PHILADELPHIA — So the Eagles entered the day all of a half-game out of first place in the NFC East and would win again.
So what, you say?
With a somewhat dumbfounding 28-23 survival test victory over the Jacksonville Jaguars Sunday, the Eagles have won four straight games, which is always impressive in the National Parity League but certainly would be more so if those four Birds victims didn’t have a current cume score of 10-26 when it comes to wins and mostly losses.
Given yet another cushy NFL challenge on this day, then, the Birds did achieve something they can be proud of … something to shout over, tell their grandchildren about some day.
“Yes, kids, let me tell ya about the time we actually scored in the first quarter way back in ’24…”
Took until their eighth game and sixth win of the season, but the Eagles scored their first points in a first quarter. And yeah, they needed help to do so.
Coming off a stalled drive, the Eagles’ Braden Mann booted a nicely hanging punt toward Jacksonville practice squad grad Austin Trammel, who camped under it and apparently didn’t hear Sydney Brown’s pounding footsteps.
The 24-year-old from London, Ontario, still has a lot of pent-up energy from rehabbing the ACL he ruptured in January in the regular season finale against the Giants. Brown seemed to expend all of it on this punt coverage bull charge, and somehow timed it just right, colliding with Trammel right when the ball arrived.
The ensuing fumble was covered by the Eagles’ Kelee Ringo at the 20, and two plays later, Jalen Hurts lofted a high pass on a wheel route, giving Saquon Barkley time to turn the wrong way, then twist back the other and snatch the descending ball out of the air for a touchdown.
It wasn’t exactly bedlam at the Linc, if only because there was plenty of football yet to be played, and while the Eagles would prevail, there was plenty of reason after the game to wonder how good, bad or very different this Eagles team may be.
Barkley went on to have another rock-solid game — 27 jaunts for 159 yards, receiving and rushing touchdowns — though his botched fumble, which looked very much like a botched officials call, was returned for a Jacksonville touchdown that ignited a would-be Jaguars comeback.
And Hurts also had a number of good plays on the way to a winning day, in which he hit on 18 of 24 passes for 230 yards and two TD passes.
But when it came time for two-point conversions or tush-push fourth down rushes, nothing seemed to work there.
“We’ve done pretty good at those in the past,” gambling coach Nick Sirianni said. “In the moment I’m always looking to do what’s best for the football team. Today, it didn’t work. That’s the hat I have to wear, right?”
The pointy cap could have been form-fitted on this day, except his players kept getting great plays. There was Barkley on one run dodging a would-be tackler, twisting the other way to escape another, then doing what could only be called a backward hurdle to clear another tackler.
While that would seem to be the play of the year, it took only a couple of quarters before it was more or less surpassed by DeVonta Smith, whose double-toe-drag while snagging the ball with one hand in the back of the end zone should be a years-long Eagles video standard.
In the end, it boiled down to a game in which quarterback Trevor Lawrence and the Jaguars were allowed back in when they shouldn’t have been, with the Jags 13 yards away from a go-ahead score with 1:42 to play. When what looked like a possible game-winning pass floated down toward Jags running back D’Ernest Johnson, it went down as a heroism act by the unlikely linebacker Nakobe Dean, who put himself between Johnson and the ball and pulled in his first career interception.
“It’s a play I knew they had … a good route,” Dean said. “Saquon scored on it early in the game. … I got beat on it in training camp against Kenny Gainwell. So, I was kind of waiting on it.”
When he finally saw it, he knew what to do.
“Just having everybody come over there and congratulate me, it was good,” Dean added. “I wasn’t doing much in the game. I don’t know how many tackles I had, but other guys had big games.”
They did just that, the defense playing issue-free ball while the offense grew the score to 22-0 early in the third. And then … it started to slip away, perhaps because a second straight two-point conversion attempt failed, and Sirianni had already skipped several would-be points by trying the two-pointers and skipping field goal attempts in favor of failed fourth-down plays.
At first, it was an annoying subplot in what should have been an easy Eagles victory. By late in the fourth quarter it seemed like a curse.
“I felt like we left … you know, it should have been a 40-point game,” Eagles lineman Lane Johnson said. “It comes down to scoring points. There’s multiple times we could have had points and we didn’t execute.”
Not surprisingly, he didn’t blame his head coach’s decisions for the near-fatal fallback.
“Lack of focus, I think,” Johnson said. “When you get up on teams, complacency can naturally come up on you, and with the talent level of the players in this league, they will expose you.”
Lawrence and Company tried awfully hard to at least temporarily take their coach, Doug Pederson, off the hottest coaching seat in the NFL. They tried but they couldn’t do it … because they don’t have the talent to win much.
As for the Eagles, they’ve won four games in a row over four teams they should beat, two of them — Browns and the Jaguars— too close for comfort. You can’t help but wonder that if some normal decisions were consistently made — such as kicking 40-yard field goals instead of predictably going for a fourth-and-3 or so — how easily the Birds would be winning over so many underwhelming opponents.
There’s a lot of football left … nine games worth. It’ll be interesting to see how much the Eagles gamble when it comes to playing better teams the rest of the way.
Contact Rob Parent at rparent@delcotimes.com
Source: Berkshire mont
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