The Eagles staggered and stumbled, but A.J. Brown caught them before they fell on their face
The Eagles’ performance was uneven at best, but it was good enough against the Commanders.
LANDOVER, Md. — The Eagles spent most of Sunday afternoon here at FedEx Field making like a tipsy tourist at the edge of the Reflecting Pool, swaying, stumbling, threatening to embarrass themselves by falling in. What is it about the Washington Commanders that causes them so much trouble, that turns what is usually a well-coached and efficient football team into one that can be so mediocre and maddening?
The Eagles turned the ball over twice inside the Washington 5-yard line — once on the invulnerable and unstoppable Tush Push. They barely bothered to cover the Commanders’ receivers once those receivers made their way into the middle of the field. Against an offensive line that had allowed the most sacks in the league, they couldn’t bring down Sam Howell behind the line of scrimmage until the final three minutes of the fourth quarter.
If all this sounds like nitpicking to you, considering that the Eagles won, 38-31, improved to 7-1, and remained atop the NFC, then you probably were outside Sunday, apple-picking. The Eagles’ performance was uneven at best, and it’s a testament to the talent that Howie Roseman and his staff have accumulated (and the residue that remains on the Commanders from their decades of incompetence) that the Eagles survived. Washington couldn’t cover A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith — in fairness, no one can cover Brown at the moment — and when Reed Blankenship intercepted a Howell pass to set up Julio Jones’ winning touchdown catch, it was the first positive play of consequence that Sean Desai’s defense made all day.
Yes, the Eagles and their fiercest defenders will tell you: a win is a win is a win. But … you wonder. You have to wonder. Before kickoff, Jalen Hurts was given a relatively clean bill of health by one of the NFL’s approved information brokers, Fox’s Jay Glazer, who said that Hurts “has been dealing with a bone bruise in his knee for four weeks. He plays through this stuff. He took a helmet to it last week, and it got re-aggravated. He’s fine.” No, what Hurts is, is tough. He threw for 319 yards and four touchdowns on that injured knee, but anyone with eyes to see could tell that Hurts was limping at times, tentative to leave the pocket at others. This was a concern last week, when he donned a brace on his left leg to get through the game against the Dolphins. It remains a concern now.
The Eagles can win games like this. They are good enough to do it. They can slog and struggle and find a way. They did that Sunday. It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t pretty, and the whole process almost resulted in a lot of questions and a lot of frustration ahead of their matchup next Sunday at home against the Cowboys. They stumbled and staggered and could have fallen in, and the consolation is that Brown likely would have caught them before they did.