It’s not just Carson Wentz. It’s everybody.
And when Jason Kelce says everybody, he means literally ... everybody.
“Whenever you’re this bad, it’s never just one person,” Kelce said Wednesday. “It’s never just one position group, and it’s never just players, coaches and front office. It’s everybody and that’s the reality.”
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Kelce laid the blame for the offense’s season-long malaise that ultimately led to Wentz getting benched on everybody involved, and he didn’t let anybody escape unscathed.
Not many players are going to call out their teammates, the coaching staff and general manager Howie Roseman, but when you’re one of the greatest players in franchise history you can go there.
And with the Eagles 3-8-1, on a four-game losing streak and set to start a 22-year-old rookie quarterback in place of a one-time MVP candidate against the top team in the NFC, Kelce went there.
“Carson has, unfortunately, not played well, so these are the situations that happen, but you feel bad that he’s the sole one taking the hit right now,” Kelce said. “Obviously, the entire offense has been terrible. Offensive line, running backs, receivers, coaches. You aren’t this bad unless everybody shares blame in this whole thing. I think everybody here knows that, I know that Carson knows that, that this is not just him. We’ve got to do something. We’ve got to try to spark some sort of difference. You can’t keep doing the same thing and expect it to get and we just haven’t been able to do it.”
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“It’s hard to believe we’re at this point now, to be honest with you. The season has not gone the way any of us anticipated or would have liked to have gone, but sitting here 3-8-1 you’ve got to try to make a change. Obviously, the offense has been absolutely terrible, the last four weeks in particular.”
Why has one of the top-ranked QBs in the NFL over the last few years played so poorly? Why has a Super Bowl play-caller been unable to regain his magic touch? Why has the offensive line allowed the 9th-most sacks in NFL history through 12 games?
How the heck has it gotten so bad?
“I think if everybody knew the answer to that we would have fixed it a long time ago,” Kelce said. “It’s complicated. Obviously the offensive line hasn’t been great, we’ve had a lot of injuries, we’ve had a lot of this and that, but ultimately we just haven’t gone out there and functioned well. We haven’t been cohesive enough — not just as players but structurally.”
The Eagles rank 29th in the NFL in yards, last in passing yards per play, last in sacks allowed, 27th on third down and 26th in scoring.
They’ve failed to score more than 17 points on offense in five straight games for the first time in 22 years and they’ve failed to score more than seven first-half points in four straight games for the first time in 35 years.
They’ve scored just nine offensive touchdowns in their last five games.
“We should be able to manufacture more points than we’re putting up, and we should be able to play better no matter what’s called,” Kelce said. “So this is ultimately a failure on a lot of different levels to facilitate a good offense. We owe it to the rest of the team here, we owe it to the Eagles, we owe it to the fan base certainly, to figure something out. Whether it’s too late or not, you still keep working, you still keep fighting, you still keep trying to grind out and figure out what’s going on. And you still keep trying to freaking win. You still try to have success on game day and that’s what we’re going to do Sunday.”
Kelce may be the last honest man in the Eagles' organization, and his message should be required reading for everybody involved in creating this mess.
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