The Eagles improved to 6-2 after a dominant 38-20 win over the New York Giants on Sunday. Jalen Hurts had another efficient performance, passing for 179 yards and four touchdowns — with just five incompletions. The Birds’ running game took a big step forward, recording 276 yards on the ground.
As the Eagles head into the bye week, here are some of the latest odds for yearly awards at two of the biggest sportsbooks …
NFC East odds update
Coming off their win over New York, the Eagles are still the favorites to win the NFC East. The Giants’ and the Dallas Cowboys’ odds to win the division have decreased following losses. Meanwhile, the Washington Commanders prepare to face the Kansas City Chiefs on Monday night.
At both sportsbooks, the Eagles’ odds have slightly changed. However, at FanDuel, they still remain behind the Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions as the front-runners to win the conference. At DraftKings, they’re also behind the Los Angeles Rams.
Eagles wide receiver Jahan Dotson catches a touchdown pass over New York Giants cornerback Korie Black.
Super Bowl odds
After Week 8, FanDuel still has the Eagles listed as one of the top five favorites to win the Super Bowl, trailing the Buffalo Bills and others, like the favored Chiefs. But at DraftKings, the Birds remain outside the top five, following the Rams and the Indianapolis Colts.
Jalen Hurts’ MVP odds have slightly improved after his performances the last two weeks. Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes continue to battle for the top two spots at both sportsbooks.
Saquon Barkley’s odds for offensive player of the year continue to fall despite a successful Week 8 performance that saw the running back eclipse 100 yards for the first time this season.
MINNEAPOLIS — The Minnesota Vikings placed quarterback Carson Wentz on injured reserve on Monday after he gutted out a shoulder injury during the last 2½ games of his five-game fill-in for J.J. McCarthy.
The former Eagles quarterback will have season-ending surgery on his left, nonthrowing shoulder, according to a person with knowledge of the plans who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the Vikings had not yet announced those details.
McCarthy, who suffered a high sprain of his right ankle during the second game of the season, was already on track to return to action this week when the struggling Vikings (3-4) play at division rival Detroit.
Wentz, who signed with the team he grew up rooting for in neighboring North Dakota the week before the regular season began, went from veteran backup to starter after McCarthy went down. The Vikings went 2-3 with Wentz, including a 37-10 blowout by the Los Angeles Chargers on Thursday. He was first hurt in the first half on Oct. 5 in London against the Cleveland Browns.
Wentz was under heavy pressure that night, with starting tackles Christian Darrisaw and Brian O’Neill and original starting center Ryan Kelly all sidelined by injury, and he took several hard hits that had him wincing. Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell said he was told by the medical staff that Wentz wasn’t risking further damage by staying in the game, so he decided not to expose undrafted rookie backup Max Brosmer to the pass rush behind a patchwork offensive line and kept Wentz in until the final drive.
The Eagles beat the Wentz-led Vikings 28-22 on Oct. 19. He completed 26 of 42 passes for 313 yards and two interceptions against his former team.
Wentz, who was the second pick in the 2016 NFL draft by the Eagles, extended his league record by making Minnesota the sixth team he has made at least one start for over the last six seasons.
The Vikings used the open roster spot to claim former Green Bay Packers tight end Ben Sims off waivers. Tight end Josh Oliver was forced out of the last game with a foot injury.
Bye weeks have come in all shapes and sizes during Nick Sirianni’s five seasons leading the Eagles.
In 2021, the Eagles waited until December and Week 14 for their week off. In 2022, the bye came in Week 7. In 2023, it was Week 10. And in 2024, the Eagles had the first bye of the season in Week 5 on the heels of their long travel to Brazil for Week 1.
Is Week 9, basically the midway point of a 17-game regular season, the perfect time?
“I don’t think you can ever really say, ‘Hey, this is the perfect time for a bye,’” Sirianni said Monday, a day after his Eagles beat the New York Giants, 38-20, to hit the bye week with a 6-2 record. “Last year, in 2024, Week 4 was our perfect time for the bye. Our mindset will be, this year, this is the perfect time for a bye. And when we play a Friday afternoon game coming up [Nov. 28 vs. Chicago], that will be the perfect time for a Friday afternoon game.
“You handle every situation and control what you can control.”
The constant through four bye weeks under Sirianni has been winning after the lull. The Eagles are 4-0 after the bye during Sirianni’s tenure. Last week in Minnesota, they improved to 10-3 over the last five seasons in games that come at least 10 days after their previous contests (including playoff games).
Extending that 4-0 streak and improving upon that 10-3 extended rest record will be a difficult task for the Eagles, who come off the bye for a Week 10 Monday night game at Green Bay, which leads the NFC with a .786 winning percentage. After that is a home game on a shorter week against the 5-2 Detroit Lions.
The bye comes just two weeks after the Eagles had a productive mini-bye following their Week 6 loss to the Giants. It was a second consecutive defeat and one that dropped the Eagles to 4-2. But the Eagles have emerged from that week with consecutive victories and won a lopsided affair Sunday. Is the state of the union different now compared to how Sirianni felt two Fridays ago? If it is, Sirianni wouldn’t say so.
“We don’t live week-to-week with results,” he said. “Obviously, we’re paid to win football games and find ways to get better, but we don’t live week-to-week. You work like crazy to get better, you work like crazy to win each football game, but then win, lose, or draw, you’re on to the next and you’re doing the same thing all over again.”
