The Philadelphia Eagles, fresh off a victory over the Packers in Green Bay on Monday Night Football, are 7-2 and currently control the top seed in the NFC. However, they’ve struggled to produce points at times. Their per-game average of 24.2 points is outside of the top 10 in the NFL, which obviously means that there’s room for improvement.
The Eagles managed to produce just 10 points against the Packers, and though they were able to pull out the win in that game thanks to a dominant defensive performance, that’s typically not going to get the job done. That fact isn’t lost on star running back Saquon Barkley, who knows that the offense needs to be better moving forward.
"We know that the way we played on Monday, more times than not, if we play that game against a lot of teams, we're going to lose," Barkley said ahead of Philadelphia's matchup with the Detroit Lions on Sunday night. "That's why you have to have complementary football. The defense came out and played big for us. We know we've got to improve."
For the Eagles, chasing offensive improvement has been a consistent theme throughout the season, not just the result of the single game.
"I think that's a conversation, no matter if we score 10 points or we score 40," Barkley said. "That's just the nature of this business. You have to have a sense of urgency and a mindset to put what you did the week before in the past and move on and try to improve. You're never going to play a perfect game."
Eagles star receiver A.J. Brown, who has expressed his mounting frustration with the Eagles’ offensive struggles throughout the season, basically said the same thing as Barkley, albeit in a slightly different way.
"I think if we're really focused on winning and doing our job, we can't just keep slapping a Band-Aid over the defense doing their job and getting us out of trouble,” Brown said. “At what point are we going to pick up our slack as an offense?
“It's been week after week sometimes we're not doing our job on offense,” he added. “You can't keep slapping a Band-Aid over that and expect to win late in the year and think you're going to go to that at the end of the year. It's not going to f---ing happen.”
From the outside looking in, the main issue appears to be playcalling. First year offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo has had some issues getting the offense going, especially when it comes to getting stars like Barkley and Brown involved consistently.
Philadelphia been able to pull out wins despite their offensive inconsistency, but that’s not a recipe for success, as the players pointed out. If they hope to repeat as Super Bowl champs, they’ll need to be better.