Eagles' d-coordinator Davis on hot seat

AFTER WATCHING his defense get smoked again Saturday night in a game the Eagles had to win to keep their playoff hopes alive, Bill Davis wasn't in the mood to answer another round of questions about his job security.

"That's for other men to decide that," he said. "What I think about is how I'm going to get this group of men to play next week. That's all I've done every day and that's all I'll do.

"I've been down this road (before) where you have seasons that are disappointing and everybody is looking for the blame game. As a team, we have to make sure that we hang together and take all the accountability that we need."

Eagles fans don't give a damn about next week. Their team has missed the playoffs for the second straight season and they want somebody to pay for that.

Davis, whose defense has given up 216 points in the last six games, including 38 Saturday to a 7-7 Redskins team quarterbacked by Kirk Cousins, will do nicely.

Every time Chip Kelly has been asked about Davis in recent weeks, he has said he still believes in him. But that and $5 will get you a venti caramel macchiato at Starbucks.

Andy Reid said the same thing about his defensive coordinator, Sean McDermott, five years ago right up until the moment he announced he had fired him.

Davis, 50, knows the drill. He has worked for 10 different teams in his 23 years as an NFL assistant. He took every one of those jobs knowing that there was a pretty good chance he was going to get fired at some point.

His defense clearly has not played well this season. The Eagles have taken a nose dive in almost every pertinent statistical category. And as you may recall, they weren't exactly the Steel Curtain last year.

They have given up more points and more yards and more first downs and more touchdown passes and more rushing yards and pretty much more of everything than they did in 2014.

One can make a pretty good argument that the reason the Eagles are stinking up the joint on defense is because they just don't have enough talent.

I happen to agree with that argument to a large degree. But I'm guessing that Kelly, who also happens to be the team's general manager as well as the head coach, doesn't.

Kelly is the guy who gave the thumbs up to drafting Marcus Smith in 2014. He's the one who traded for Kiko Alonso and gave Byron Maxwell a $10 million a year contract. He's the one who traded Brandon Boykin.

But Kelly isn't going to fire himself and he's certainly not going to admit he's in over his head as general manager.

He's going to need a scapegoat for this disaster of a season. Despite the votes of confidence from Kelly, there's a very good chance that will be Davis.

In recent weeks, Davis' defense hasn't been able to tackle, stop the run, cover receivers, get pressure on the quarterback, get off the field on third down, force turnovers, and hold teams to field goals in the red zone.

"We've made all kinds of adjustments," Davis said when someone wondered whether he's been fiddling up in the coaches' booth while NovaCare burned. "Every week seems to be a little bit different of a flavor, and we're moving a lot of things around."

He tried moving things around Saturday to neutralize Redskins receivers DeSean Jackson, Pierre Garcon and Jamison Crowder. Did a decent job on them. Unfortunately, his inside linebackers and safeties got torched by tight end Jordan Reed (nine catches, 129 yards, two TDs) and running backs Pierre Thomas (seven catches, 67 yards) and Chris Thompson (a 12-yard TD catch).

"We lost some one-on-ones," Davis said. "I moved some of my calls from helping outside (on the wide receivers) to helping inside (on the tight ends and backs) later. You never know where the issues will show themselves during the course of the game. And when they show, you have to adjust. We adjusted, but it wasn't enough."

Said outside linebacker Connor Barwin: "They beat us on some matchups. They played matchup football and their guys won those matchups.

"I think there was one drive when they just kind of moved the ball all the way down the field. That was the one really disappointing drive that I thought they had on us."

He is referring to an 11-play, 54-yard touchdown drive in the third quarter that gave the Redskins a 23-10 lead. They converted a third-and-10, a third-and-14 and a third-and-six on the drive.

Since surprising rookie Jordan Hicks was lost for the season in Week 9 with a torn pectoral tendon, Davis has gotten next to nothing from his inside linebackers.

The position was supposed to be one of the unit's strengths. But 31-year-old DeMeco Ryans is running on empty, Alonso has been a shell of the player he was two years ago when he was the league's defensive rookie of the year with Buffalo, and Mychal Kendricks, who played at a Pro Bowl-caliber level last season, hasn't played worth a damn.

"They've fought through some injuries and it just hasn't been right all year," Davis said.

After the game, safety Malcolm Jenkins, who earlier this season had questioned the lack of accountability on the team, sort of defended Davis and sort of didn't. You be the judge:

"I don't think anybody in this organization can look at themselves and feel like they've done really well this year," he said when asked about Davis' role in the defense's struggles.

"I know, myself, there are things I could have done to further help this team. Obviously, when you're the d-coordinator, you get a lot of the attention and blame per se. But it's not just Billy. It's everybody. It's guys not making plays that they should be making. And that makes him look bad."

Asked whether it weighed on him that the players' poor performance might cost Davis his job, Jenkins said: "All of our jobs are on the line, man. It's a production business. (If) you don't produce, basically they'll find somebody else to put in there.

"I don't think anybody is worried about anybody else's job. They're worried about their own job.''

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