The message for the coaching staff this week, Sirianni said, is to be “completely locked in and focused on finding ways to get better, identifying issues, identifying strengths, and this is a really important week.
“We’ve benefited from this week in the past, whether that be going into the playoffs or whether it’s in the regular season,” he said. “It’s that same motivation and that same hunger to do everything that we can do to help improve the football team.”
For the players, the message is to get some rest, heal up, but remain mentally focused on what’s ahead.
“This bye week sets you up for some things for the rest of the season,” Sirianni said.
It certainly did last year, when the Eagles hit the bye with a 2-2 record, made some tweaks, and won 10 consecutive games after the break.
Maybe the bye week is coming at a bad time. Who wouldn’t want to keep it rolling after the offense put together arguably its best four-quarter performance under new coordinator Kevin Patullo?
The Eagles put together a complete effort Sunday and finally found success running the football and passing it during the same game. They schemed up the pin-and-pull blocking game and showed their under-center versatility.
It has been a bumpy first eight games for Patullo after taking the reins from Kellen Moore. But Sunday — which followed a strong showing with the aerial attack last week — showed the Eagles might be on a better path.
Coach Nick Sirianni believes offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo is getting better each week.
“I think he’s done a good job of continuing to get better, just like our players,” Sirianni said of Patullo. “Every team is a new team, so there’s a growth period whether there’s a first-time play caller or not. There’s a growth period within each year for the players, for the coaches, everything. That’s what the first weeks of the season are for, is to find ways to win, find ways to get better, and really be in that continual growth mindset all the way through so you’re playing your best football in November, December, January hopefully.”
Trade deadline looming
The trade deadline will have passed the next time the Eagles take the field for a practice. The deadline is Nov. 4 at 4 p.m., and the Eagles aren’t due back at the NovaCare Complex until after that.
It could be an active deadline period for the Eagles, who have a few positions of need to address. Does not having a game to prepare for ahead of the deadline make life easier for Sirianni when it comes to working closely with Howie Roseman on improvements? The coach said it’s no different.
“We find time to do the things that are necessary to help the team win, help the team get better,” Sirianni said.
After an off-day on Sunday, the Flyers hit the ice Monday for practice in Voorhees, and there was a big piece missing.
Defenseman Travis Sanheim did not skate, and when asked if it was a maintenance day, coach Rick Tocchet said, “Kind of, yeah.”
“Just dealing with a little tweak here and there,” he added. “It’s better [for] us to just keep him off the ice. He’s played a lot of minutes.”
In his ninth NHL season, Sanheim ranks second among all NHL skaters in ice time, averaging 26 minutes, 28 seconds. He only trails Quinn Hughes of the Vancouver Canucks.
The blueliner, who does not skate on the power play, does play against the opposition’s top line and kills penalties.
“Just whatever’s asked of me, whenever they need me to go out there,” Sanheim said on Oct. 19. “I’ve got the lungs to do it. I recover pretty good. So just whatever they kind of ask [of me].”
Flyers defenseman Travis Sanheim, who ranks second in the NHL in ice time, has one goal and four points this season.
Ristolainen update
Rasmus Ristolainen is inching closer to a return.
“In Risto’s case, everything’s coming along nicely,” Flyers general manager Danny Brière said on Monday of the defenseman, who has been skating on his own. “Pretty soon, we’re hoping he starts practicing with the team.
“I don’t know how far away that is, but he’s progressing well, and everything’s going well. We’re hoping next month, in about a four-to-six-week range, hopefully he’s back with the team.”
Ristolainen has not played this season after undergoing surgery on a right triceps tendon rupture on March 26. In 2024, Ristolainen underwent two surgeries, including a repair to a ruptured triceps tendon. According to Brière in April 2025, the injury was similar, although he wouldn’t confirm if he tore the tendon again.
Before the start of training camp, the GM announced Ristolainen was expected to miss the first six to eight weeks of the season. It sounds like he is on track.
The Finnish defenseman played in 63 games last season, with four goals, 15 points, and the first positive plus-minus of his career (plus-3) while averaging more than 20 minutes. One of the Flyers’ top blueliners, Ristolainen, who also played on the power play this season, last played on March 11.
Bonk update
It’s been weeks since prospect Oliver Bonk has been spotted on the ice. The 20-year-old, who just turned pro, is dealing with an upper-body injury that kept him from participating in the rookie series against the New York Rangers in early September and training camp.
Flyers defenseman Oliver Bonk will make his professional hockey debut this season.
“Things are not moving … as quickly as we expected,” Brière said on Sept. 16, adding that he underwent medical imaging that morning despite skating with the rookies in a noncontact jersey.
Unlike Ristolainen, his timeline is still to be determined. But the hope is for the highly touted blueliner to get back to action soon.
“As far as Oliver, we didn’t know how serious it was at first. We’ve kept him out of rookie camp, and it lingered. We kept him out of main camp, thinking that it would get better, and it’s been a slow process with his upper-body injury,” Brière said on Monday.
“But it’s going well now. We’re just hoping that there’s no setbacks. We’re trying to give him the time and proper space between skates for him to feel good enough to come back and play. It’s a little tougher on a timeline with him. We’re kind of waiting on the progression and making sure there’s no setback on him.”
