Due to a brutal road trip the Philadelphia Eagles embark on, it’ll be at least one year and slightly more when they get to host a game at Lincoln Financial Field since their last home victory.
The enthusiasm from the Chip Kelly hiring has evaporated, and even from the more recent win over the Washington Redskins. A) The Redskins are a terrible on defense, no matter how good Robert Griffin III is or isn’t right now. Once the Eagles faced teams that are capable of outgunning them or making Michael Vick play like, well, you expect Vick to play, it’s clear to see that changing the offensive schemes and formations weren’t enough.
The Eagles last won a home game on September 30, 2012, beating the New York Giants 19-17, their last win before an 8-game losing streak. Their next home game will be on October 20, 2013, facing the Dallas Cowboys.
Teams have gone more than a year without winning at home, but that’s not the point. It’s a symbol and a stat worth paying attention to displaying how far the Eagles have fallen over the last three seasons, and how hard it is to bring back an NFL team on a winning path, even with what seemingly is a very talented group of players and a rookie head coach (in the pros at least) who knows what he’s doing on one side of the ball.
The Eagles, after losing to the Chargers and the Chiefs have to play three consecutive road games – in Denver, which seems like a loss before the game even started, before going to play the Giants in New York and then the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, two teams that at the moment are even worse off than the Eagles.
It’s hard to say what were the expectation were from Chip Kelly on his first season, but it was probably somewhere between the 4-12 year the Eagles had last season and what they usually achieved with Andy Reid, which is a playoff spot. If the Eagles come out battered, bruised and especially win-less from this road trip, the pessimistic prediction might not look too bad after all.