Crossing Broad
Sometimes you have to take things at face value, and face value for the Philadelphia Eagles is two primetime games in seven days in which they’ve held the Green Bay Packers to seven points at Lambeau and the Detroit Lions to nine points at Lincoln Financial Field.
That’s the big story on Action News.
The Birds are 8-2, lead the NFC, and are playing lights out defensive football. Five times on Sunday night they stopped Detroit on downs, stuffing Jared Goff and company over and over and over again. Combine that with the Lions’ 3-13 mark on third down, and that’s the recipe for completely shutting down one of the league’s best units. It was an incredible effort from Vic Fangio’s unit.
On the other hand, the Eagles’ offense continued where it left off in Green Bay. They weren’t great, and did little with excellent starting field position, but they made more plays, in particular a 2nd quarter TD drive to reclaim the lead for good, followed by Jake Elliott knocking one right down the middle from 49 yards. Jalen Hurts didn’t have a good game, nor did anybody on that side of the ball.
Yet here we are again. The Birds win, and the glass remains half full. If the defense keeps playing like this, nobody is beating them.
To the observations we go:
1) It wasn’t a completed pass, but you have to like the Eagles opening with Jalen Hurts under center and throwing out of play action.
2) Two rare occurrences on the opening drive. We saw Dallas Goedert drop his first pass of the year and then a Lane Johnson holding call. Goedert only had 16 career drops coming into the game and Johnson only two penalties this season.
3) Cooooooooooooooooooop with the interception. Jordan Davis has the best hands at Lincoln Financial Field since Freddie Mitchell on 4th and 26.
4) We would like A.J. Brown to be involved, but you don’t have to force him the ball. There were four targets on the first two drives, but he only caught two of those, and one was a shallow route for a designed touch that didn’t go anywhere.
5) Checking off the obligatory bump shots, we got the Art Museum and Boathouse Row before hitting the eight minute mark of the 1st quarter.
6) 3rd and 1 near midfield… why no tush push? Por que no push el tush?
7) Don’t think it’s a hot take to say that Lane Johnson has entered the Jason Peters portion of his career. Feels like he’s coming out of every game with some sort of injury. No doubt he’s a warrior, but he’s 35 years old and just doesn’t have the durability he used to have.
8) So… Dan Campbell ran it on 3rd and 8, only to try to get the Eagles to jump on 4th and 6, then ended up punting from the Birds’ 45? What happened to the aggressive Campbell we’ve come to know?...
