Philadelphia

Eagles' Offense Has a Lot of Problems to Solve

It's not just the quarterback. It might be mainly the quarterback, but the last two weeks have been disastrous for the entire offense, not just one person.

The Eagles' offense scored just 10 points the last two weeks of the regular season, an ugly win over the Raiders that locked up the No. 1 seed and an uglier 6-0 loss to the Cowboys in a game that had no impact on the standings.

In the process, they netted fewer than 220 yards of offense in consecutive games for the first time since 2005, went 3-for-25 on third down and recorded 12 or fewer first downs in consecutive games for the first time since late in the 2001 season.

They became the first 13-win team in NFL history shut out in its final game.

"I think that obviously we aren't happy with the way we've performed the last two weeks," Jason Kelce said.

"We don't really have time to worry. We're just trying to focus on getting better and improving what's going wrong, why it's happening and correct it. You're always just trying to improve what you did wrong and not do it again. It's just been a frustrating last couple of weeks."

Through the Giants game, Foles' first start in place of Carson Wentz, the Eagles led the NFL with 31.3 points per game, and were third with 387 yards per game.

Since then … disaster.

No team in NFL history has ever scored 20 or fewer points the last two weeks of a season and gone on to win a playoff game.

The Eagles scored 19 the last two weeks of this season - only 13 of them courtesy of the offense.

Thanks to their 13-3 record, the Eagles are the No. 1 seed in the NFC playoff bracket. They'll be at home at 4:35 p.m. a week from Saturday against the winner of the Saints-Panthers game unless the Falcons beat the Rams, in which case they'd face the Falcons.

"I'm excited about what we've earned," Torrey Smith said. "Because of the way we played early in the year we have the opportunity to take a step back with the bye week and start to prepare for the next team.

"It's almost like we get to hit the re-set button. Everybody does. It doesn't matter if we're 13-3 if we go out there and blow it the first game. We need to go out and handle our business, continue to get better this week, pay attention to the fundamentals and play like the Eagles we are."

Foles has been horrible, but he's not the Eagles' only concern on offense. Although everything is clearly related.

After averaging 148 rushing yards per game and 4.7 per carry the first 11 weeks, they were at 99 and 4.0 the last five games.

And big plays have been disappeared. After recording 22 plays of 30 yards or more the first 12 weeks of the season, the offense produced just two the last four games.

They didn't have an offensive touchdown longer than 32 yards the last seven weeks of the season after recording eight the first nine weeks.

"It's not rocket science," said Smith, who had a costly drop on the Eagles' first drive Sunday. "You just gotta do it.

"The coaches can't do anything about me trying to take off without the ball. That's me. I catch that ball, I'm scoring. That's me. I didn't get it done. So it's execution. We just can't shoot ourselves in the foot.

"It's always execution. We've been in a lot of third and longs and that's never a good thing. We have to stay in third and manageable and make the plays when they're there."

None of the Eagles' wide receivers was here when Foles was the Eagles' quarterback from 2012 through 2014, and their lack of chemistry shows.

Foles' longest completions since Wentz got hurt were a 32-yard catch-and-run by Jay Ajayi and a 25-yarder to Zach Ertz. A running back and a tight end.

Foles hasn't hit a pass longer than 19 yards to a wide receiver over these last 2 ½ games.

"Obviously any time you kind of go to a new person at the position it's going to take some time to build that chemistry and I think the next week is going to be almost like training camp, getting on the same page with Nick," Ertz said. "That's going to be the focus."

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