The Eagles need to stick to the run game against the Rams

The Philadelphia Eagles need to remain committed to the ground game this week against Los Angeles.

It has been a grim week in Philadelphia, to say the least. The Philadelphia Eagles took their second loss of the season on the road to start the month. Even though 10-2 is still an excellent record, the loss knocked them out of the first seed. Not only did they get pushed out of first place, but they also failed to prove their doubters wrong.

By now you probably know that the Eagles have one of the easier schedules in the NFL. They faced a lot of teams with losing records who will most likely not be making the playoffs this season. Although they have beaten a couple of contenders, the Seattle Seahawks was clearly their toughest opponent to date.

After a 24-10 loss on primetime television, some have accused the Eagles of being frauds. The truth is, the Eagles beat themselves last Sunday night. They couldn’t seem to commit to what was working. They also failed to minimize mistakes, which turned out to be the recipe for disaster.

As Sunday’s game against the Los Angeles Rams approaches, the Eagles are preparing to take on, yet another tough NFC opponent. This time around they need to get back to their original plans and play some smash mouth football. In other words, Doug Pederson and the Eagles offense need to commit to running the football!

Back to bad habits…

For the first time this season, Jay Ajayi out-carried LeGarrette Blount by one more rushing attempt. Unfortunately, they only had 17 total attempts combined. Looking at their average yards-per-carry, Ajayi (3.9) and Blount (3.3), they probably should’ve gotten some more opportunities to pound the rock on Sunday.

We all witnessed a bad habit of Doug Pederson’s coaching against the Seahawks. Similar to how he was in the first couple of weeks this season, he completely neglected the run game early on. By the time the second-half of the game rolled around, it was too late to start it back up. Carson Wentz ended up throwing the ball over 40 times. That was the first time he threw that many times since week two’s loss to the Kansas City Chiefs. Ironically, that was the same game that Pederson was ridiculed for issuing Blount zero carries.

Pound the rock!

Clearly, Pederson needs to remain committed to the run game if they want to move the offense down the field this week. Against Seattle, they never seemed to really establish a rhythm, which had their offensive game-flow doomed from the start. Now that Ajayi has had enough time to get the offense down, he should be getting at least 12-15 carries this week.

While Seattle has one of the better rushing defenses, the Rams aren’t too solid at stopping the run game this season. They are currently the 27th ranked defense in the entire league. Through 12 games they have allowed 1,474 yards and 12 touchdowns this season on the ground. They are just outside of the bottom five rushing defenses allowing an average of 122 yards-per-game.

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Clearly, the struggles of the Rams rushing defense should be enough motivation for the Eagles to keep the ball on the ground this week. As long as they are getting help from the big men up front, there should be no reason why they can’t move the ball and keep the clock running. Assuming Pederson plans to clean up his mistakes of abandoning to run game, the Eagles backfield could potentially have a big day against the Rams.