Fletcher Cox didn’t hold anything back in mid-August when he was asked about the Eagles' defensive line.
“We have to be the group that leads this team,” Cox said on Aug. 16.
Early in the season, everything was going according to plan.
The Eagles’ well-paid defensive line looked every bit as good as advertised. They were racking up sacks and the Eagles were racking up wins. By the time the bye week came around in Week 4, the Eagles were 3-0 and among the league leaders with 10 sacks.
It’s no surprise that as the sack numbers have dropped, the wins have dried up too (see story). In the Eagles' five wins, they have 18 sacks. In their six losses? Just eight.
“We gotta have fun. We gotta get back to having fun,” defensive end Brandon Graham said on Wednesday. “We’re so into, ‘We have to get sacks,’ that we strain too hard to where it don’t happen for us. Because we strain too hard, it’s not happening naturally. We’re not trusting our ability.”
The Eagles’ defensive line met as a unit on Wednesday morning before practice for a conversation started by position coach Chris Wilson and led by leaders like Graham, Cox and Connor Barwin.
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According to Graham, the conversation was based around the idea that as individuals, they need to stop pressing, stop playing with their own agenda and trying to spark a play.
“When we work together, that’s when we’re at our best,” Graham said.
“We tried to create plays on our own,” starting defensive tackle Bennie Logan said. “We just have to play within the scheme, let plays come to us. We started getting frustrated. Today at practice, we were relaxed and loose and getting back to the way we’ve been playing. We understand teams are not just going to let us get after them up front. We just have to chip at the rock the whole game, and eventually, it’s going to crack.”
Sure, sacks aren’t everything, but getting to the quarterback is important. After picking up 20 sacks in the first six games of the season, the Eagles have just six in their last five.
And guys on the line were starting to press.
“You feel the pressure,” Graham said. “You feel the pressure that you have to make a play to kind of spark it. But really, we just have to continue to do what we’ve been doing and eventually, things open up.”
Logan admitted facing Aaron Rodgers was frustrating on Monday night. The Eagles didn’t get a sack for the second time this season and Rodgers carved them up for 313 yards and two scores.
According to ProFootballFocus, Rodgers was pressured on just eight of 41 drop-backs and was blitzed just seven times. Rodgers was so effective because he was able to get the ball out quickly. And when he didn’t, he extended plays with his feet.
“We’ve just been so anxious to get after the quarterback and sack him and whatnot, it was getting us frustrated because we were trying to get back to where we were at earlier in the year,” Logan said. “Teams are really just locking us up or getting it out of the hand fast and making us chase the ball. We just have to relax and get back to the way we’ve been doing and just have fun.”
When asked about the defensive line on Tuesday, Doug Pederson declined to place blame on the players, instead opting to point out effort and the attention they’ve received.
But it’s not hard to see: The unit isn’t performing as well as it was expected to.
Is it still even the strength of the team?
“We still feel that way,” Barwin said. “We've got to collectively be better and be more focused down the stretch. And I think we will.”