Guys, let's be honest: Philly escaped. I won't apologize for a win, especially a division win, ESPECIALLY against the hated Cowboys, but let's count the ways in which Philly tried to lose tonight:
The Birds fumbled three times and came perilously close to losing all of them, including the fumbled ball at the end that rookie Tyler Steen somehow came up with (more on this play in a bit). Typically, teams that fumble three times recover all of them one in eight times.
The Eagles had ten accepted penalties for 98 yards, and Cowboys fans would probably like to remind us of two or three that easily could have been called but weren't. Three horrible fouls on the final drive (the PI on Bradberry, the stupid roughing the passer on Reddick and Carter's offsides) set Dallas up for victory.
I was counting the number of times that the pass rush had Dak pinned down and let him off the hook; I think I lost count at four or five.
We have to talk about Brian Johnson, who started off with a solid adjustment to lean on the run game before the end of the first half. But, his playcalling down the stretch was borderline criminal. I have three examples: 1) why call passes inside your own five after the Birds had stopped Dallas on the goal line? Those plays not only had no chance, but possessed bottomless downside (can you imagine a pick or a safety?) and stopped the clock twice. 2) After the officials gifted the Eagles by swallowing their whistles on a clear hold of Micah Parsons, Brian Johnson bailed out Dallas by dialing up a deep shot to AJ Brown that wasn't even close. Instead of calling an obvious running play to gain three yards, the Birds were forced to punt AND the clock was stopped yet again. 3) Needing a simple run play to force Dallas to burn their final timeout, Johnson calls a run play with a lot of motion and moving parts; Brown collides with Swift and the ball disappears into a pile of bodies. Not sure how Steen came away with it but it almost certainly saved a touchdown (Dallas would have had the ball on our 30 with a timeout). Really thoughtless play calls that absolutely left the door open for the Cowboys.
OK, deep breaths, everybody: that's all I'm going to say on the negative side (although I certainly stand by all that I said); let's break down the positive factors that lead to the big win:
Poser Cowboys miss the inches they really needed. We talked already about the fumbles; discredit to Dallas for failing to recover any of them. Further criticism is warranted for narrowly missing on the TD that was overturned and the two point conversion on which that Prescott ran out of bounds. On both plays, Dallas was trying to get cute by nibbling at the edges of the field instead of taking the most direct route and going straight at the defense. They failed and those failures turned the game without question.
Eagles win turnover battle (technically). I pointed out in the last minute preview that the turnover margin would be key; the only turnover of the game was on its final play, but Philly's ability (some would call it good luck) to avoid any turnovers was huge tonight.
Run game outperforms the box score. Philly's final numbers of 33 carries for 109 yards and two scores might not jump off the page but the average is unquestionably dampened by how many Brotherly Shoves were executed successfully. I piled on OC Johnson for his awful playcalling down the stretch, but in fairness I need to point out that he changed his strategy early on to commit to running the ball on almost every first down the Eagles had. Dallas was vulnerable to the run and committing to it early generally kept Philly on schedule all day long.
Red zone success does in fact turn out to be critical. Another pregame observation I had was that situational football would be critical, especially the red zone. Philly was a perfect three-for-three in the red zone, while Dallas only managed six points over their final three red zone trips. If you expand the red area to the opponent's thirty, Philly goes 4-for-4 while Dallas only scored 20 points on six total trips.
For once, Philly's special teams was notably positive in a big game. Really, the only negative I could find for the Birds tonight was the first big kickoff return by Turpin, but I think even that was aided by an uncalled hold. Other than that, all the big goofs were made by Dallas (the kickoff out of bounds comes to mind), and the biggest plays were made by Philly (Braden Mann and the punt team had two high leverage moments, one at the end of each half, and executed them perfectly). Had the doinked-in FG been one inch to the left, the imbalance looks even worse for Dallas.
The Hurts-Prescott rivalry ramps up. Credit where it's due, Dak played pretty well overall, arguably outplaying Hurts. That's not at all to say that Jalen played poorly; he had one of his better games and it matters even more considering Jalen was noticeably banged up for much of the contest. You have to conclude that Jalen made the plays that he needed to when it mattered most, and Dak didn't. If nothing else, the overstated and misleading "Jalen has never beaten Dak" narrative can be put to rest.
All in all, I'm happy to claim this win. I was closely watching the box score and in my game notes observed that it was neck and neck statistically through nearly the entire game; the Cowboy's final yardage advantage was almost entirely due to the final few drives when the Eagles were noticeably playing not to lose. Much may be made of the officiating (and again, there were a few missed calls that went Philly's way) but on the whole there were calls that went both ways and you'd struggle to convince me that officiating had a material effect on the outcome. Major props to the character of the defense, which was totally on its heels at the end but came through with a couple of clutch sacks that ended up turning the tide. The list of key players that got banged up at one point or another is LONG (Hurts, Brown, Goedert, Slay, Bradberry, and that's just off the top of my head), but none of the injuries seemed very serious, and now we'll have the bye to recover. Philly is a full game and a half clear of the rest of the NFC (and 2.5 games clear of the NFC East) and has racked up 8-1 starts in back to back years for the first time in franchise history. For what it's worth, they're also two games ahead of where I thought they'd be at the break (I had predicted a 6-3 start in the preseason). There are still improvements to be made, but that's actually a positive: how many games will we win when we finally get it all together?
Finally, it's always good to beat Dallas, especially in an instant classic of a game.
FLY EAGLES FLY!
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