Fan-genius! Vic’s defense, Saquon Barkley’s greatness leave Eagles as NFC’s second-best Super Bowl contender

Saquon Barkley and Vic Fangio.

That’s the formula.

Nick Sirianni knows it. Howie Roseman knows it. The Washington Commanders sure as heck know it.

You can say a lot of bad things about the way the Eagles looked on Thursday night. Sloppy, disjointed, lacking some serious pizzazz at the game’s most important position. All true, and all irrelevant after a 26-18 win over the Commanders improved them to 8-2. The real mark of a good football team is the end result of games like this. Winning ugly isn’t a skill. It’s an identity. The Eagles have it — for the first time in years.

» READ MORE: Eagles beat Commanders 26-18 for sixth straight win as Saquon Barkley scores 2 TDs and the defense stands tall

Are they a perfect team? Of course not. The quarterback was off the mark way more than he was on it. The head coach made the right fourth-down calls and then watched his formerly automatic kicker miss a pair of field goals. The passing game looked lost any time DeVonta Smith and A.J. Brown weren’t open on slant patterns in the middle of the field.

No, they sure aren’t perfect. Far from it. It’s the reason they found themselves where they were at the start of the fourth quarter: trailing at home to a less talented team.

But they are built differently this year. They are built like the teams that usually find themselves in the thick of things deep into the postseason. They are winning the games where they don’t look great. They are making it OK for their quarterback to be only OK.

Credit two men. The defensive coordinator and the running back. They weren’t the only reasons the Eagles won this one. But they were the biggest (with sincere apologies to Jalen Carter and Zack Baun).

Fangio was at his finest Thursday night. The circumstances were as difficult as they get. For some reason, the NFL scheduled the Eagles for a 4 p.m. road game on the Sunday before they were due to play a Thursday night home game against a division opponent. On a short week, every hour counts. Fangio had 75 fewer of them to prepare for a Commanders offense that has a rookie quarterback, a new offensive coordinator, and exactly 10 games on tape. The spot was far more dangerous than you would have assumed when the schedule came out.

“Short weeks, man, everybody knows you can’t put in too much [to the game plan],” defensive end Brandon Graham said.

Fangio, a baseball guy, didn’t pitch a shutout. But this was at least nine innings of one-run ball. The Commanders thrive on confusion unlike any other team in the league. The thing that makes their three-headed rushing attack so dangerous is that all three heads are on the field at the same time. Brian Robinson going one way, Austin Ekeler going the other, Jayden Daniels getting the snap in the middle.

“I feel like we probably underestimated how tough the looks would be until we got out there playing,” said linebacker Nakobe Dean, who played a key role in limiting the dynamic Daniels to his second-lowest rushing output of the season. “I don’t know if we just didn’t get enough live looks because it was a short week or something, but I feel like we did an OK job of stopping it.”

» READ MORE: The Eagles pulled out the Commanders’ hearts in a battle of Thursday Night Football attrition. It’s the mark of a really good team.

Washington entered the night with the fourth-best rushing attack in the league, averaging 153.5 yards per game and 4.9 yards per attempt. They’d rushed for 200 yards in a game a remarkable four of their first 10 games. The Pittsburgh Steelers and the Baltimore Ravens shut them down, leading to two of their three losses. Now, Fangio and the Eagles have delivered a fourth.

“It’s a bunch of eye candy,” Graham said of Washington’s misdirection attack. “Everyone’s got to do their job. When one guy goes this way, you’ve got to go there with him and trust other people to make the plays. Because as soon as you don’t, they get you out of your gaps, and that’s how they get you. We saw it on film, and that’s what they tried to do to us. Everybody just played their part.”

There haven’t been many opportunities over the last few seasons to mention the Eagles defense in the same breath as those of the Steelers and Ravens. But that is where they are. And it can carry them a long way.

Just look at what they did to Washington.

— Joined the Steelers as the only two teams to hold Daniels, the electric dual-threat rookie quarterback, under 20 yards rushing in a game. The former LSU star entered Week 11 averaging 8.5 attempts and 46.4 yards per game. Against the Eagles, he managed just 18 yards on seven carries.

— Held Daniels’ go-to target, the always-dangerous Terry McLaurin, to two targets, one catch, and 10 receiving yards.

— Held Washington to four plays or less on over half of their drives.

The statement moment came with a little over nine minutes remaining in the fourth quarter and the Eagles clinging to a 12-10 lead. Washington was facing a second-and-1 at the Eagles 25-yard line, already in position for a go-ahead field goal.

Really, it was three moments.

— Carter stuffs Robinson for no gain on second-and-1.

— Third-and-1: Same result.

— Fourth-and-1 Commanders eschew the go-ahead field goal to their own detriment: Daniels rolls right on a designed run. The entire Eagles defense rolls with him. Reed Blankenship and Baun knock him hard out of bounds.

It was already over, even before Barkley laid the death blow with a 39-yard-touchdown rumble on the ensuing drive. In fact, we’d already seen the Saquon Barkley Play.

You know what I mean. The Play. The one that comes every week, often in these sorts of circumstances. This time, it came on third-and-6 midway through the third quarter. The Eagles spread out the Commanders defense, leaked Barkley out of the backfield into the middle of the field, then watched him do his thing. After using a change of angle and speed to make the first (and only) would-be tackler miss, Barkley exploded down the wide-open field. With a trio of Commanders defenders converging on him near the 35-yard-line, he somehow accelerated, earning himself at least another 10 or 15 yards and very nearly exploding out of the other side like some kind of action movie hero with the world caving in. From punting the ball away at their own 40 to a first-and-10 at the Commanders’ 17-yard-line. That’s what Barkley did, just as he seemingly does once a week: flipped the field, and the script. After a Jake Elliott field goal and a quick three-and-out, the Eagles had the ball and that all-important designation: the team you’d rather be, even if you’re the team that’s down 10-6.

» READ MORE: Eagles grades: Saquon Barkley, the entire secondary deserve game balls vs. Commanders

“The run game sets up play-action, sets up a lot of stuff, but I really think our defense has played lights out and set us up in positions to win,” Eagles right tackle Lane Johnson said. “We didn’t have a great first half. They bailed us out numerous times … Coach Fangio and his staff are doing a great job of keeping them focused. Maybe our offense can match their intensity in the first half and make games not so close.”

It would definitely help. But winning the close ones matters a lot. The Eagles have a devastating combination: a running back who can do things that no other running back can, and a veteran defensive coordinator who has spent a couple of months learning how to deploy the vast trove of weapons at his disposal.

The Eagles are a tough team. They are going to be a tough out.