Crossing Broad
Twice this season the Philadelphia Eagles have played on a short week after a choke job, and twice they’ve been handled in games that weren’t particularly competitive.
The only reason this one was remotely close was because Ben Johnson inexplicably decided to stop running the football. Then the light bulb clicked on and he went back to the ground game after Jalen Hurts fumbled in the red zone. If he had never gone away from D’Andre Swift and Kyle Monongai in the first place, it would have been curtains in the third quarter.
Meantime, Nick Sirianni and Kevin Patullo’s offense needed garbage time to break double digits. The QB was bad and the line was bad. More penalties and 1st down fecklessness. And Vic Fangio’s defense, which has been the catalyst for almost every win this season, gave up almost 300 rushing yards. They weren’t anywhere near their best, but gave the pathetic O a chance, which wasn’t taken.
Moving forward, on one hand, the Eagles lost two in a row earlier this season, then came back with a four-game win streak. They’ve got the Raiders and Commanders (2x) still on the schedule, which isn’t exactly murderer’s row. On the other hand, they’ve barely been scraping by in some of these wins to begin with, so when the calendar flips to December we’ll see if this is a repeat of the 2023 collapse.
But first, the observations:
1) Scintillating interview with Jalen Hurts to kick off the broadcast:
“What do you have to do to play four quarters of football?” (paraphrasing).
“We just have to go out and there play four quarters of football, (insert a couple of cliches)”
2) One of the things that gets lost in the 2023 Eagles shitshow is how good D’Andre Swift was that year. He ran for a career-high 1,049 yards and went to the Pro Bowl. 4.6 yards per carry and another 200+ yards and a touchdown in the receiving game. He had 125 and a score in this game.
3) Another fourth down stop for the Eagles’ defense, this time after a challenge on the opening Chicago drive. It looked like Kyle Monongai’s shin touched down before he lunged and got the ball across the line:
4) A.J. Brown false start followed by a first down on a hitch route feels like an apropos snapshot for the 2025 Eagles offense. Then you follow it up a few plays later with Hurts fleeing the pocket to his right and throwing the ball out of bounds on 3rd and 5. Awesome!
5) Not often you see the D line get moved backward, but on the second Bears drive they had Monongai stopped on 3rd and 2 and Chicago’s O line didn’t quit on the play. Good stuff initially by Jordan Davis but a frustrating result. 13 carries for 84 yards and a touchdown in the first quarter for the visitors.
6) With Xavier Gipson injured, they had Britain Covey and Will Shipley out there...
