5 key Eagles figures who need to prove something this season
Eagles training camp is here. It means a new beginning. There are great expectations for this year’s team. Prognosticators have them ranked top five here, and top 10 there, which serves as great fodder for sportstalk radio hosts and podcast spinning heads, though does little to shed what happened late last season. That stink tends to linger and can only be erased on the field during live play, not in controlled settings like training camp.
This is a team with something to collectively prove in 2024, because the last time anyone saw the Eagles they were a downtrodden team that quit.
The official epitaph of their epic collapse came with 10:44 left to play in their 32-9 playoff loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the Wild Card round, forcing ESPN color analyst and NFL Hall of Famer Troy Aikman to brazenly—and accurately—announce to the nation that the 2023 Eagles were a … “a defeated team and they were when they came in. And there’s been no life to this group really throughout the entire ball game.”
The cumulative record of the six teams the Eagles played in their 1-6 fall was 52-50 (which includes playing the New York Giants twice). Their 1-6 downfall marked a span in which they were outscored 214-132 (by an average of 11.7 points per game), while getting outgained 2,729 to 2,293, giving up an average of 389.8 yards a game and outgained by an average of 62.2 yards a game.
The Eagles had the worst defense in the NFL the final month of last season. The defense gave up the second-highest amount of passing touchdowns in the NFL, only behind Washington (39 to the Eagles’ 35). For the season, the Eagles were 30th in the NFL in opponent red zone scoring percentage (TDs only) at 66.1%, and were No. 31 in passing defense, allowing an average of 252.7 yards a game. They were 30th in scoring defense (25.2) and allowed 51 touchdowns, the third-highest total in the NFL, behind only Washington (59) and Arizona (54).
For a team that landed 11-7 overall, the Eagles became only the fourth double-digit winning team in NFL history to finish with a minus-point differential, at minus-18 (442/460) overall behind of the 2021 Las Vegas Raiders, who finished 10-8 with a minus-72 point differential (393/465), and the minus-34 difference posted by the 2023 Pittsburgh Steelers (321/355) that went 10-8. The Eagles finished ahead of the minus-10 differential by the 13-5 Minnesota Vikings (448/458) in 2022.
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