Pardon the Eagles if they’re not quite sure how to handle losing. They hadn’t done it since Week Two.
But as they absorbed a road loss to Seattle last night and now head to Southern California for a week of preparations before their next game with the Rams, they feel like their second loss of the season was their own fault.
“It’s definitely better when it’s a self-inflicted thing that you can correct,” veteran center Jason Kelce said, via Dave Zangaro of NBC Sports Philadelphia. “It’s not like, in my opinion, still have to go watch the tape, but it wasn’t like we were by far the worst team out there. I think we were the more undisciplined team today. And that ended up culminating in putting us in a situation where we couldn’t win the game.
“I think that it’s encouraging that as long as we get that fixed, we can beat a team like this and we should beat a team like this. It’s encouraging, but at the end of the day, it’s still frustrating.”
They are still tied for the best record in the NFC with the Vikings, but there were some issues exposed that they’re going to need to work on.
Quarterback Carson Wentz’s fumble through the end zone (which effectively ended things early in the third quarter) was the first one, but far from the only one. They were more conservative than normal in their play-calling (not going for a fourth-and-2 before halftime was out of character), and committed some poorly timed penalties.
At least they can sequester themselves somewhere warm while they work on the mistakes.
“We’ll be fine,” Wentz said. “The guys in this locker room, we’re all mature, we’ll all respond just fine. We’re all frustrated about this one, but we’re not too worried. I think we’ll be just fine.”
We’ll find out this week if that’s true.