Exciting (and familiar) finish, and the team I was rooting for won, but this was not a fun game to watch. I think it was way more bad offense than good defense.
Falcons had their shot against the Patriots and unlike the Eagles, they choked theirs away. They had their shot. Won't be back to that game again for a long time.
The only thing worse than the game was listening to the last three minutes on the radio going home on Sirius with the Philly announcers - god, they were horrible. I noticed Goodell looked like he would rather be Kavanagh getting grilled by the Senate than to be at that game. The good news is for anyone using this game to decide if they'll watch football at all this year due to the politics, rules changes, etc they've just freed up their Sundays for the next five months.
I made it to about halftime before I fell asleep. Woke up to hearing Atlanta struggled in the redzone again to end the game? What is wrong with Sarkisian? On their first redzone attempt how does Julio not even get one jump ball in the corner of the endzone? He's unguardable.
I thought it was just me then I saw people on Twitter talking about it too. They just flat out refuse to use Julio inside the 20. It’s very bizarre
Just heard on the radio that Matt Ryan is 1 for 20 on passes to Julio in the red zone. That is just unacceptable.
I watched most of the first half before I had to go to sleep. Boring game for the most part, I was surprised how silent the crowd in Philly was early in the game. Talent-wise Philly looks even better this year than last. The've added some big name, former stars to their team like Haloti Ngata & Mike Wallace. I already knew about Michael Bennett. Wow that's quality depth. Kinda like how te Jets added L.T. in 2010. Atlanta choked. Beautiful first drive moved the ball at will, couldn't punch it in then stupidly went for it on fourth down. Set the tone for the game I think.
I thought I heard that they scored 1 touchdown on 20 passes to him in the red zone, which is of course not the same thing, but either way it's a tremendous indictment of all three involved - Ryan, Jones, and the OC. Since the OC changed but the other two didn't, I really put it on Ryan and Jones, with Ryan taking more of the blame. After 10 years in the league he should be able and willing to put on his big boy pants and change the play call if necessary to get his team into the end zone, and it's pretty clear he can't do it. That's what makes him much more like Stafford or Rivers than like Brees or Rodgers - really really good, franchise QB for sure, but not quite elite. Edit: apparently it's only in the last 2 years, so can't blame Shanahan.
Eagles’ Winning NFL Kickoff Game Falls To 9-Year Viewership Low The final numbers of the first official game of the NFL’s new season are in and the league and NBC looked to have been drenched by more than the rain that delayed the Eagles and Atlanta Falcons match-up in Philadelphia last night. Snagging 19 million viewers on the Comcast-owned network, the late starting Eagles winning kickoff game fell 13% in broadcast audience from last year’s NFL opener with the New England Patriots and the victorious Kansas City Chiefs. That’s another year of straight double digit decline for the NFL and NBC. With last years opener holding the previous record, the 2018 battle in Philly is also the worst any kickoff game has done since 2009. In fast affiliates, the season opener drew a 6.6/27 among adults 18-49. A drop of 14% from the final demo numbers of the September 7, 2017 game. When you factor in rising streaming and digital viewership, last night’s audience for current Super Bowl champs the Eagles v. the Falcons drew 19.5 million. In a rare state of affairs, but maybe not unexpected due to the more than one hour late start of the game because of weather, the match-up peaked very early. About 21.7 million were watching in the 9:30 – 9:45 PM ET slot during the first quarter of what was then a pretty slow game. It was, of course, a pretty slow night on the non-NFL portion of primetime with CBS’ Big Brother(1.4/6) and ABC’s Match Game (0.6/3) up a tenth each from that respective last originals. The Disney-owned net’s Take Two (0.4/2) was unchanged from last week – not something the NFL gets to say from a year ago. https://deadline.com/2018/09/eagles-nfl-kickoff-game-ratings-down-falcons-nbc-1202459228/
And in the 11:30 - 11:45 PM ET segment there were 273 viewers nationwide. Even Roger Goodell, the 44 million dollar man, had gone to sleep. Two of those viewing in that time slot could not pry themselves away because they were so intrigued by NBC's "Green Zone" technology. Four viewers stated they turned off the broadcast early on because of disappointment that "Color Blast" uniforms had been discontinued.