The Eagles avenged their Week 6 loss to the New York Giants with a dominant 38-20 win at Lincoln Financial Field. However, much of the dialogue following the game still focused on the drama surrounding star receiver A.J. Brown, who didn’t even play on Sunday. There was also talk about Jalen Hurts’ performance — and his return to the MVP conversation — and the questionable officiating in the Birds’ Week 8 win.
Here’s a look at what they’re saying about the Eagles as they enter the bye week with a 6-2 record …
A.J. Brown trade talk
Brown sat out of Sunday’s game due to a hamstring injury. Despite his absence, the Eagles offense dominated, finishing the game with a season-high 427 total yards. DeVonta Smith remained the centerpiece of the Birds’ passing game, recording six receptions (on nine targets) for 84 yards.
Everything came together for the Eagles, including the team’s previously spotty running game. The Birds recorded 276 yards on the ground, with Saquon Barkley eclipsing 100 rushing yards for the first time this season.
With all the drama surrounding Brown’s latest social media posts and the team’s success without him on the field, there’s already even more discussion centered on whether the team should trade the receiver.
“The only thing that gets or punctures momentum and a loaded roster is drama,” Colin Cowherd said on The Colin Cowherd Podcast. “And I’m watching them today and I’m like oh [expletive]. They almost have 300 yards rushing. Some of this is tied to A.J. Brown’s absence. They’re just free to do what they want to do. … I just don’t think this team needs A.J. Brown.”
“They’re not going to trade A.J. Brown,” Schefter said on ESPN’s Get Up. “Here’s the deal. They’re trying to repeat as a Super Bowl champion. They’re in the business of acquiring talent, not giving it away. And whatever they can get back for A.J. Brown, they can get back in February or March before the draft. They’re going to want him here to help the stretch run after the big win here, he’s not going to get traded.”
But he does believe the team will eventually make some moves moving forward.
“The Eagles don’t play again until two weeks from today in Green Bay,” Schefter said. “… If the Eagles don’t make a move to better their roster between now and then, I’d be surprised. That’s what they do. They’re always active. They’re always aggressive and they’re going to be that way again. I’ll be surprised if in the next two weeks, the Eagles haven’t pulled off at least one trade.”
Eagles wide receiver A.J. Brown, who had a big game in Week 7 against the Vikings, didn’t play in Sunday’s game against the Giants due to a hamstring injury.
Hall of Fame advice for Brown
Former New York Jets coach Rex Ryan asked Hall of Fame quarterback Peyton Manning about the Brown situation on ESPN’s Sunday NFL Countdown. Manning did his best to offer advice to the team.
“I hate what’s going on there in Philly, it’s not fun to watch,” Manning said. “People always ask, ‘Hey, why did Marvin Harrison never complain about not getting the ball?’ Because I always threw him the ball.
“I hated the fact that A.J. Brown doesn’t seem happy and they’re winning football games. I would tell A.J. the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. There’s certain teams that if he wanted to go play for right now, I can promise you he would not be happy there. The Eagles are 5-2, they won the Super Bowl last year, there’s big games for him coming. … He’s not going to have 10 catches for 160 every single week, but if he just stays in there, I can promise you good things are coming.”
Peyton Manning knows A.J. Brown and the Eagles will get on the same page 🦅
"People always asked me 'Hey, how come Marvin Harrison never complained about not getting the ball? Because I always threw him the ball!" pic.twitter.com/C2iwNDCrhs
There were a few questionable calls in Sunday’s game, including a potential Tush Push fumble. Hurts was stripped of the ball while running the Eagles’ signature sneak play, but the officials ruled that the quarterback’s forward progress had been stopped. The play couldn’t be reviewed and the Eagles kept the ball. Here’s a look at what happened.
Referees ruled that Jalen Hurts' forward progress was stopped before Kayvon Thibodeaux took the ball away from him on the tush push pic.twitter.com/rW4Mx3MNv5
The Eagles scored two plays later. Former Eagles defensive end Chris Long discussed the ruling on the Green Light podcast.
“I thought the Giants got robbed on the Tush Push,” Long said. “Certainly, the game plays out a little bit differently in sequence if that changes. But, the whistle was the whistle. And that’s the problem. I see so many Tush Pushes where the forward progress is three, four, five seconds. I understand the case that Giants fans would make that Thibodeaux pulled that ball out. And I think he did. I think he did. Didn’t go their way.”
Hurts still found plenty of success through the air — completing 15 of 20 passes for 179 yards and four touchdowns — despite Brown being sidelined. The quarterback now has 15 passing touchdowns, five rushing touchdowns, and just one interception through eight games.
Over his last two games, Hurts has thrown seven touchdown passes — and just nine incompletions. Numbers like those are enough for former Eagles linebacker Emmanuel Acho to put Hurts in the running for MVP.
“Jalen Hurts has to be in the MVP conversation,” Acho said on the Speakeasy talk show. “I’m watching the game today and I’m thinking to myself, wait a second. In the midst of all the wide receiver distractions — and sometimes disregard the distractions — in the midst of the absence of A.J. Brown, you go out there and you get four touchdowns vs. a New York Giants team that’s incredibly hungry.
