In a thorough beatdown from start to finish, the Philadelphia Eagles demolished the Minnesota Vikings 24-7.
It started early with quarterback Jalen Hurts taking the Eagles offense down the field 82 yards for a three-yard rushing touchdown to take a 7-0 lead. The Eagles didn’t look back from then on and dominated from there on out.
Hurts was incredible all night, completing 26-of-31 for 333 yards and a touchdown along with 57 yards and two touchdowns on the ground.
He spread the ball out well with DeVonta Smith (7-80), A.J. Brown (5-69) and Dallas Goedert (5-82) all getting adequate touches on the outside. They were all consistently getting open and taking advantage of yards after the catch.
On the defensive side of the football, the Eagles came to play. They pressured Kirk Cousins consistently and while they only got two sacks, they altered a lot of throws and the back seven batted down 11 passes and intercepted Cousins three times.
For the Vikings, nothing was clicking on offense. They tried to focus on getting Justin Jefferson the football but he only was able to catch six passes for 48 yards. The other wide receivers didn’t do much better as Adam Thielen (4-52) and K.J. Osborn were also relatively invisible (2-25).
The biggest story of the game was Cousins. He was flat out abysmal all night. He wasn’t making great reads, threw way too many passes into coverage and had three intercepted when it should have been more like six. The Vikings star quarterback had a classic dud on Monday Night Football.
The defense didn’t help him much either. Defensive coordinator Ed Donatell ran his defense and tried to keep everything in front of them with the idea being that they would have to hit every layup to beat them and the Eagles did just that. The real frustrating element was that Donatell didn’t adjust to play a more aggressive coverage style when that wasn’t working.
Overall, the Vikings currently sit at 1-1 heading into next Sunday’s matchup against the Detroit Lions.
