[mooby]

I like to be more pragmatic with my expectations. The Eagles have really good corners, Quinyon Mitchell in particular is having one of the best rookie seasons by a corner in a while. Before their bye he was averaging 6 targets a game, after the bye? 3 targets a game. First matchup? He effectively shut down Terry, who had 2 targets (and 1 reception for 10 yards).

So if we're gonna win this one we need other guys to step up. Ekeler and Ertz combined for 14 receptions the first game, and they're both out most likely. So one of our unheralded players needs to step up. McCaffrey? McNichols? Dyami Brown? Ben Sinnott? John Bates? We're looking at you.

To really put it in perspective, the numbers from our first matchup:

Ekeler/Ertz: 14 receptions for 136 yards on 16 targets.

Bates, McLaurin, Zaccheaus, Robinson Jr, N. Brown, D. Brown, McNichols, McCaffrey: 8 receptions for 55 yards on 16 targets.

Run game: We ran for 93 yards on 28 attempts for a 3.3 average. JD had 18 yards on 7 attempts for a 2.6 average.

Verdict? Offense is gonna have to step up tremendously for us to even have a shot. We kept the score close for 3 quarters last time until our defense got exhausted and they broke us in the 4th quarter. Our top two targets from last time are out so we need some of our lesser known guys to step up. Assuming McLaurin gets blanketed by Mitchell again we need everybody on this one. Kingsbury also needs to get creative to get Terry Mac some looks.