Category: Sports Columnists

For an Eagles team desperate to stop a losing streak, a coach turned to Scripture the other day to inspire a few members of the one unit that has been pretty much beyond reproach. Jeremiah Washburn, who’s in charge of the Eagles’ defensive line, shared a message with the team’s tackles and ends from Isaiah 6:8: Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

“The perspective of the D-line — it’s like, ‘Send me,’” tackle Moro Ojomo said. “That was kind of our mentality heading into this game.”

So on Sunday against the two-win Las Vegas Raiders, the Eagles sent Ojomo, who had a sack and two quarterback hits. And they sent Brandon Graham, who had two sacks while lining up at tackle. And they sent Zack Baun, who had four tackles and an interception. And they sent the Raiders back to the Strip wearing the scarlet letter of having produced the worst offensive performance of any Eagles opponent ever. It wasn’t just that the Eagles won 31-0 — their first shutout in nearly seven years. It was that they allowed the Raiders to gain just 75 yards of total offense.

Combine those two figures, the 0 and the 75, and you get what was, statistically speaking, the best game any Eagles defense has ever played. You get a game in which the Raiders’ longest gain on any play was 15 yards … on an unnecessary roughness penalty by Cooper DeJean. And as pitiful as Las Vegas was Sunday and has been offensively all season — the Raiders entered the game last in the NFL in points and next-to-last in yardage — you still got a glimpse of what might yet be the Eagles’ saving grace in their quest to win a second straight Super Bowl. As ragged and inconsistent as their offense has been, their defense is good enough to get them there.

“Our mindset, regardless, is, ‘If they don’t score, they don’t win,’” Ojomo said. “You saw that today. That’s the mindset we’ve got to have. The offense has to have the mindset of not necessarily depending on us, and what you get is that perfect marriage. They do their thing. We do our thing. We’re always going to raise the standard.”

They have to. Maybe Jalen Hurts, Saquon Barkley, and the rest of the offense will raise their level of play over the next three weeks and beyond. Maybe this dominant performance against a terrible team can allow the Eagles to get their groove from last season back. But to be in their locker room after Sunday’s game was to observe a different collective disposition from one side of the ball to the other.

Hurts delivered one curt, clipped answer after another in his postgame news conference, as if he were offended that the people in the room had pointed out that he’d committed five turnovers six days earlier against the Los Angeles Chargers. Nick Sirianni, Landon Dickerson, and other members of the offense kept up that same standoffish pose. Meanwhile, the team’s defensive players were ebullient and enthusiastic and generally have been all season. With the exception of the 281 rushing yards they gave up to the Chicago Bears two weeks ago, they have done their part to keep the Eagles in contention in the NFC.

They let the Eagles get away with victories against the Green Bay Packers and the Detroit Lions. They surrendered a touchdown on the Chargers’ first possession last Monday night, and they haven’t given up another in the 20 possessions since. They have a high standard, and they keep meeting it, and it was telling to hear, for instance, linebacker Nakobe Dean describe a lesson he learned from the unit’s perfect performance Sunday.

“There are plays we’re going to look back at and be like, ‘Oh, man, we could have [done] this better,’” he said. “I had a blitz. I was too high. I didn’t have great pad level. I got blocked by [running back] Raheem [Mostert], and the last couple of weeks I’ve been running through guys. So it’s like, yes, I have something to build on. I got blocked trying to bull [rush]. Now it’s time to stick/swat. Now it’s time to spin, do something like that. At first, I was thinking I was going to do it from the beginning. It was ‘Do this until they block it.’ Now it’s blocked. Now you can add a little something.”

The striking aspect of this dynamic — the inconsistency of the offense, the consistent excellence of the defense — is the lack of dissension within the locker room. Dean and Ojomo and their defensive teammates would be well within their rights to resent how much they’ve had to carry the Eagles. But there’s no indication that such a fissure exists. That’s a credit to coordinator Vic Fangio, sure, and it’s a credit to a unit full of young, homegrown players who aren’t surly, cynical veterans, who aren’t mercenaries, who don’t know any better but to ball out.

“We’re hungry, and we run around, and we want to be great,” Ojomo said. “We want to go and get it. It’s like this perfect thing, but the reality is, we’ve got to do it again.”

And again. And again. And again into January, if the Eagles are to have any hope of playing into February. A Super Bowl is still possible for them. Their defense will have to drag them there.

When Jalen Hurts hit A.J. Brown in the end zone with the exclamation point touchdown Sunday, he turned to the Eagles’ sideline and, with unusual enthusiasm, he jumped up and down, waved his arms with emphasis, and said several things that seemed out of character for a young man who usually behaves in such a godly manner.

Maybe he was saying, “Bench me? Bench me?!? That’s ridiculous!”

Probably not. But you couldn’t blame him if he was.

After the game Hurts declined to divulge what he said, or even what he felt, after that, his last play of the game.

“Just a natural reaction,” he offered.

Hurts declined to divulge much of anything, in fact. It is part of his personality: When he plays well after a spate of poor play, he retreats into himself.

