Midway through the first quarter of Saturday’s preseason tilt against the Eagles, Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel had seen enough.
The Eagles had marched from their own 23 yard line down and had reached the Patriots 18, with New England’s defense having gotten manhandled on a drive where on four out of the previous five plays, Philadelphia’s offense had gained five or more yards.
It started on the second play from scrimmage. Quarterback Andy Dalton faked a handoff and rolled to his right, with rookie linebacker Gabe Jacas bearing down on him. As Dalton threw the football, Jacas wasn’t able to get there in time to disrupt the throw, with Dalton connecting on a short pass to wideout Darius Cooper, who was coming across to the right.
Chad Muma was covering Cooper, but he ended up with a bad angle and didn’t have the speed to stop him, diving and reaching out to try and trip him up. Instead, Cooper slipped past him and picked up 25 yards.
Linebacker K.J. Britt, who came from the other side of the field to eventually help Kindle Vildor finish off the tackle, was seen after the play exchanging words with Muma, with Britt clearly frustrated about something.
The Eagles then ran to the right side again on the next play, with Jesse Luketa getting pushed out and Muma getting stiff-armed as he tried bringing Eagles running back Will Shipley down, but Shipley kept his footing and pushed Muma off him, picking up several more yards before being pushed out of bounds.
They dropped Shipley for a loss of two on the next play after both Luketa and Joshua Farmer broke through and made the tackle, which set up a 3rd-and-7. Dalton again connected with Cooper, and Vildor came up and stopped him short of the marker for what seemed like a good play as Vildor pumped his fist after making the tackle, seeing that Cooper hadn’t made it.
But instead of a punt, the Eagles decided to go for it at the New England 40. The Patriots ended up in a soft zone on 4th-and-1, with four players in the vicinity of Cooper and no one recognized the route. Dalton fired a strike in between New England’s defenders, hitting Cooper for a 13-yard gain before Britt came in and wrapped him up.
The Eagles were at the New England 27, and they weren’t done.
On the next play, which the Eagles ran over right guard, Jeremiah Pharms shed his blocker and had a shot at Shipley, but he slipped past, and both Britt and Dell Pettus were overpowered, with Vildor coming in for the tackle but not until after Shipley had picked up 9 yards.
That was the last straw. Vrabel called timeout with 1:53 left in the first quarter, gathering his defense on the sideline for what appeared to be animated conversation.
“I saw dogs**t defense and I wanted to talk to them,” said Vrabel after the game when asked about the timeout. “And I figured that if I didn’t call timeout, that I wouldn’t be able to get what I wanted to say off my chest.”
Unfortunately, it didn’t matter. Philadelphia picked up where it left off and six plays later, the Eagles punched it in for the touchdown after running the football and overpowering the Patriots’ defense on the final five straight plays.
Vrabel: Patriots Lack Depth
The frustation on the sideline as they came off the field was obvious, and “inconsistent” was a word that Vrabel used after the game to describe how things went down. That was probably the best way to describe that group Saturday night. There were some good moments here and there, but overall, there were still too many other plays they gave up that left Vrabel frustrated after it was over.
“It’s inconsistent. I think that there’s some really good performances and then obviously some things that we do that hurt us and we have to be able to eliminate those few things, those lulls or those naps that we talked about,” said Vrabel. “I felt like we really competed. The guys that were there tonight in the game competed in the second half.”
After two days of work during the Patriots and Eagles joint practice, along with Saturday’s preseason game, it’s given the coaching staff plenty to look at. That may not be good news from some players as the coaches begin making some difficult decisions in the coming days.
The issue right now is that Vrabel doesn’t appear comfortable with the guys further down the depth chart, which he said after the game is part of the reason why his starters haven’t seen much – if any – time through two games.
“I don’t think we have a very deep team, Mike [Reiss],” said Vrabel when asked by Reiss if the starters might play next week to get acclimated to the speed of the game ahead of the regular season. “So I think we have to make sure that we’re preparing our football team and that we’re doing everything that we can to keep our best players available. And if that means playing Thursday as part of preparation, then that’s what we’ll do.”
“Have not made that decision yet, but I would say that that’s something that I’m confident in with where we’re set up currently.”
Still, the one positive is that the Patriots were able to close out the Eagles when it counted, with rookie Quintayvious Hutchins coming up with the strip sack on Eagles QB Cole Payton to seal the 24-21 victory. It also didn’t hurt that his offense put together a solid effort on its final possession, with Behren Morton throwing a perfectly thrown ball to Nick DeGennaro, which went for a 37-yard go-ahead touchdown with just under a minute left in the game.
“I think that’s probably the thing that I’ll take away for the last 3 or 4 days,” said Vrabel. “[It] was just the way that they competed and fed off each other and made some plays and gave up a few and then were able to come back there at the end and score and then obviously end the game on defense.”
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Ian Logue is a Seacoast native and owner and senior writer for PatsFans.com, an independent media site covering the New England Patriots and has been running this site in one form or another since 1997.
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