“You ain’t got A.J. Brown. So, you go out there and you do it with [Smith], Jahan Dotson, and Dallas Goedert. You’re finally starting to get active. The week before you go out there and you get three touchdowns with no interceptions. Now, all of a sudden Jalen Hurts has 15 passing touchdowns — these are not Tush Push touchdowns, people, 15 passing touchdowns — and five rushing touchdowns to just one interception. These are MVP-type numbers.”
.@EmmanuelAcho says Jalen Hurts "HAS to be in the MVP conversation!"
FIFA began the process of selling another 1 million tickets for next year’s World Cup on Monday, with the opening of a new ticket draw marking the start of the tournament’s second phase of sales.
The World Cup will take place this summer in 16 cities across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, including in Philadelphia, where six matches will be played at Lincoln Financial Field.
This draw, which runs through 11 a.m. Friday, includes a domestic exclusivity time slot for residents of the three host countries. Fans from those countries, whose entries are selected out of this draw, will have the opportunity to buy single-match tickets for games taking place inside their home nation.
The phase is open to all fans, regardless of which country they live.
“We already have seen massive interest from around the world for this tournament, and especially from within the host countries as Canada, Mexico and the United States prepare to host the biggest FIFA World Cup yet,” said Heimo Schirgi, the tournament’s chief operating officer. “This second phase, with its host country domestic exclusivity time slot, will allow us to say ‘thank you’ to these local fans, while ensuring global opportunity as well.”
Those fans from the U.S, Canada and Mexico who enter the draw before it closes Friday have a chance to receive, through what FIFA says is a randomized process, a time slot during which they can buy tickets starting on Nov. 12. Those slots will be issued through Nov. 15. Fans who win those chances will receive word at least 48 hours before their time slot opens.
Residents of the three host countries — the U.S., Canada and Mexico, in that order — purchased more tickets than those from any other nation in the initial phase of ticketing. England, Germany, Brazil, Spain, Colombia, Argentina and France, in that order, rounded out the top 10.
Once the domestic exclusivity time slot ends, more fans will be eligible to obtain a purchasing slot starting on Nov. 17. Additional tickets will be made available in subsequent phases, FIFA said.
FIFA announced earlier this month that more than 1 million tickets have already been sold for next year’s World Cup, with people from 212 countries and territories having already purchased. So far, 28 of the 48 spots for teams in the field have been filled.
The start of ticket sales doesn’t take away from how there are unique questions for consumers heading into the tournament, particularly about how they’ll get visas, if necessary, to visit the U.S. as the country cracks down on immigration. An international friendly match between defending World Cup champion Argentina — featuring Lionel Messi — and Puerto Rico was moved from Chicago to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., because of lagging ticket sales that some believe were in response to the immigration crackdown.
Based on the listed stadium attendance figures, there are roughly 7.1 million seats to fill for the 104 matches for the tournament around 16 North American venues. It is unknown how many of those seats will be available for sale to the public.
Ticket data has shown that the lowest-priced seats — set at $60 — were available for at least 40 matches. Almost all seats for the vast majority of matches were set at a much higher price. The opening match for the U.S., to be played at Inglewood, Calif., had prices ranging from $560 to $2,735 when sales opened. On the resale site, at least one ticket for that opening U.S. match on June 12 was listed for more than $60,000 earlier this month.
Fans with the option to purchase could choose seats in one of four categories; Category 1 is what FIFA officials call the best seats, Category 4 is somewhere around the tops of stadiums. Ticket costs are expected to fluctuate as soccer’s biggest event utilizes dynamic pricing for the first time.
After decades of paranoia and conspiracy theories that cast the Birds as victims of perceived favoritism shown to such rivals as the Cowboys, Patriots, and Chiefs, consider what happened for the Eagles on Sunday against the Giants. Honestly, no fan base feels persecuted more than the Eagles’, whose owner, Jeffrey Lurie, is still bitter about the obvious defensive holding call by James Bradberry that cost them a Super Bowl win three years ago.
James Bradberry gets called for a holding penalty late in Eagles-Chiefs.
The NFL continues to allow the Eagles to run the Tush Push, but that play earned another strike against it when the owners meet next spring.
Assuming a team introduces another proposal to ban the controversial short-yardage play — which has been assailed as an injury risk, which is ridiculous, and has been assailed as a penalty magnet, which is legitimate — Sunday’s debacle will add fuel to whatever fire remains from last spring’s 22-10 vote, which was two ballots shy of a ban.
Facing fourth-and-1 at the Giants’ 11 early in the second quarter, Jalen Hurts and his line surged forward and Hurts peeled off slightly to the left. Floating on a sea of humanity, Hurts clearly never stopped moving toward the line to gain, and as he reached the ball forward, Giants linebacker Kayvon Thibodeaux stripped him of the ball and recovered it.
The play was not reviewable because forward progress is not a reviewable issue.
The larger issue here is that officials don’t seem to be able to consistently rule correctly on a number of areas, among them: whether the defense moves too early; whether the defense lines up in the neutral zone; whether the offensive line moves early; or whether the offense lines up in the neutral zone.
Sunday, they didn’t properly gauge forward progress, even with the runner in plain view.
The final was 38-20, but the call was enormous in the context of the game. Instead of losing the ball to a Giants team that had just completed a 52-yard touchdown drive, the Eagles retained possession and scored a touchdown two plays later to make it 14-7.
It was just the first seven-point swing the officials delivered to the home team.
