The final chapter for the 2015 Philadelphia Eagles season that will now go down as a total failure was not unlike the rest of the season.
There were opportunities to take the game. There were glimmers of hope. And then there were drops. There were turnovers. There were penalties. There was uncontrollable chaos.
And it finally cost the Eagles their season, deservedly so.
The 38-24 loss to the Redskins dropped the Eagles to 6-9, sealing a losing season and officially ending the Eagles bid for the NFC East.
The Eagles first drive showed the same promise the preseason did: near perfection and the thought that maybe this team was as motivated as they needed to be.
The Eagles offense didn’t get another touchdown until garbage time, when the game was already over. In between, the Redskins struck for 13 quick points, botched a chance to extend a 16-10 lead at the end of the half and left the Eagles in the game early in the third.
Nothing about the second half was a difference from the rest of the season for the Eagles. They dropped passes on a regular basis. They took penalties, eight accepted ones in total for the game for 70 yards. They had two turnovers for the game, one that directly resulted in a touchdown.
Two of Washington’s offensive touchdowns were aided by poor defensive coverage. Kiko Alonso, acquired for LeSean McCoy, stood out as a problem defensively. DeMarco Murray, the other part of the McCoy equation, coughed up the ball that led to the fumble recovery for a touchdown.
In a season where the Eagles started with some promise and expectations and a lot riding on Chip Kelly’s offseason moves, there were two of his most discussed, failing in the biggest game of the season.
This was a team that always failed to get up for the hype of a big game. As Chip Kelly said this week, with the season on the line, if they couldn’t get motivated for this, than nothing could motivate.
Well, you saw what they are. They are a team that couldn’t perform when it counted. They are a team that struggled so mightily to find any form of consistency.
And this is what you get when you constantly shoot yourself in the foot. You can’t make as many mistakes as this team did week in and week out and expect to succeed. It just doesn’t happen.
What this team provided us with is a sense of false hope that turned in a groundhog day of the inconsistencies and failings. A 4-0 preseason suddenly took a team that may go 10-6 and make the playoffs to a Super Bowl contender. There’s nothing wrong with shooting for the moon, even in the most unlikely situations, but every now and then, you have to be prepared to accept reality.
Problem is, what happens when reality is that you’re a really bad football team that could still be crowned with a division title and that hope is carried all the way to Week 16? You get the 2015 Philadelphia Eagles, a team in a atrocious division that couldn’t even find a way to beat the own rivals, let alone go out and beat someone else from the outside of the NFC East.
The Eagles, at 6-9, have three wins against AFC East opponents. Consider that, the Eagles will finish with three – possibly four – wins in the NFC this season out of 12 games. You can’t lose eight games within your conference and expect to win, especially when three of them are to division rivals.
In pure Chip Kelly fashion, the Eagles nearly made the playoffs the unorthodox way, by being a horrible football team everywhere else, but taking care of business in their division.
What they got, well, that was deserved, because after a season like that — 6-9 with one game to play and an offseason to wallow in it and take a hard look at what reality is rather than fantasyland — is nothing short of a failure.
