Things weren’t pretty Friday night in Cincinnati as a porous offensive line and poor performances by the back ups left the Birds flying back to Philly with a sour 22-9 on their wings.
On Sunday head coach Andy Reid looked back on his team’s effort in his normal “we gotta do a better job” way:
“I had a chance to look at the film. Obviously we saw some good things and we saw some things we need to work on. I thought the ones, particularly on the defensive side, did a very nice job. Always room to improve, but they played very emotional, aggressive football. Had some turnovers in there against what I consider a pretty good offense there. Offensively we’ve got a couple things we need to work on and we started that today. We will get better. The things I mentioned to you before were turnovers, penalties and then just overall execution on all phases of the game; special teams, offense and defense. As coaches, we can do a better job and the players know they can do a better job, too.”
Andy wasn’t very candid --as usual -- as he protects his team. But he alluded to the issues that plagued the Birds in Cincy.
Yes it was only preseason so the beat down by the Bengals really doesn’t matter all that much. But Reid is right that the Eagles need to do a better job on all teams.
He mentioned too many turnovers -- that is on Michael Vick more than anyone else. The Birds backup QB can’t be throwing passes directly to the other team instead of to the guys in green.
Big Red mentioned penalties. Well the coaching staff needs to work with their starting tackles Jason Peters and Winston Justice to rectify those illegal formation penalties. It should be a simple fix -- know where to line up and don’t get flagged.
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As for execution: the first team offense needs to do a better job running the ball. The defensive secondary needs to do a better job containing bigger receivers like Terrell Owens. And, the special teams needs to cover better on both kickoffs and punts. That could be fixed once regular special teamers -- not guys trying to make the roster -- cover all the kicks.
The Birds will get a shot at working on these areas in their third preseason test Friday night at Kansas City.
