In an article last week, we witnessed one of the three undefeated NFL teams, the Philadelphia Eagles (3-1, 1st in NFC East). This weekend, they Eagles lost a close game to the San Francisco 49ers (2-2, 3rd NFC West 26-21 at the new Levi Stadium in Santa Clara, California.
The pre-game odds in Las Vegas had the 49ers -5 with the O/U at 50.5 and in both cases they were very good with their projected odds as in most cases. The standout for the game and the 49ers was RB Frank Gore, who rushed for 119 yards on 24 carries and had one reception for 55 yards and a TD to help the 49ers in avoiding the 0-3 mark, and recording his first 100 yard game of the 2014 season. Their QB Colin Kaepernick passed for 218 yards; completing 17 of 30 passes for 2 touchdowns and was intercepted once and sacked four times. Their kicker Dawson had 4 FG’s with two being in excess of 45 yards.
The 49ers on Sunday stopped the high powered offense of the Eagles as they stopped RB McCoy, who had only 17 yards on 10 carries and moved back into the team’s defensive roots and with the help of RB Gore moved into the win column.
In this game the undefeated Eagles could not complete their second half magic that was instrumental in their first three wins. But they tried as QB Nick Foles in the late moments of the game took the Eagles down the field on 6 first downs in a lengthy drive, but that stalled as QB Foles threw two incomplete passes from the 1 yard line.
For the total game statistics the only thing close was the passing yardage of both teams. The 49ers had 20 first downs to the Eagles 11 and the 49erser had 76 total plays to the Eagles 56. The 49erser totaled 407 offensive yards (189 passing & 218 rushing) while the Eagles had 213 yards (191 passing and 22 rushing. The 49ers had 1 interception and their QB sacked 4 times while the Eagles had 2 interceptions and were sacked once.
The good things that took place for the Eagles was Sproles returned a punt for 82 yards and his career best, while Jenkins intercepted the 49ers QB and took in 53 yards for a TD, then Smith recovered a blocked punt and scored a TD off that recovery for the Eagles. For the game Eagles QB Foles was 21 of 43 for 195 yards while their scoring came with 7 points in the 1st quarter on a blocked punt return, 7 points in the 2nd quarter on an interception returned for a TD, and a punt return in the 2nd for a TD all in the first half and were held scoreless in the 2nd half in their 1st loss of the season.
If the Eagles QB had the same stats of 300 yards passing in this game that he had in the first two games, he would have joined Peyton Manning, Steve Young, Kurt Warner and Drew Brees as the only QB’s to open an NFL season with 4 consecutive 300 yard games passing.
The Eagles will play the St. Louis Rams 1-2 (4th NFC West) on Sunday, Oct.5th 2014, while the 49ers play the Kansas City Chiefs in Philadelphia and the Chiefs played the New England Patriots on Sept. 29th on Monday Night Football.
The public that bet on NFL football at the online sportsbook should check the results of that Monday night game between the Pats and the Chiefs as the information was not available at the time of this article which would affect both team statistics.