Offensively, Eagles a running joke

THE EAGLES' running game is broken. No one with functioning vision who has watched DeMarco Murray run into a brick wall the last two games, including the team's head coach, the team's offensive linemen and Murray himself will disagree with that point.

The million-dollar question is what's wrong with it and can it be fixed.

"Everything happened so fast I can't even tell you what happened," right tackle Lane Johnson said after the Eagles rushed for just 7 yards - that's right, 7 yards - on 17 carries in yesterday's ugly 20-10 loss to the Cowboys. "We need to go back and look at the film and see where we messed up. But it comes down to execution. That's what it was."

Murray, who led the league in rushing last season when he was with the Cowboys, rushed for 2 yards on 13 carries against his former team.

This came six days after he was held to just 9 yards on eight carries in the Eagles' 26-24 Week 1 loss to the Falcons.

That's 11 yards on 21 carries in two games. Not exactly what they had in mind from him when they signed him to a five-year, $40 million deal with $18 million in guarantees in March.

But don't blame Murray. He's a very good running back, but he's not Houdini. From the first quarter to the last, the Cowboys' front seven was slicing through the gaps between the Eagles' offensive linemen and getting into the backfield.

Murray had nowhere to run. Neither did the Eagles' other two running backs, Darren Sproles (one carry, minus-4 yards) or Ryan Mathews (one carry, 0 yards).

"Offensively, we weren't in sync," Murray said. "We just couldn't get anything going. Individually, collectively, we've got to make it work. You've got to look yourself in the mirror, watch the film tomorrow and go from there."

Murray was tackled for losses on five of his 13 carries yesterday, including three in a row in the third quarter for minus-6, minus-5 and minus-5 yards.

"We couldn't get anything started," coach Chip Kelly said after the game. "I don't think the running backs even really had time to assess if there was a hole. Too much penetration up front. Too many guys in the backfield.

"We just didn't block them. It wasn't a very difficult (defensive) scheme. They ran four down linemen, three linebackers. They didn't have extra guys in the box. We just couldn't block the defensive line tonight."

Which begs the question why. Did Kelly screw up big time when he released veteran guards Evan Mathis and Todd Herremans and replaced them with journeymen Allen Barbre and Andrew Gardner?

Or have opposing defenses simply figured out the secret to Kelly's zone-running game?

"They were getting a lot of penetration with their stunts," Johnson said. "I think that's what caused a lot of the tackles for loss. They pretty much stopped our inside zone and were trying to spill it backwards to the backside.

"Even when we tried to run our outside zone at times, they got penetration on that too. They pretty much just shut it down."

Kelly wasn't ready to discount any possibility after the game. Asked if he has the right people in there on the offensive line, he said, "We'll see. We'll see. We've got to assess everything."

Two years ago, when LeSean McCoy won the league rushing title and their quarterback, Nick Foles, put up the third best passer rating in league history, the Eagles' offensive line was regarded as one of the NFL's best.

Mathis and Herremans are gone from that group, but they still have three very highly regarded players left in Johnson, seven-time Pro Bowl left tackle Jason Peters and center Jason Kelce. So what is going on?

"Obviously, missed blocks were a huge part of it today," said Kelce. "I'd like to say they did something different than what we expected. I don't think they did, but I don't know. I've got to go back and look at the film.

"All I know is (the blocking) was very, very inconsistent. No, check that. It was consistently bad."

Kelce does have a pretty good idea of what he's going to see when he looks at the film.

"At times they were playing downhill very aggressively," he said. "At other times they weren't. They were moving the front up all game. We knew they were going to move the front up because that's something they've done (in the past). I thought we had a good beat on that as well. But we just never got going."

It would be easy to lay all the blame on the two new guards, Barbre and Gardner. But the truth is, everybody up front has struggled in these first two games.

"Right now, I'm not playing well," Kelce said. "It doesn't matter who's next to me if I'm not getting my job done. So I don't think (the two new guards) have much to do with the reason we're struggling. We're just not getting it done collectively."

Murray had five catches for 53 yards yesterday. But the Eagles didn't sign him away from the Cowboys to catch passes. They signed him to run the ball and gain a lot of yards.

He had one run of more than 3 yards against the Cowboys. That was for 9 yards late in the game with Dallas up by an insurmountable 17 points.

That gave the Eagles a first down at the Dallas 3-yard line. But when Murray tried to run the ball in two plays later from the 1, he was stopped for no gain. Just like Mathews was on that important third-and-1 late in the Falcons game.

"Right now, it doesn't matter who the running back is," Kelce said. "We're not doing anything up front to give him an opportunity. We've got to get this fixed up front. Blocking assignments, double-teams, whatever it is. We've got to get it fixed."

Blog: eagletarian.com