Bleeding Green Nation
Highlights and lowlights from Philadelphia’s Week 8 win.
Zac Taylor folded his arms and looked up at the clock in disbelief with 41 second left in the third quarter. The Cincinnati Bengals’ coach who had reached the AFC Championship twice in the last four years was facing misery.
Grief is what arrived after the Eagles stopped the Bengals on a big fourth-and-one tackle by rookie safety Cooper DeJean on Cincinnati’s dangerous Ja’Marr Chase.
The Eagles answered by turning a close game into a 37-17 route winning for the first time in Cincinnati, taking care of Joe Burrow and the Bengals on Sunday at Paycor Stadium for their third-straight win.
Jalen Hurts rushed for three touchdowns, becoming the first quarterback in NFL history to rush for two or more touchdowns in 14 games, Saquon Barkley rushed for 108 yards and the defense caused two turnovers, equaling the number of turnovers they created over their first six games and their first turnover since Week 3 against the New Orleans Saints.
After Hurts scored his third touchdown, he immediately emerged out from under the pile and handed Barkley the ball to make sure he put an exclamation spike on it after carrying much of the load in the fourth quarter.
Although the game was well decided by then, on the DeJean stop. Trailing 24-17, with 1:08 left in the third quarter, Taylor went into panic mode and DeJean was there to make him pay for it.
On Cincinnati’s last play of the third quarter, sitting at its 39 staring at a fourth-and-one, Taylor decided to risk the game right there. Burrow slung a short pass in the flat to Chase and DeJean was there to upend him for a two-yard loss. The Eagles replied with a Jake Elliott 49-yard field, followed by an exhaustive 12-play, 7-minute, 37-second drive and another Elliott field goal.
Cincinnati had long been a house or horrors for the Eagles, who were 0-4-1 at Cincinnati prior to Sunday.
Maybe this victory will exorcise some demons of the past six games. The Eagles are now 5-2 and showing some flashes of who they could be—an NFC Championship contender.
There was a mountain of good, some bad, and some continued ugliness in the Eagles’ dominant 37-17 victory over the Cincinnati Bengals.
Hurts looking like the vintage 2022 MVP-candidate version for all the dubious that labeled him a “game-manager” last week. He was tremendous. He completed 16 of 20 for 236 yards and a touchdown, while rushing for 37 yards and three touchdowns. He played with poise. He threw crisp passes. He saw wide-open receivers and trusted covered receivers that they would get the ball.
Barkley plowing through Cincinnati for a game-high 108 yards on 22 carries, his longest 19 yards.
Linebacker Zack Baun putting the game on ice, punching the ball out of tight end Mike Gesicki’s hands with 4:31 to play and Nakobe Dean there to recover it. Cincinnati’s second turnover led to Elliott’s third field goal...
