of the game. I think in general Slay gets underrated in Philly. But he was great in week 1.