Eagles have historically bad run defense performance in loss to Bears

Eagles have historically bad run defense performance in loss to Bears originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

The Eagles didn't just have a bad performance against the run on Friday afternoon.

They had an all-time bad performance.

In their 24-15 loss to the Bears on Black Friday, the Eagles gave up 281 rushing yards and allowed both D'Andre Swift and Kyle Monangai to go over the century mark in an embarrassing loss.

We just have to play better, simply put, plain," Jordan Davis said. There's no excuse for that. I think that was a poor product we put on the field. We have to get better. We have to get better and it takes all of us. We can't take that long to figure out a remedy for that. We have to do quick adjustments and we have to get that down."

Those 281 yards are the most the Eagles have given up on the ground in a game since the 2015 season. The last time they gave up that many rushing yards before 2015 was back in 1973.

And those 281 rushing yards are tied for the ninth most the Eagles have ever given up in a single game.

It came down to really just technique," Nakobe Dean said. It came down to technique and playing hard and playing off each other. And that's from every position: D-line, linebacker, DB, everybody got to play better. We have to get off blocks, we have to strike better. Just got to execute better."

The Bears were able to get their run game going laterally and it gave the Eagles fits. But the Eagles also missed a bunch of tackles and gave up a ton of yards after contact.

In fact, the Eagles gave up 177 yards after contact on designed runs Friday, according to NextGen Stats. That means they gave up more yards after contact than they had given up rushing yards in a single game this season.

The Bears used cut-backs and misdirections all game and the Eagles never caught up.

You just got to be good with your eyes," defensive end Jaelan Phillips said. That's kind of the point. The misdirection is to confuse you and if your eyes aren't good, they're going to catch you a step off and good backs like that are going to capitalize. I thought they did a good job and we didn't do a good enough job."

The shocking part about the Eagles' rushing defense is that it had been shored up over the last month. Since reinserting Dean into the lineup, the Eagles had given up just 92.0 rushing yards per game over their previous five games.

The Bears surpassed the 100-yard mark on their first run of the second quarter on Friday.

By the end of the game, the Bears won the time-of-possession battle 39:18-20:42. It's just the fourth time in the Sirianni Era that the Eagles have possessed the ball for under 21 minutes in a game.

That's on us at the end of the day," Phillips said. They're running the ball like that, the clocks going to be winding, they're going to have possession of the ball for a long time. Ultimately, we have to do better getting them off the field, getting turnovers, things of that nature."

What did Nick Sirianni think the biggest issues with the run defense were?

It's a lot of different things," the head coach said. So you're going to look and say, First of all, did we do the things we needed to do as coaches to help put them in positions?' and then it's going to be about block destruction, tackling, how we get off the blocks, how we tackle, have to look at that.

Swift had a couple opportunities or had a couple plays that got some extra yards with some yards after making some guys miss. He's an electric back, but again, I'll have to look at exactly what all went down, but I know that when you're giving up that many yards, everybody has a hand in that with where we are as far as where we are putting guys on defense, but then also how we block destruct and how we take on blocks and how we tackle."

Swift finished the game with 125 yards and a touchdown on 18 carries, while Monangai had 130 yards and a touchdown on 22 carries.

The Bears, as a team, averaged 6.0 yards per rushing attempt.

They were able to run the ball on us," Reed Blankenship said. Obviously, you can't stop the run, it's going to be a tough day in the office, just like I've been saying. They could do what they wanted with it, honestly. I hate to say that. I still trust the guys in the room that we're going to get it fixed and we're going to get our jobs done."