I admit, my belief was wavering after a couple Hurts turnovers let the top offense in the league off the hook. Oh me of little faith! The Eagles had a classic finish including yet another clock killing, pounding touchdown drives (featuring two successful Brotherly Shoves on 4th down), a relentless pass rush that rarely let Tua stay comfortable and monster plays from Dallas Goedert and especially AJ Brown. Let's talk about some of the biggest storylines:
Jalen Hurts up and down but ultimately carries Philly. Jalen gave us some flashbacks from last week, with a disastrous fumble and later a pick six that never should have been thrown, but despite that he had one of the better games in this young season (6.6 TYP). His 4-for-4 mark in Brotherly Shoves was arguably the most important stat of the night. Jalen also outplayed his former college teammate tonight by a notable margin. I counted three drops by Eagles receivers; those plays would have boosted the statline even more. He was gimpy for the majority of the night; hopefully he'll be fine. The fact that he played the entire game and the playcalling didn't seem to be affected provides hope for his health going forward.
Eagles defense dominates. Miami's offense was, by far, the most impressive unit in the league coming into tonight; Philly shut them down. The NBC guys pointed out that the Birds limited the Fish to one offensive TD; this coming after an endless stream of graphics from multiple networks reminding us that Miami's 30 touchdowns through six weeks was fourth all time. Philly held Miami to 244 total yards, 12 first downs and only 5.1 yards/play. Miami's OL injuries helped, but the Birds piled up a dozen TFLs. Philly managed all of this despite the fact that they seemed unable to cover those WRs for much of the night, one of the few negative takeaways from tonight.
Miami excuses won't hold water. The Monday Morning Quarterbacks will point out how many players Miami was missing, and may well complain about the no-call on Bradberry that helped end the Miami drive in Philly territory. Don't let them have it. Philly was banged up too; they really missed Reed Blankenship tonight, and the list of Eagles that played but were banged up in one way or another was LONG (Slay, Carter, Johnson, Dean, Brown, Hurts). The no-call was probably a good call; the facemask grab was brief, obviously inadvertent and had no impact on the outcome of the play whatsoever. If your hopes rest on technicalities, you don't deserve to win. The penalties were fair otherwise, and there were at least two more that could have been called on Miami but weren't (the PI that helped end an Eagles drive in the 3Q, and God only knows how many defensive offsides).
Eagle streak alerts. Lane Johnson's streak of not allowing an official sack ended tonight, but who really cares? His injury wasn't nearly as serious as initially feared and his presence made a huge difference. The new streak to pay attention to is Jason Kelce's sack shutout streak, which was at 34 games going into tonight. AJ Brown's 137 yards tonight marks the fifth straight game he went over 125, tying the NFL record.
Some roses for Nick. I was shouting at my TV when Sirianni ran out the punt team in the mid-4Q; thankfully he reconsidered and the result was the extension of the game-winning drive. The Birds have turned into prime time killers under Nick; tonight's win raises their record to 7-1 in prime time over the last two seasons. Even counting offsetting penalties and Bradberry's no-call, the Birds only had three "fouls" tonight, a sign they came ready to play mentally.
The better team won. The stat sheet proves it (26-12 FD, 355-244 yardage, 36:43-23:17 ToP), the eye test proves it (Eagles never trailed and led for all but eight minutes and 21 seconds of game time), and as alluded to above it would have taken all the breaks of the game to go Miami's way to keep this close. Time will tell if Miami was more of a paper tiger than previously thought (they've only played two good teams and have gotten blasted both times), but as things stand right now this seems like the Bird's biggest win of the year.
Back to back divisional tests await. Next week we'll head to DC for the Commander rematch, which feels like a revenge game even though we won the last one, and then it's back home to host Dallas in the next installment of the classic rivalry. This team remains imperfect, but that's no shame in a year that many teams aren't 100%. If they can stay healthy and polish some things up they could easily open 8-1 for the second straight year.
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