Thursday Night Football Afterword: Eagles vs Bengals

With five turnovers, the Eagles demonstrated on national
television why their season has gone so poorly.
Photo credit to NFL Network.

Next week we will have a Saturday Night Football game, so I will spend the next morning writing my Afterword for that before the Sunday games begin. Last night was the final Thursday game of the 2012 season.

The Bengals jumped out to an early 10-0 lead after two takeaways but struggled in the second quarter as Andy Dalton was stripped twice in the pocket. Philadelphia took a 13-10 halftime lead but would not score again.

During one 72-second stretch in the second half, the Eagles turned the ball over three times, reminiscent of another Thursday game this season – New York Jets on Thanksgiving, anyone?

The 34-13 final score was not at all telling of how Philadelphia played. Their defense easily played well enough to win the game, but poor offensive play in the first quarter and second half led to too many short fields for the Cincinnati offense.

Andy Dalton only threw for 127 yards in the win, throwing one touchdown on a completion percentage below 50%. He also made a couple nice moves on the way to a rushing touchdown.

Cincinnati was much more affective in on the ground as BenJarvus Green-Ellis topped 100 yards and Dalton picked up another 22 before taking three knees to run out the clock.

After two consecutive eye-popping games, Bryce Brown has been limited in rushing. With 34 yards last night, he topped his Week 14 total by 28 yards, but it certainly has his fantasy owners, myself included, a little frustrated. With the Redskins and Giants left on the schedule, it doesn’t get much easier.

Nick Foles looked solid at times, but he is still a shaky, inconsistent rookie. He made some terrific passes, one of which unfortunately was subsequently fumbled away, and he made some terrible throws. He finished with one interception, but two more passes should have been picked off late in the fourth quarter.

I think Foles is the future at quarterback for Philadelphia, but it is going to take a lot of offseason work to clean up his game.

Thanks for reading everyone and enjoy the rest of Week 15. I’ll be back Monday with my Sunday Afterwords!