If we're being completely honest, this really wasn't the Eagles' best effort. It's completely impossible to say what might have occurred if SF had been healthy at QB, or if Devonta Smith's no-catch-that-wasn't would have been called correctly, but that doesn't ultimately matter. Philly won the game going away, and that's what history will remember.
Let's clear up a few myths that the talking heads will dwell on before we get into some more details:
"That catch by Smith was really a drop! Huge break for Philly!" First, I'm not actually 100% sure it was a drop; I'm reasonably certain that it was but one of the angles they showed made it unclear. Plus, by the end of the game, that particular score didn't matter. We'd have taken a 24-7 win just as well as the 31-7 final margin.
"The 49ers were helpless without their quarterbacks! Bad luck!" No one is going to pretend like the injuries were somehow good luck for SF, but I think we need to recognize that (if we're being honest) the difference between Brock Purdy and Josh Johnson (or for that matter, between Purdy and Garoppolo) isn't that significant. On top of this, the Eagles' two most important offensive players (Hurts and Johnson) were both far short of 100%.
"The referees were biased!" Besides the missed no-catch, SF racked up more than twice the penalties and penalty yards that the Eagles did. However, you'd be hard pressed to point to any of the penalties and say that they were blatant bad calls. Several had unfortunate timing, but that isn't the fault of the Eagles (or the officials); just be more smart in big moments. The 49ers were not.
I think the thing that stood out to me most about this game was that Philly was able to find success running against the league's top defense. The Birds' 138 rushing yards were nearly twice the season average allowed by the 49ers. Considering that Jalen Hurts was clearly not his normal self throwing the ball, I'd say that counts as a solid win.
I have to rag on Hurts here, just a little. If you are looking for evidence that he's all the way back, you won't point to this game. He had no passing touchdowns and averaged a lousy 4.8 yards/attempt (drops to 3.7 if Smith is ruled to have dropped that ball). I felt that SF was focused on forcing him to roll left as often as possible, and they did a better than expected job of containing the deep shot (Hurts had one good opportunity to hit Brown down the right sideline and overshot him pretty badly). I thought that the offense opened up noticeably once the staff increased Hurts' designed runs. This makes sense; we saw that happen in the Giants game as well. I think Hurts will need to have the designed run in his repertoire going forward if he is to be successful. On the positive side, Jalen avoided turnovers and most bad throws, and I felt he did a good job overall in keeping the offense on track as much as possible.
The defense on the whole played a good game. I had nothing but complaints about the low quality tackling on McCaffrey's touchdown, but thankfully that was the only obvious example I can think of for bad Eagles tackling. The forced fumbles on both QBs were more or less what I expected from the pass rush. It's reasonable to say that a healthy SF offense scores more points, but it's hard to imagine it would have been TOO much more.
Mixed bag on special teams, in my view. Boston Scott did some damage on the one kick they let him return. Elliott was again perfect on all his kicks. The downside here is that Brett Kern was again subpar, with the exception of that high pressure punt from his own end zone. I'm hopeful that Siposs can make it back for the Super Bowl, but we'll see what happens there. The kick coverage was again a weakness.
The other major positive is that Philly got through the game largely healthy. Remarkably, Philly should roll into the Super Bowl with nearly perfect health.
These two playoff games have both been laughers, with the starters watching the clock hit 0:00 from the bench both times and a combined margin of 69-14. It's hard to escape the conclusion the the AFC champion will present a much more serious threat when the time comes. Let's enjoy this and hope the team is ready to learn the lessons and move on with their prep.
We're going to the Super Bowl! FLY EAGLES FLY!
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