Somehow the Eagles managed to follow up their ugly win against Green Bay with an even uglier win over an overachieving Rams team (I will maintain that I believed LA to be the worst team in the bracket). How did they try to lose? Let's count the ways:
On the Rams first drive, Darius Slay (who played a good game overall) cut under a route and put both hands on the ball but dropped it. The Rams would go on to score on that drive.
Trailing 13-7, the Rams took a deep shot that Isaiah Rodgers read nicely, got both hands on, and watched the WR just rip it out of his hands in a who-wants-it-more embarrassment. That big play set up a field goal.
AJ Brown, who is clearly being limited by both his knee and the struggling passing game, brought back a glimpse of the old big play Brown by catching a jump ball on the Rams' two yard line... then inexplicably lost it while he's falling across the goal line. That led to...
... Jalen Hurts took so many big losses on sacks and busted scrambles it was nearly proverbial. Massive losses by Jalen on those kinds of plays killed at least four drives, including two that could have been FG attempts. Or might have been, if...
... Jake Elliott hadn't lost the coaches' confidence by missing two XPs. Braden Mann's heroics saved them from a couple more disasters. Elliott hit all three FGs in those awful conditions, to his credit, but it's clear he isn't held in high esteem right now.
This is really an extension of 4 above, but Jalen taking that sack in the end zone was perhaps the least shocking safety I've ever seen. Jalen was clearly hobbling and the Ram's pass rush was cooking; why send him back there to pass with minimal protection when he's struggling to both run and pass? Really a coaching goof more than anything else.
On LA's final drive, Cooper DeJean got two hands on a potential pick and dropped it. I felt sure that would prove to be fatal to Philly's season but they survived it.
Injuries are generally not the fault of anyone, so I feel odd adding them to this list but for the record: Quinyon Mitchell, Rodgers, Slay, Hurts, Dickerson, Brown all clearly bothered by injuries or took them during the game. We'll need most of those guys back for next week to have a real shot.
Well, that's the negative out of my system! Let's talk about some of the positives:
When it comes to playoff football, what really matters (as we know) is simply to survive and advance. In many ways this game mirrored the Divisional round classic against Atlanta in Philly's title run seven years ago. Let's count those similarities: 1) against a team that had recently played in the Super Bowl, 2) opponent had savvy veteran QB, 3) game was decided by less than a TD and was close throughout, 4) opponent took early lead but never regained it once it was lost, 5) opponent drove deep into Philly territory but came up short of the winning touchdown late, 6) Eagles' starting QB banged up. Philly's struggles to get that win had most observers (myself included) feeling skeptical about their chances to keep it going; that skepticism thankfully proved unfounded.
As of this writing the Eagles are 7-1 over the last two seasons combined against all surviving teams in this playoff; the one loss was that Commanders nightmare from last month that Hurts didn't get to finish.
The guy that the 2017 Eagles didn't have was Saquon Barkley, who continues to tear through the NFL. He now has 2,329 rushing yards in 18 games, just 147 short of Terrell Davis' record.
Jalen had a rough game, but (I'm indebted to Eagles message board commenter Brian M. for this insight) if you give Hurts the yards he would have gained on the cheap shot that forced a drop by Devonta Smith and the aforementioned drop by Brown, Hurts would have ended up with 199 yards and a score on just 20 throws (and once again, no turnovers). That's not bad.
The Eagles gave up touchdowns on the Rams' initial drive in each meeting this season. They gave up a total of 20 points on the other 19 meaningful drives in those games combined. Emblematic of how Fangio has proven to be so adept at making adjustments on the fly. What a welcome change from the Gannon/Desai days!
Did anyone else feel deja vu from the Eagles' heart stopping win over Dallas from last season? It was the exact same feeling; Eagles seemingly have the game wrapped up, defense allows a quick drive that puts them in position to lose, last minute sack saves the team.
Looking ahead to the NFC title game against the Commanders (who had that on your NFL season bingo card?), ordinarily the ugly nature of a win like what Philly had today would dampen my enthusiasm for their chances, but two things: 1) it's dangerous to use a team's performance in the previous round as a major indicator of how they'll do in the next round, especially if that performance was out of character for that team (it was, in both the Eagles' and Commanders' cases). Second, like Minnesota in 2017, sometimes a team that pulls off an unexpected and emotional win in the playoffs has little left in the tank for the next round. Let's see how that plays out for the Commanders. No matter what else, I think the biggest thing to watch is clearly the health of the players I mentioned earlier. I'm not sure there's a path to the Super Bowl that doesn't involve getting most or all of those guys healthy.
I'll have more to say on the coming NFC Championship Game later this week. In the meantime, I'll need to speak to my stress management professionals about this game we just watched.
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