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Photo Credits: Sarah Stier - Getty Images
On Sunday, the Philadelphia Eagles handedly beat the New York Giants by a final score of 48 to 22. The Eagles offense was virtually unstoppable throughout the entirety of the game and didn't seem to miss a beat, even when Head Coach Nick Sirianni pulled the majority of his starters mid way through the 4th quarter. Below are three key observations from this game.
The "We Score a Lot of Points" Club
If you had told me at the beginning of the season that, with four weeks left until the start of the playoffs, A.J. Brown, Jalen Hurts, and Miles Sanders would all have at least ten touchdowns, I wouldn't have believed you. Not because all of these players aren't good, but just because of the amount of offensive weapons that the Eagles have. For any single skill player to have ten or more touchdowns in a season is impressive. But for the Eagles to have multiple when they have a variety of "mouths to feed", in terms of getting different players the ball, speaks to their offensive efficiency. Watch and enjoy these A.J. Brown and Miles Sanders touchdowns.
A.J. Brown and Miles Sanders are the first Eagles WR/RB combo to both go over 1,000 yards since Jeremy Maclin and LeSean McCoy in 2014. But of course, none of this could be possible without Jalen Hurts playing out of his mind. Like Sanders, Hurts also scored his tenth rushing touchdown today and became only the second quarterback in NFL history to have double digit rushing touchdowns in consecutive seasons. Oh, and he still threw for 217 yards and two touchdowns on 31 attempts today. Hurts is playing like the league MVP, and his success has spilled over to Brown and Sanders.
One final thought on the Eagle's offense. Per StatMuse, the Eagles have a point differential this season of 138. This differential is the best in the league, followed only closely behind by the Buffalo Bills and the Dallas Cowboys. While the Eagles defense has certainly played a role in this, the Eagles offense being able to drop 48 points on a division rival is the reason why they're leading the league in this category.
The "We Get a Lot of Sacks" Club
Maybe House Enterprise's Presidente, Will Tondo, would agree with me that the Giants offensive line isn't terrible. Maybe Tondo wouldn't agree with that take. I think it depends on when you asked him that question.
The Eagles managed to sack Daniel Jones and Tyrod Taylor a combined seven times today for their second most sacks in a game this season. The pressure that the Eagles were able to generate had a decisive affect on Daniel Jones and the entire Giant's offense this game. There were multiple times where Philly's edge defenders would collapse the edge and push Jones up into the pocket where he was swallowed by a combination of Fletcher Cox, Javon Hargrave, and others.
Beyond dominating the Giants up front, the cool part about this game is that, with today's seven sacks, the Eagles have four defensive lineman that already have, or are close to, ten sacks on the year.
The one Eagle from that list that I really hope makes it to ten sacks is Brandon Graham. He's not a national name like Haason Reddick, but he's by far my favorite Eagle. A 13 year veteran of the team, Graham has always come up big when the Eagles have needed him the most. He had arguably the most impactful play in franchise history when he strip sacked Tom Brady in Super Bowl LII and all but guaranteed the Eagles first championship. Graham has never gotten to double digit sacks in the regular season before, so I hope that with four games remaining, he's able to get it done. Anyways, here's one of the three sacks he managed to get today.
One last thing to note about the Eagle's defensive line. As Jimmy Kempski pointed out in the tweet above, the Eagles now have 49 sacks this season while they only had 29 all of last season. A team potentially DOUBLING the amount of sacks they had from last year is pretty incredible. With that context in mind, is the Giants offensive line bad? Or, are the Eagle's defensive line just that good? Ask Tondo for his take.
The "Kind of Scary Injuries" Club:
Heading into the season, the Eagles had quality starters at every position. The starters were never the issue. The problem was the depth that they had at certain positions. The Eagles' safeties room had arguably the worst depth. Unfortunately, in this game against the Giants, the position group got even thinner. Against the Packers, the Eagles lost starting safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson. Undrafted rookie Reed Blankenship stepped in and played pretty well in Gardner-Johnson's absence. However, the Eagles lost Blankenship pretty early on in this game, meaning they had to turn to K'Von Wallace to play the rest of the game.
K'Von Wallace hasn't been the strongest of contributors in his time thus far in Philly. Despite this being his third year with the team after being drafted in 2020, he hasn't done anything to inspire confidence in his playmaking ability. In fact, Wallace started the year as the team's third safety, before being passed on the depth chart by Reed Blankenship. All of this is to say that the Eagles need to hope that either one of Garner-Johnson or Blankenship gets healthy soon, because it was apparent that the Giants were looking to pick on Wallace and they even had some success with that. Beyond Wallace, there's not many options for this team. After Blankenship went down, Wallace and the other Eagles starting safety, Marcus Epps, were the only safeties on the team's roster.
Another damaging injury that occurred today happened to Eagles punter, Arryn Siposs. After a blocked punt deep in Eagle's territory, Siposs managed to pick the ball up and run almost to the first down marker. It looked, however, that Siposs was the victim of a late hit and subsequently had his ankle hurt. It was so bad that he eventually needed to be carted off the field. This is a potentially catastrophic injury to the Eagle's special teams unit, which has looked anything but great this season. The Eagle's kicker, Jake Elliot was able to pass as serviceable in relief of Siposs. However, this still isn't a great situation to be in heading into the last weeks of the regular season.
Up Next:
The Philadelphia Eagles play the Chicago Bears next week. I like the Eagle's chances in this game, but I think the score will be closer than most would think. My prediction is that the Eagles win next week with a final score of 35 to 28.
Go Birds!!!!!!!!!!