Dominating the Cowboys continued a post-bye trend for the Eagles. Up next, a chance to seize the division.
The Eagles can boost their lead in the NFC East come Thursday night.
ARLINGTON, Texas — Two football teams, two very different directions.
The physical manifestation of that played out over 60 minutes inside AT&T Stadium, though all it really took was 40 for the Eagles to assert their dominance over the Dallas Cowboys during their 34-6 win.
The reality of where these teams are right now was easy to see on the ground level of the stadium. Outside one locker room, Jerry Jones gave a hard-to-follow soliloquy about the sun and the moon. Back on Earth, inside the visitor’s locker room, there was a smiling welcoming committee. Howie Roseman and Jeffrey Lurie greeted Eagles players and coaches as they exited the field, winners here for the first time since 2017.
Cathartic victory in hand, Roseman kept repeating a version of the same phrase: “Let’s get out of here quick and get home,” he said. A normal sentiment after any road game, but it had more importance Sunday. While the Cowboys and their owner, winless in four home games so far, figure out the value of curtains and the angle of the sun, the Eagles have a quick turnaround before their next game, a Thursday night showdown vs. second-place Washington.
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A win Thursday — which they will be favored to attain — would give them a 1½-game stranglehold on the NFC East with seven games to go, a remarkable sentence to type given how things felt the afternoon of Sept. 29, when the Eagles, under the hot sun in Tampa, Fla., were dealt an embarrassing 33-16 defeat.
They have since won five straight games — a perfect 5-for-5 since a Week 5 bye-week reset that came at a perfect time. There was a lot going on during those first four weeks. The Eagles won their opener in Brazil. They returned to Philadelphia and erased a good start by losing to Atlanta in a way — Jalen Hurts turning the ball over and Nick Sirianni making questionable time-management decisions — that gave an unnecessary reminder of how things went south in 2023. Star receivers A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith suffered injuries.
Even out of the bye, during a win over Cleveland that nearly got away from the Eagles, Sirianni jawed with fans behind the bench and then defiantly declared that wins are wins, no matter what they look like.
Yet here they are, despite that rocky start, a characterization with which Saquon Barkley disagreed.
“I wouldn‘t say it was rocky,” he said. “I think you guys made it seem rocky. No offense. You guys are doing your job, but panic outside the locker room was from outside the locker room. It wasn‘t in here. We had no panic. We kind of treated it like the preseason games, to be honest. That was kind of the mindset. We were like, ’All right, we’re done with preseason. Now let’s go get things shaking.’”
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Things are shaking. Is there a more developed chemistry that’s showing now?
“We had the chemistry when we were 2-2,” Barkley said. “Just stuff happened. We were banged up, we weren’t playing our best ball, it was all a new system, there’s all the excuses we could have in the world. We’re not going to make them, but at the end of the day, that’s what it was, and you got to find your groove.”
A groove, they have found. The Eagles have outscored their opponents, 147-65, over the last five games. They are forcing takeaways — five of them Sunday — and learning to win offensively in different ways. That mostly has meant a reliance on Barkley, but on Sunday, it was Hurts doing it with his legs and his arm, shaking off two turnovers on his way to four total touchdowns. The wins haven’t come against the NFL’s best, but all the Eagles can do is play who’s on their schedule.
“There’s a lot of positive things going on right now, and the beauty is we still haven’t scratched the surface,” Barkley said. “That’s kind of the scary thing. We got to stop saying that. We got to start putting things together, and we look forward to the challenge that’s coming up this week.”
What will it look like when the surface isn’t just scratched?
“Probably scary,” Barkley said. “I don’t know. But at the end of the day the most important thing is winning football games and we’re on a pretty good streak right now, 2-0 in the division.”
They have a chance to get to 3-0 Thursday against the surprising Washington Commanders, who are 7-3 after losing Sunday at home to the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Eagles were due to land in Philadelphia after midnight and have the shortest of short weeks. Sunday’s blowout, however, allowed them a chance to rest their starters.
There was some brief fun in the locker room, but it was time to move on. Even animated safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson, normally not one to hold back, was reserved. Gardner-Johnson had made his share of plays. He crushed Cowboys receiver Jalen Tolbert on the first play from scrimmage, setting the tone for a defense that allowed just 146 net yards against a pair of backup quarterbacks and forced five turnovers — the last an interception by Gardner-Johnson, his second in three weeks.
But the trash-talking tone setter kept it all in perspective.
“It’s just one of many games right now that we’ve got to continue to put together and continue to understand that this is not over,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of ball left, and we’re ready to keep playing.”