Early in the fourth quarter, with New York facing fourth-and-11 and trailing by 18, Giants receiver Darius Slayton and Eagles cornerback Quinyon Mitchell engaged in routine hand-fighting during Slayton’s route. Slayton disengaged in a normal fashion, caught the pass, and romped for a 68-yard touchdown.
But no.
Slayton was called for offensive pass interference. Brutal call. In fact, a penalty probably should have been called on Mitchell.
Instead of cutting the lead to 11, the Giants had to punt.
The Eagles are tied for 11th in total penalties called, and they’re seventh in total penalty yards, but most of the calls are inarguable, and, objectively, they seem to be getting away with lots of shenanigans. This was true Sunday.
Yes, the Eagles won by 18, and they dominated all day, but they were gifted that 14-point swing. These two were the kinds of crucial calls that the Eagles and other Chiefs opponents lately have claimed gave unfair advantage to Kansas City; the kinds of calls the Patriots under Bill Belichick seemed to get all the time; and the kinds of calls America’s Team has gotten for 50 years in Dallas.
The Eagles are getting those calls now … right?
The Giants agreed, at least for Sunday. Said Thibodeaux:
“They said they called the forward progress before he reached the ball out. Sounds like some [B.S.] to me.”
Me too.
Eagles tight end Dallas Goedert scoring a fourth-quarter touchdown against the Giants.
Seeing red with Goedert
Under Nick Sirianni, the Eagles have never finished outside the top 10 in red-zone efficiency. But with the combination of Sirianni and offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo, who had served as Sirianni’s passing-game coordinator the last four years, the Birds have never been better.
The Eagles are 6-2 in large part because they’ve converted 17 of their 20 trips inside the opponents’ 20-yard line into touchdowns. That’s 85%, which is about 11 percentage points better than the Ravens’ rate last season, which is the best conversion rate by any team over an entire season since Sirianni arrived.
Why are they so efficient?
Because the Eagles have a spectacular offensive line; a strong, fast quarterback; a lethal play in the Tush Push; a superstar running back; two star receivers; and, for my money, the most important red-zone weapon: an elite tight end.
Also: superb play-calling. Example:
On second-and-8 from the Giants’ 17-yard line, Patullo called a run-pass option. Hurts kept it. At the same time, tight end Dallas Goedert swung from the left side of the line to the right, broke upfield, and was wide-open for a touchdown.
So many moving parts worked in perfect synchronization. It was the Eagles’ prettiest play of the season.
“Ultimately, Kevin has to call the plays that he feels give us the best chance to win there,” Sirianni said after the Eagles went 3-for-3 in the red zone on Sunday. “I think we’ve done a good job of being efficient down there, though. … We’ve kept the ball moving forward. Jalen’s played really good football down there, and Dallas has obviously been really good down there.”
Goedert had two touchdown catches in Sunday’s win over the Giants. His seven TD catches are first among tight ends and already are a career high.
“They’ve been letting me get the ball and use my big body,” Goedert said. “We can score in a lot of different ways.”
He certainly can. His 35 touchdowncatches (including playoffs) in about 7½ seasons as an Eagle rank second among franchise tight ends behind Zach Ertz, who caught 40 (including playoffs) in about 8½ seasons.
“He’s a hell of a player,“ Hurts said. ”He’s a big-time target and in a sense, he’s due. He’s due. He does a lot of dirty work in this offense.”
It might be tough to call Goedert’s number with Hurts, running back Saquon Barkley, and receivers A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith, but the Eagles are winning because Goedert is finding the end zone more than anyone else under Patullo.
“KP has a really good feel in the red zone,” said Hurts.
So does DG.
Mixed emotionals
After being embarrassed by owner Woody Johnson, who said, “If we can just complete a pass, it would look good” after seven weeks of bad quarterback play, Jets quarterback Justin Fields played well Sunday in a comeback win over the Bengals.
Fields had been benched at halftime the week before in favor of Tyrod Taylor, but Taylor’s bruised knee sidelined him Sunday and gave Fields another chance. Fields played well enough to win: 21-for-32, 244 yards, one touchdown. Afterward, during an emotional press availability, he admitted that the pressures of his turbulent career, culminating in Johnson’s criticisms, broke him down.
“This week, I found myself in my closet, crying on the ground, laying down,” Fields said.
As you might assume, Johnson, formerly Donald Trump’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, is not a pleasant bloke. In an annual survey conducted by the players’ association, his 2024 team gave his club the league’s only overall “F,” and his franchise has been a punch line for years.
However, if Johnson’s cruel, candid, but ultimately accurate assessment of the quarterback play worked, well …
Coach Shane Steichen’s Colts are 7-1.
Extra points
Shane Steichen, in his third year in Indianapolis, continued his romp to Coach of the Year honors when his Colts beat the Titans and moved to 7-1. Since becoming the Eagles’ OC in 2021, Steichen’s teams have been in the top 10 in rushing, with the Eagles finishing No. 1 in 2021. This year, behind league-leading running back Jonathan Taylor, the Colts rank sixth. … Right behind Steichen in the running for COY: Mike Vrabel, whose Patriots reached 6-2 with a win over the Browns. Second-year quarterback Drake Maye leads the NFL with a 118.7 passer rating. … In that game, Browns defensive lineman Myles Garrett recorded five sacks, bringing him to 10 for the season, tied for the league lead. … Aaron Rodgers failed to join Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Brett Favre, and Drew Brees as quarterbacks who have beaten all 32 teams when his Steelers lost to the Packers, the team that drafted him. … The Cowboys, with their No. 2-ranked offense and second-to-last defense, lost in Denver and fell to 3-4-1. That means the Eagles are the only team in the NFC East with a winning record — remarkable, since the division was considered one of the best before the season began.