“Heavy is the head that wears the crown,” said Brandon Graham, unlikely Shakespeare paraphraser. “Everybody thinks they want it until they get it.”

Hurts was benched in the 2018 College Football Playoff Championship Game, was a second-round draft pick projected as a gadget quarterback, and is routinely maligned for his arm strength and decision-making when things go badly. A three-week slump isn’t going to derail his career.

“Everybody needs to remember where I come from,” he said, “and how I’m built. … [Losses] aren’t barriers. They’re just bumps in the road.”

The high road, in Hurts’ case.

Naturally reticent and having long borne the burdens of doubt, demotion, and disappointment, it is all Hurts can do in these moments to not gloat. Small clues provide the only window into Hurts’ world. Like a master gambler, he has few “tells,” but you can always sense the smoldering passion when, after playing under water, he burst to the surface for air.

It’s how he has survived. It’s how he survived the past week.

“You control your own joy when there’s a lot of noise out there,” coach Nick Sirianni explained.

It was impossible for Hurts to not hear the noise.

Hurts’ seven turnovers and 69.9 passer rating were the most apt and most significant barometers of the three-game losing streak the Eagles rode into Sunday’s snow-frosted walkover contest against the visiting Raiders.

Hurts’ slump raised the question about whether, if he continued to struggle, he should be benched. This, despite having gone to two Pro Bowls and two Super Bowls, the most recent of which he was crowned MVP. Still, playing without stars Lane Johnson on the offensive line and Jalen Carter on the defensive line, the Eagles had slipped from 8-2 to 8-5 and had gone from being the No. 1 seed in the NFC to No. 3, with the Cowboys lurking in the weeds of the NFC East race.

The question in question was posed by the Eagles’ flagship station, WIP 94.1-FM, during its weekly, contracted interview with Sirianni that follows the most recent game. Hurts had five turnovers in the most recent game, a Monday Night Football loss at the Chargers.

Sirianni’s response: “I think that’s ridiculous.”

The question wasn’t ridiculous. It was legitimate.

It sure seems ridiculous now.

Hurts rebounded from the worst game of his career with one of the best. He completed 12 of 15 passes for 175 yards and three touchdowns. Two went to tight end Dallas Goedert, who led the team with six catches for 70 yards. The third went to Brown, only his second official target of the day, a 27-yard dime into triple coverage — by far, Hurts’ best throw of the day.

It was not, however, his best play. That came a few minutes earlier.

Midway through the third quarter, a holding penalty put the ball on the Raiders’ 27 and presented Hurts with third-and-12. At stake: a dagger touchdown or a field goal that would preserve for the Raiders a sliver of hope.

Hurts, in the shotgun formation, saw the middle of the field utterly undefended. He appeared to audible at the line of scrimmage, but later said the play was run as called by offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo. Either way, it was the sort of play that only a handful of quarterbacks can make.

Hurts received the snap, took a half-step backward, tucked the ball, and darted up the middle. He then scooted to his left and outraced defenders to the sideline, exiting the field a yard beyond the first-down marker.

Three plays later, he hit Goedert from 4 yards and the Eagles led, 24-0.

The Brown TD was little more than garnish, but might serve the team well. Brown spent the first half of the season complaining, mostly on social media, that he was being underutilized. He then was targeted 45 times in the next four games, but the offense struggled and the team lost three of four.

On Sunday, Brown was underutilized again, but he did catch the TD pass.

He didn’t speak with the press after the game.

Monitor your insta feed.

At any rate, Hurts thrived in a game that unfolded in the proper design for the team’s composition.

He threw just 15 passes, but none was thrown into harm’s way. None was forced to Brown. Hurts’ 154.9 passer rating was the second-best of his 89 starts, including playoffs. He has not thrown more than 28 passes in any of his top four.

Hurts benefited from an absence of offense from the Raiders, who used backup quarterback Kenny Pickett in place of injured Geno Smith, who’d been piloting the league’s worst scoring offense, at 15.1 points per game. The Eagles’ defense was great, but it was playing a warm-weather dome team in 20-degree weather with 25-mph wind gusts on Pacific Coast time.

Hurts also benefited from a pointed effort to feature running back Saquon Barkley, who ran 22 times for 78 yards and a touchdown. He averaged 14 carries during the losing streak.

Finally, the Eagles incorporated a handful of designed runs, and Hurts ran on his own. His 39 yards on seven rushes were his most since Game 4. He averaged 44.8 rushing yards in the first four games, all of which were wins. The Eagles went 4-5 in the next nine games.

Hurts needs to run. Saquon needs to run. Goedert needs the ball.

If A.J. gets some looks, great. If not, live with it.

“It’s a good formula,” said Brandon Graham, who had two sacks in Game 14 of his 16th season. He’s seen some stuff. “It’s definitely a good formula for us.”

Sirianni understands the formula but wouldn’t commit.

“Next week we could come out and it could be a completely different game,” he said.

Why?

This is how these Eagles can win.

Any other method would be ridiculous.