The Eagles got trounced 45-17 by the Buccaneers on Sunday. DeMarco Murray had 13 carries for 64 yards, including a lost fumble. There’s plenty of blame to go around when your team plays a game like that and finds itself at 4-6 — especially when expectations coming into the season were sky high — but it was Murray who was singled out by an anonymous teammate to the Philly Inquirer’s Jeff McLane for one particular play, which didn’t even happen against Tampa, but occurred last week in a close loss to the Dolphins:
It was third and 1, and DeMarco Murray got the handoff. He turned the corner and appeared to have the first down. But rather than finish off his run, he saw 185-pound cornerback Brice McCain coming at him, and he slid to the ground just barely beyond the first-down marker. Millions watched it on TV and thousands saw it in person at Lincoln Financial Field, but the people it should matter to most were Murray’s teammates. And at least one, when asked on Sunday whether he thought the Eagles were giving it their all, noticed.
“Well, when you see DeMarco sliding before getting hit, you tell me. Was that giving full effort?” said an Eagles player who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “You see that [stuff], and it makes you wonder.”
This is a weird example to vent about to a reporter. Anything that happened a week ago in the NFL is old news. Murray was surrounded by defenders, on his way out of bounds anyway, picked up the first down, and was not going to gain any more yardage. Taking a hit here would have been a needless injury risk, and the only functional purpose would have been for the optics of not being perceived as unmanly. As a fan watching on television, I unequivocally would want the player I’m rooting for to slide there.
That being said, there’s apparently an unwritten rule that nobody besides the quarterback should avoid contact. For example: “I have never run out of bounds,” Seahawks running back Thomas Rawls said Sunday, via ESPN’s Sheil Kapadia. “It’s just my make-up. It’s my whole mentality. I think I would feel less of a person just running out of bounds instead of being physical, showing toughness and [having] a different mentality at the running back position.”
Nevertheless, there’s going to be plenty of diagnosis about everything that has gone wrong with the Eagles this year. Despite all this, because they’ve got the luxury of playing in the NFC East, they’re just one game out of a playoff spot. Things could be different in a few weeks, but right now it feels like the season is spiraling downhill.
[Photo via Eric Hartline-USA TODAY Sports]
from The Big Lead http://ift.tt/1Ib0OG0
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