Guess who’s going back, back again. Jett Luchanko is returning to juniors.
The Flyers announced Monday that the center has been returned to Guelph of the Ontario Hockey League after he skated in four of the Flyers’ first eight games. According to a team source, there has been no decision yet on who will be recalled from the Lehigh Valley Phantoms to take Luchanko’s spot on the roster.
The team could have played Luchanko in as many as nine games before triggering his NHL contract.
“Very simple, we want him to play high minutes,” Flyers general manager Danny Brière said. “We liked what we’ve seen. He could have stayed here; he showed that he can play. But we want more than that for him in the long run.
“And we felt at this point it was time for him to start playing high minutes and more of an offensive role, get back to playing power play, killing penalties, facing the top opposition on the other team, on a nightly basis.”
Transaction: We have returned forward Jett Luchanko to his junior team, @Storm_City (OHL).
Luchanko averaged 8 minutes, 58 seconds of ice time with the Flyers, registering one shot on goal and a plus-minus of minus-3. Last season, also in four games, he tallied three shots on goal across an average of 14:03 with the same plus-minus.
The only difference is that last season, under former coach John Tortorella, Luchanko was playing higher up the lineup. Under new coach Rick Tocchet, Luchanko had been slotted in on the fourth line, often between Garnet Hathaway and Nikita Grebenkin.
“He’s going to play in the NHL, there’s no doubt about that. Now, how high does he get? That’s really up to him, but it’s in there,” Brière said. “The speed alone is going to scare a lot of teams eventually — when he gets more comfortable, when he gets more assertive out there. The speed alone is probably his biggest asset. … It took me a while to feel comfortable enough to make those plays, so I know exactly what he’s going through. It takes time.
“From our end, we need patience; we need to give him time to find that comfort, and on his end, his job is just to find a way to break through.”
Luchanko struggled to find his footing this season despite his high hockey IQ and passing ability. He missed development camp because of a groin injury and was held out of rookie camp for precautionary reasons.
He also continued to grapple with the Flyers’ push to see the 19-year-old shoot more; he also had only threeshots on goal in five preseason games. As an NHL scout told The Inquirer in early October, Luchanko, who is listed at 5-foot-11, 190 pounds, doesn’t look NHL strong yet and needs to play a harder, more confident game.
“I wouldn’t say shooting’s his thing,” Riley Armstrong, the Flyers’ director of player development, told The Inquirer in April. “I think that’s one thing that we’re working on with him. He’s always been kind of that pass-first guy. … And a lot of it is confidence, having confidence that you can beat a goalie.”
Added Brière: “It’s a comfort thing. He just needs to feel comfortable. I know how you feel as an 18- or 19-year-old. You’re coming in, you’re trying to please everybody around you. You’re on the ice with guys you’ve been watching on TV. You have a Travis Konecny beside you, obviously, you’re going to force a pass there. It’s human nature. That’s just how it is.
“It takes time, and hopefully he’s going to get out of that pretty soon. And we’ve seen him play in juniors. He can shoot the puck. He’s got a good shot. It’s just the confidence that he needs to do it here now.”
Drafted 13th overall in 2024, Luchanko tallied 21 goals and 56 points in 46 OHL games last season with Guelph. After his season ended with the Storm, he had a 16-game stint with the Phantoms in the American Hockey League, which included seven playoff games. He racked up nine assists in the AHL, including two in the first-round series clincher against Wilkes-Barre/Scranton.
While there was a thought to send him to the AHL on a conditioning stint, it meant he would have had to sit for some time to be eligible. But the Flyers were happy with his progression with the Phantoms and at training camp as well.
“We saw a big progression last season when he came in to play in Lehigh — he was pretty impressive. He played really well,” Brière said. “He was arguably our best player down the stretch and into the playoffs. So that was really encouraging to see.
“He was able to put up points as well, but that was the product of playing heavy minutes in junior to feeling comfortable on the ice … and that takes time.”
Because of the NHL-CHL agreement, which prevents CHL players under 20 years old from going to the AHL, he could only be returned to the Storm. That rule will change next season when each team will be granted one exemption.
“Well, it [stinks] because he’s in that mushy [middle]. … There’s certain things that, [to be fixed], he just has to go play a lot,” Tocchet said. “You can’t do it up here, whether you play 10, 11, minutes: more decisive with the puck, more shooting mentality, use his speed offensively, not just defensively. … Because of the rules of it is what it is, he has to go somewhere where we can just get settled and play.”
The expectation is that Luchanko will play for Canada at the World Junior Championship, which begins after Christmas. Luchanko suited up last year in a limited role, despite being one of the better players, for the squad that lost to Czechia in the quarterfinals. A native of London, Ontario, he had one goal in five games.
“We also want to prepare him for the World Junior Championship because it’s tough if he’s playing 7, 8 minutes a night for the first three months of the season, and you send him to the World Juniors, and they expect to play him 15 to 18, maybe 20 minutes,” Brière said.
