There’s no easy way to put it. Jay Ajayi made a huge mistake.
After a 23-21 loss where there were plenty of Eagles worthy of getting fingers pointed at them, Jay Ajayi understood when fingers pointed at him. Ajayi fumbled the ball at the Minnesota 5-yard line on the first drive of the third quarter.
At least he owned it.
Yeah, I can’t do that. I pride myself on being elite. I want to be elite. I want to be the best and you can’t do that when your team’s counting on you. We just had a great drive starting off the second half. Gotta finish the drive. I gotta make sure I hold the ball and get in the end zone. And you see what happens at the end of the game.
Those little things; that’s what we talk about when we say self-inflicted. I can’t do that to the team. I take pride in my craft and coming out here and putting great games out on the field and in this offense, opportunities, you gotta take advantage of every one. So for me, personally, I’m very disappointing in doing that. I know, at the end of the day, that played a part in why we lost tonight. I’m going to take that to heart, wear that on my sleeve and I’m going to come back better from that.
The fumble in that spot was so brutal because the offense had struggled to get much going before that. In fact, the Eagles had just 91 total offensive yards in the first half and had already gone 67 yards on the first drive of the third quarter.
They were getting into an offensive rhythm for the first time all afternoon. And then Ajayi fumbled the ball away.
Ajayi finished the game with 29 yards on eight carries; he also had a 5-yard catch.
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Things haven’t gone well for Ajayi so far in 2018. He’s been banged up, first with a foot injury, then a fracture in his back, and has just 184 yards rushing. What’s worse is he is averaging 11.25 carries per game. That’s probably way less than he wanted in a contract year.
On Sunday night, Ajayi was asked if it’s time for the Eagles to do some “soul searching.”
“That’s something that we’ve already been discussing,” he said. “Everyone just evaluating yourself. Who you want to be, what’s your identity and who this team is. Because when you win the Super Bowl, everyone is comparing us to last year with what we did in the Super Bowl. And this is a new team and it’s the 2018 Eagles. We’ve got to figure out what we’re doing this year and how we can get back to another Super Bowl. And we’re not doing that right now.”