It was a clever attempt at bending the narrative from Philadelphia Eagles coach Nick Sirianni, who, after the game, said one of his messages to the team this week dealt with the idea of opponents improving the deeper his team traversed into the playoffs. While it sounds obvious, it’s also a convenient way of obscuring how it all comes together for Philadelphia, a team that, over the past two weeks—and, really, in longer stretches this year—looks more like a club trying to positively spin a near drowning as a common feature in a synchronized swimming routine.
The Eagles’ 28–22 divisional round win over the Los Angeles Rams, much like their 22–10 wild-card win over the Green Bay Packers, was strange in that it featured almost mesmerizing moments of sheer dominance that managed to gently conceal perpetual questions about the team that remain difficult to answer. Green Bay fumbled a kickoff, had receivers vanish like sofa change and committed egregious personal fouls. The Rams did have two footballs punched loose in a game blanketed with thick, watery snow, but more notably couldn’t capitalize on Philadelphia’s maddening insistence on dropping back its injured quarterback, or hurling him into harm’s way at the strangest of times, or ignoring all the other opportune times to weaponize its best offensive player. The win over the Packers seemed like the team being the beneficiary of some luck, which, to Sirianni’s point, is simply part of the cosmos when it comes to postseason football. The latter, though, seemed like an almost miraculous survival—another game that makes one simultaneously admire the way they keep winning (16 times in 19 games) and wonder how it’s been so sustainable.
Stevie Wonder blared through the home locker room as players knocked off the slush and a massive crowd gathered around the locker of Saquon Barkley, who added two more 60-plus-yard touchdowns, tying him for the all-time single-season record alongside Jim Brown, Jerry Rice and Elroy Hirsch with six. On the second, a 78-yard run with 4:36 to go in the fourth quarter, Barkley said he was misaligned at the snap—he was supposed to be on Jalen Hurts’s left—but it didn’t matter after he caught an opening and gassed beyond a herd of Rams defenders too worn down and snowed in to catch him.
If there’s a perfect metaphor for the Eagles’ season, which manages to squeeze the beauty out of imperfection, it’s here. Barkley’s 205 rushing yards and a dominant performance from the Eagles’ front, including a near-constantly double-teamed Jalen Carter, though, were an absolute necessity to counter the team’s own puzzling offensive game plan.
Even before Hurts was seen grabbing his knee and entering the medical tent toward the end of the third quarter, it was incredibly obvious that both he and the Eagles’ offensive line had one answer to counter the Rams’ pressure packages: run the football.
On each of the Eagles’ first two touchdowns, a 44-yard Hurts score and a 62-yard touchdown run by Barkley, the Rams were in lighter defensive packages that the team tried to enhance by feigning pressure and dropping defenders or bringing pressure from someone outside of the front four. These turned out to be great pure rush calls against an Eagles offensive line that is incredibly powerful but, while on a slick, snow-covered surface Sunday, felt a bit challenged laterally (Mekhi Becton said the snow was an equal detriment to both teams, though Hurts was sacked seven times). This was especially true when Barkley, one of the better pass protecting backs in the league, was not in the lineup
In both instances, the defensive calls played right into Philadelphia’s hand, allowing a fake-blitzing linebacker on the Barkley touchdown run, for example, to fall into the claws of Becton and get shot-putted a few yards downfield. On the Hurts run, the Rams were bringing Beaux Limmer, but Limmer shot a gap that gave him a front row seat to a fake handoff, which held him in place long enough for Hurts to get to the opposite edge.
And while this is probably twinged with a bit of hyperbole, it seemed that in every other instance, the Eagles were hoping to see Hurts throw himself into some kind of hot streak—a needless attempt by Sirianni and offensive coordinator Kellen Moore to diversify a bad weather game plan or simply a clinic in outthinking oneself. For Moore especially, it was a curious afternoon that will certainly surface during his upcoming head coaching interviews.
• Third-and-8 from the Rams’ 30-yard line with 9:04 remaining in the second quarter: Hurts, with Kenneth Gainwell in the backfield to protect, drops back to almost the 40-yard line. Byron Young creeps in from the linebacker position late and muddies up the protection for the Eagles, and all of a sudden a three-man Rams pressure feels like a tidal wave. Hurts is sacked for a loss of nine yards and the Eagles are forced to punt.
• Second-and-8 from the Rams’ 32-yard line with 30 seconds remaining in the second quarter: Hurts, again with Gainwell in the backfield to protect, drops back to the 40-yard line. Linebacker Omar Speights shows blitz late and is passed up by Becton, who seems to think he has help in the backfield from Gainwell. Hurts is sacked (and then sacked again on the next play, an attempted Hail Mary).
• Second-and-6 from the Eagles’ 8-yard line with 26 seconds remaining in the third quarter: Hurts, this time with Barkley in the backfield, drops a yard into his own end zone. He passes up what looks like a completable ball to Dallas Goedert and can’t make it to a second read after Neville Gallimore has him by the waist. By this point, Hurts had already clearly been showing signs of injury.
One would think this would have ended the experiment. However…
• Second-and-7 from the Eagles’ 33-yard line with 2:44 to go in the fourth quarter, with the Eagles up by six points and the Rams in possession of two timeouts (plus the two-minute warning): Hurts fakes a handoff and drops deep into the backfield. Kobie Turner, clearly understanding Hurts’s lack of mobility, rushes straight toward Hurts and brings him down in the backfield, dramatically improving the Rams’ field position on a possible game-winning drive.
The Eagles also nearly attempted a tush push with an injured Hurts before Lane Johnson was called for a false start.
And so, we’re left with this kind of puzzle that, like Sirianni’s example, heightens with complexity and significance this time of year. Does it matter at all the deeper this team gets into the postseason and keeps on winning anyway? Or, should we simply take a cue from the coach who believes that it’s an overwhelming positive when component parts can overcome some kind of adversity or deficiency—even if that deficiency is the coaching. Even if the adversity seems to be man made.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Eagles Are One Game From Super Bowl, Despite Coaching Deficiencies.