“It’s a tough adjustment to change like that. So you’ve got to get used to those minutes, and it should give him plenty of time to get conditioned to play in high minutes.”
Entering Monday, Guelph is 6-5-2-0 in 13 games and has won three straight.
Let’s allow Jordan Mailata to explain the season Dallas Goedert is having in the way Mailata does best, with a touch of swearing and some humorous perspective.
“That … guy,” Mailata said Sunday after Goedert caught two touchdown passes in the Eagles’ 38-20 win over the New York Giants. “We almost didn’t bring him back. Can you believe that [stuff]? How funny is that? How funny is that?”
Yes, there was a time during the offseason when it appeared as if the Eagles would part ways with Goedert after seven seasons. Goedert himself even confronted that possibility before the Eagles reworked his contract to bring him back on a one-year deal worth more than $10 million but less than the $14.25 million that would have been owed to him on his previous deal.
Just how valuable has Goedert been to the Eagles? He is tied for the NFL lead in receiving touchdowns with seven. He reached a career high with his sixth touchdown of the season on a second-quarter score Sunday and then got to the end zone again early in the fourth quarter to extend the Eagles’ lead to 31-13 and put the game out of reach.
Goedert’s return to the Eagles benefited both parties. The Eagles didn’t have many better alternatives, and Goedert, 30, was coming off of a 2024 season when he played in a career-low 10 games thanks to multiple injuries. Imagine the dollar signs he’s seeing right now with seven touchdowns in seven games. He will be a free agent after the season.
“I’ve just been enjoying this season,” Goedert said Sunday. “Not too worried about the future, just trying to be where my feet are, enjoying it.
“It’s been a lot of fun, and we just got to keep getting better. There’s a lot of season left and we want to win a lot more games. Not worried about personal things. It’s a cool little stat, but I’m just trying to help the team win.”
Goedert runs through New York Giants safety Tyler Nubin in the second quarter en route to a touchdown against the Giants.
He has been doing that, especially in the red zone, where the Eagles have been the most prolific team in the NFL. Goedert said the red zone philosophy has changed a little bit this year under new offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo.
After Sunday, the Eagles are at 17 touchdowns in 20 trips, good for an NFL-best 85% success rate. Six of Goedert’s seven scores have come in the red zone.
The Eagles didn’t have A.J. Brown on Sunday, so they went to their big-body tight end instead, on what happened to be national tight ends day. The Eagles lined Goedert up left on the outside of the formation for a second-and-2 from the 6-yard line near the end of the first half. Goedert ran a quick slant toward the middle of the field, then caught the ball at the first-down marker before barreling through two defenders for the touchdown.
His second touchdown was even prettier. The Eagles ran a run-pass option on a second-and-8 from the 17. It’s a play they like to run and often do it well. Goedert started on the left side of the formation and worked right after the snap. Jalen Hurts put the ball in Tank Bigsby’s stomach, but pulled it out. The linebacker charged with covering Goedert slipped, and Goedert changed his trajectory with the end zone in mind.
“Usually I catch it going to the flat,” Goedert said. “They kind of squeezed the linebacker and I felt like I could get vertical.”
Vertical he went. Goedert caught the ball at the 9, turned toward the end zone, and held the ball out ahead of him as he crossed the goal line.
Goedert’s fourth-quarter touchdown against the Giants helped extend the Eagles’ lead.
Asked about hitting his career high already, Goedert said, “keep it going. Let’s get some more.”
As for Mailata, the left tackle said he’s not surprised by Goedert’s fast start.
“That guy works his [butt] off during the week. He really does,” Mailata said. “I think we’re pretty lucky to have the people we have in this room because they’re hard workers, and I think it sets the culture for the young guys to see hard work is always rewarded.”
Two years isn’t a long time to wait between playoff games, in MLS or any other sport. But the Union’s return to the postseason brought an intensity to the air at Subaru Park that hadn’t been felt for a while, even with the many soccer spectacles that have come to town since then.
It also brought a very compelling game, if not always for the right reasons. At the end of the night, it felt like the series-opening win over Chicago had been four games in one: the scoreless first 70 minutes, the Union’s surge to a 2-0 lead, the Fire’s comeback, and the penalty-kick shootout.
Let’s take each in turn to go inside how the home team prevailed.
Three is a magic number
The first stanza was defined as much by referee Sergii Boyko as by the lack of goals. He seemed to have little interest in calling most of the first half’s contact as fouls, less interest in the crowd’s opinion of him, and the least in Chicago goalkeeper Chris Brady’s repeated time-wasting on the ball.
Those antics took much of the energy out of a crowd of 19,019 that for once was in the stands well before kickoff. Perhaps that was helped by the starting time being advertised in some places as 5:30 p.m., though it was long known and correctly printed elsewhere as 5:55. (Cue the joke that the time should be printed wrong more often.)
The fans were alive when Chicago’s starting lineup was introduced, launching a storm of boos at manager Gregg Berhalter for his previous tenure with the U.S. men’s national team. Then they shook the rafters when Quinn Sullivan was unveiled as the pregame drummer, a few weeks after surgery on a torn ACL that ended his season.
