Donovan McNabb wasn’t going to mince words when Marks & Reese asked him about the Eagles’ recent struggles during his appearance on Monday – and after Ike said that it wasn’t the fact they lost, but the way they lost to Dallas that hurt him, Donovan said that like the delicious when hot cheese sauce next to their Crab Fries at Monday’s Chickie’s & Pete’s broadcast, the Eagles have gone stone cold and stayed there for a while now.
“We're all about the Birds and we want to see them continue to flourish, but this is something that's been transpiring for the last five or six weeks,” McNabb said. “I look at it as a situation where, when you put yourself in those tight close games because you don't start fast, you're not able to be effective. It affects things because going forward, it's gonna catch up to you at some point, and I think what we’ve been seeing for the last two months to come out versus two teams that are scorching hot right now., it’s hard to play catch-up when you can consistently make mistakes and find yourself in a bad situation.”
Make no mistake, the Birds aren’t as “bad” of a 10-3 team as some think, as two of their three losses are to fellow 10-3 San Fran and Dallas the last two weeks, and they do have wins over Dallas, Miami, Kansas City, and Buffalo, plus three other teams in the thick of a playoff hunt.
But the latter two named wins, as McNabb alluded to, weren’t easy by any means, and they’ve been taken to the limit twice by the 4-9 Commanders and once by the 2-10 Patriots and lost to the 5-8 Jets, so we’re not quite seeing the machine that rolled to the Super Bowl last year on either side of the ball.
“We’ve been trying to get them to be more balanced, but the identity of this football team to me is week by week; it's like almost like we're trying to set up the run with the pass, instead of setting up the pass with the run,” McNabb said. “I think what happened was that the heat kind of came down on Nick and the offensive staff of being able to try to establish the run, but when we get a good drive and we continue to fumble the ball or turnovers or find ourselves in bad situations, it’s hard to stay with that mentality and game plan.”
Two months ago, McNabb said, the Eagles were more pass-heavy, whether that was to protect Jalen Hurts around potential injury or going away from D’Andre Swift, but whatever is happening now ‘is just not working out in our favor.’
But, now 13 games into the season, shouldn’t the offense have figured out what it is? And how much of the issue is Hurts?
“I look at it differently because I played the position, and I know everyone is kind of comparing last season to this season, which is not a comparison because he's not playing the way he played last year, and I knew that that wouldn't happen,” McNabb said. “Is he efficient? Yes. Is the explosiveness out of the offense that we've seen last season? Yes, but we have to remember it’s a different coordinator on both sides. I think we're trying to be more methodical this season, being able to just kind of take what the defense has given us and try to create that explosive play instead of being able to attack the defense in their weaknesses. We’re not utilizing that mentality when it comes to our game planning when I watch, and so everyone goes right to Jalen, who hasn’t been as sharp as he was last year; I think it will get better, but it won’t be what it was last year.”
That all said, he’s confident the team will get it together next Monday night in Seattle.
“I’m very confident, because I knew that this would kind of catch up to us,” McNabb said. “I thought it was gonna start in that Buffalo game, but we fought back. San Francisco and Dallas are different beasts, and also, our rest period hasn't been what everybody's rest period was. So we'll be able to regroup and get everything together, but it’ll be big to see how the next two weeks go, and how this locker room rallies behind each other.”
Take a listen to McNabb’s entire segment, which also looks at some of the weaknesses on the defense, some anonymous comments about offensive issues and complaints, Jalen Hurts’ health and more!