Anatomy of a Loss: Philadelphia and Detroit

The Eagles and Lions suffered brutal losses on Sunday at the hands of Washington and Chicago, respectively. The Lions, with a healthy Matthew Stafford, had been receiving some buzz as a playoff sleeper going into the year by the more analytical types in the football universe. That is not to say that the Lions are expected to be world-beaters this season; but taking care of the Bears in week one was supposed to be the first step in realizing these playoff aspirations and the market indicated such; they were giving three points in their game Sunday afternoon. The Eagles, despite their rash of injuries in camp along the offensive line, were expected to easily dispatch this Washington squad as they looked to keep pace with the Cowboys in the NFC East. It looked like they were going to do such, racing out to a 17-0 lead in the early going. After that point, however, Philadelphia seemingly lost its ability to effectively move the ball against a young Washington defense. I wanted to look at these two losses, figure out why they happened, and what we should think moving forward for these two playoff hopefuls.

I will start with Eagles. The Eagles took their commanding three score lead with 6:54 left in the second quarter. According to the win probability model provided by the NFL data package nflfastR, which takes into account the pregame spread, the Eagles had about a 93 percent chance of closing the game out with a win. From there, it got ugly for Carson Wentz and co.

The collapse column groups the offensive plays for each team before and after point at which the Eagles scored to bring their lead to 17. Throughout the game, the Eagles were extremely aggressive throwing the ball, possibly due to the absence of Miles Sanders. As they built their lead, they threw the ball on 71.4 percent of their offensive plays and the offense was humming to the tune of a 6.07 yards per play and a 0.384 EPA per play, both elite figures. Washington, unsurprisingly, was having trouble on offense. While the 4.06 yards per play mark is certainly less than impressive, the EPA per play mark of -0.345 in the early going was disastrous. After Goedert's touchdown in the second quarter, the Eagles did not just regress, they looked like a totally different team. They were only able to muster a paltry 2.38 yards per play and gave back more than three quarters of a point per play despite becoming more aggressive throwing the ball. Wentz threw two picks and took 8 hits as the Washington defensive front had its way with the hurting Philadelphia offensive line. It is difficult to give Washington much credit here: it was still not able to move the ball effectively after the Goedert touchdown, but with the Wentz interceptions giving them some favorable field position they were able to capitalize on the Eagles ineptitude.  One issue that was consistent throughout the game for Philadelphia was getting to manageable third downs. 

On either side of the collapse the Eagles were, on average, facing a shade over 10 yards to go per third down play. At that point, it is asking a lot for the offense to continue to move the chains. The big difference in EPA before and after the infamous point in the second quarter was the Jalen Reagor 55 yard catch off of play-action. That play itself was worth almost six points (5.88 EPA) or a touchdown on the expected scoreboard ledger. With such a small sample of plays, if you were to pull that out of the sample or replace it with an average third down play, the picture is much more grim. The best way to fix these third down woes is to avoid third and long situations all together. Wentz was not able to sequence completions in the short and intermediate areas of the field throughout the game, thus Philadelphia's backs were up against the wall throughout the afternoon. 

You want to give some credit to Washington for fighting back in this game, but this loss falls squarely on the shoulders of the Eagles offense. Wentz was awful for a lot of the game. Posting a -0.758 EPA per play on those dreaded 40 plays is a recipe for disaster. By the end of the game, the Eagles had posted the worst offensive EPA figure in the entire league in week 1. While Washington has invested a ton of resources into its front seven, the back-end of their defense is still among the worst in the league. The fact that the Eagles had so much trouble exploiting this weakness is troubling. If you are an Eagles fan looking for a silver lining, I would say two things: first, we are talking about one game out of 16. The Cowboys lost this weekend too so they are not chasing a game after one week. Also the offensive line hopes to get healthier and develop some cohesion as the new faces are fully-integrated. 

However, Wentz looked bad and this is not a good Washington team. If the Eagles continue to struggle to protect Wentz, the Eagles will struggle to make the playoffs in a loaded NFC. It was odd that Doug Pederson continued to throw the ball so often with such a large lead, but with Sanders hopefully back in the fold for week 2, maybe he leans more on the run game to bleed out the clock with the lead in the future. I should note that their commanding lead happened early on in the game, so even if they did have more trust in the running game, you cannot expect to win a game while trying to churn clock for two and a half quarters. The Eagles have a big test next week when they take on the Rams, who looked good against the Cowboys on Sunday night and came away with a win despite some characteristically questionable fourth down decision making by Sean McVay (punting on fourth and 1 from the 50 with a small lead and kicking a field goal on the Dallas 15 with only two yards to go). If Philadelphia plays like they did on Sunday they will be 0-2, already on the outside looking in for the playoffs and the pressure, if it has not already, will be turned up to the nth degree for Doug Pederson, Carson Wentz, and the rest of the Eagles organization.  

Now, let's look at the debacle at Ford Field. The Lions went up 23-6 after a Matt Prater field goal with 3:19 left in the third quarter. The win probability for Detroit at that point was 97 percent. From there the Bears scored 21 unanswered points to put the game away. The difference in performance of each team before and after this point where the game seemed to be decided, similar to the Philadelphia game, was stark. 

The Lions were woeful after an excellent start to the game and Trubisky caught fire after putting up a typical performance through three quarters. The one sack after the 23-6 lead for Stafford does not look too bad without any context. When you add in the necessary context, however, this changes. Stafford took a sack with 5:39 left in the fourth quarter up 10 on a second and eight from the Chicago 33 yard line. Firmly in range to kick of field goal to make it two touchdown game even following an incomplete pass, the Lions were instead stuck at the Chicago 42 on third down where they presumably would have to punt, pinning the Bears deep into their own territory. Trubisky would be then required to lead two long drives for the Bears to be able to win the game. Matt Patricia had other plans. Stafford threw a five yard pass to DeAndre Swift to bring the Lions to the Bears 37. Patricia trotted out Matt Prater to attempt a 55 yard field goal. Since 2010, field goals within a yard of a 55 yard attempt have made successful on about 57.5 percent. Multiple 0.575 by 3 and you have 1.725 expected points on such an attempt. Add 1.725 to 10 and you get a 11.725 expected score differential after a 55 yard field goal attempt. There is not much of a functional difference between a 10 point margin and a 11.725 expected margin. In either case, Chicago would have to score two touchdowns to win the game. The downside is by missing the kick, you give Chicago a short field which makes it much easier to score two touchdowns in five minutes. Sure enough, Prater missed the field goal and Chicago scored touchdowns with 3:03 left and 2:00 left after Stafford threw an interception at Detroit's 42 yard line with 2:45 left. Detroit still could have won the game. The Lions got the ball back with a shade under two minutes left, drove the ball down the field, and DeAndre Swift dropped a pass in the end zone with 11 seconds left. Stafford did not do Patricia any favors down the stretch by taking a crucial sack and throwing a costly interception, but this field goal decision by Patricia was arguably the most costly decision of the day, given Detroit would not have been in such a precarious position to begin with. Patricia has been one of the worst decision-makers on fourth down during his tenure in Detroit: 

In this game alone he punted the ball on fourth and one from their own 34 yard line, kicked a field goal on fourth and three from Chicago's 26, and kicked a field goal in the aforementioned situation at the end of the game. Patricia needs to be successful to keep his job in Detroit this year and make a push for the playoffs. Decisions like these are counter-intuitive in reaching this goal. If Patricia keeps making these types of decisions in high leverage situations, the Lions may leave some more wins on the table and Patricia will be another victim of the vicious NFL coaching carousel.

All play-by-play data via nflfastR