And they were touchingly silent during a pregame tribute to Brad Youtz, one of the Sons of Ben supporters’ club’s founding members, who died earlier this month. His loyalty began even before the Union existed, as he helped lead the fan movement that brought an expansion team here.
The view of what transpired next looked familiar to any watcher, from Youtz upstairs to the new generation in his old River End seats.
With the Supporters’ Shield mounted in the River End, an impeccably-observed moment of silence at the first Union home game since Brad Youtz’s passing.
My longtime friend has the best seat in the house today.
Berhalter’s 3-4-3 tactics had helped the Fire build a six-game winning streak heading into their first playoff berth in eight years. That setup turned the screws on the Union, the latest proof that for all that has improved in Bradley Carnell’s first year as manager, the team can still struggle to solve three-back defenses.
Uhre delivers again
The game changed when Carnell turned to his own toolbox, with the first substitutions in the 64th minute. One of them, Mikael Uhre, broke the game open.
It was a classic quick move down the field, with Milan Iloski sending Uhre down the right side. He was one-on-one with former Union teammate Jack Elliott and drew on some inside knowledge.
“He probably knows that normally I would go on my right,” Uhre said. “So I was thinking, let me cut it in and then see how it opens up. And then I could see Indy making the run on the back post.”
That was Indiana Vassilev, and Uhre found him with a dazzling, lofted pass across the 18-yard box. A quick trap, a quick shot, and Brady was flattened.
Five minutes later, the player who arguably changed this team’s whole season had another defining moment. Here came the Union again, this time with Iloski on the ball on the right flank. He had Vassilev and Uhre charging up the middle, and Chicago’s defense was expecting a pass.
Instead, Iloski kept the ball, cut left on Elliott, and slammed a shot into the top corner.
“As I was dribbling forward, I noticed there wasn’t a lot of options,” Iloski said. “I knew off the dribble I could beat anyone in this league. Once I let the guy kind of get close to me … I just got the ball out of my feet and then focused on hitting the ball on target.”
That same self-confidence would come in handy just over 20 minutes later. But there was still a long way to go.
Chicago’s comeback
Even after Jonathan Bamba’s goal out of a corner kick traffic jam in the 84th, there was little reason to believe the Union would blow the lead.
But between Chicago’s goals, Berhalter made a tweak that turned the game, subbing in attacking midfielder Brian Gutiérrez for centerback Sam Rogers. Removing a defender ended up helping Iloski, but the Fire benefited more, and for the second game in a row Gutiérrez showed why he’s a U.S. national team prospect.
“He was playing in these half spaces — that was really difficult for us, and they had some success to the end of the game,” Union goalkeeper Andre Blake said. “We couldn’t stop him from getting on the ball and he’s a great player, so he was able to create some dangerous plays for them.”
At the start of stoppage time, Jakob Glesnes tripped Mauricio Pineda just outside the Union’s 18-yard box. And just as happened a previous time when Glesnes tripped Lionel Messi against Miami in May, this was a game-changing moment.
Bamba shot the free kick into the wall, the ball came right back to him, and he laid it off for Elliott to fire from 30 yards — low, hard, and straight past his former teammates. That he did not celebrate made the moment even more resonant.
Andre Blake (right) looks back at his net after Jack Elliott’s game-tying free kick goal got by.
When Boyko finally blew the whistle to end regulation, the game headed straight to penalty kicks. It was a moment that both elevated the drama and exposed again the strangeness of the MLS playoff format: a best-of-three first round and single-game knockouts the rest of the way.
Plenty of other competitions around the world these days go straight to penalties after regulation, as a kindness to players’ health. But none so contort things by making a score barely matter over the course of a series.
MLS used to do what the rest of the sport has long done: single-game rounds all the way, or a two-game, home-and-away series in which the aggregate goal tally decides the winner. In this best-of-three setup, it doesn’t matter if you win 2-0, 2-1, or by any other score; or if the tie after 90 minutes is 2-2, 1-1, 0-0, or 5-5. All that counts is which team wins.
It helped the Union this time, and it’s certainly an American tradition. But that doesn’t make it a good soccer principle.
Andre Blake celebrates after Chicago’s Joel Waterman put his penalty kick off the crossbar.
Blake’s shootout heroics
Carnell offered the zinger of the night when he called the game “a contrasting of two styles — one team just trying to waste every second and try and get out of here. Probably, they got what they wanted, [which] was penalties.”
Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.
Blake had studied Chicago’s takers with the Union’s outstanding goalkeeper coach, Phil Wheddon. A veteran of the U.S. men’s and women’s national teams and American clubs going back to the early 2000s, Wheddon delivered again this time, working out a set of signals from the bench that Blake needed only a glance to see.
While Brady ran his mouth, the best goalkeeper in MLS for a decade running did his job. Blake stuffed Elliott, got a big piece of Hugo Cuypers’ shot even though it went in, and psyched Joel Waterman into hitting the crossbar.
Andre Blake (center) and Milan Iloski (right) had enough of the antics of Chicago goalkeeper Chris Brady during the shootout.
That easily overcame Uhre being saved on the Union’s first turn of the shootout. Iloski, Frankie Westfield, Tai Baribo, and Jesús Bueno were perfect afterward.
“In truth, I was a little bit nervous before my penalty kick,” Bueno said. “But when Blake gave me the ball, I just looked at him in the eye, and we laughed, and we knew that everything was going to be OK.”
