The Eagles win ugly, but show signs of promise late for a Philly sports landscape with a bleak outlook

If you need to feel good about the Eagles, and we know you do, then don’t scrutinize too closely their homely home win over the undermanned, dysfunctional Cleveland Browns.

Use the win as painkiller for the Phillies’ four-game loss in the NLDS last week to, of all teams, the clearly inferior Mets.

Use the win as a distraction from the news that Joel Embiid’s chronic knee issues will keep him out of the preseason, which will limit his play in the early-season games, and might cause complications with the team’s prospects, especially since he’s never played with $211 million, 34-year-old free agent Paul George. But hey, at least Embiid won a meaningless gold medal as a prop player for Team USA, his third country of citizenship.

Use the Eagles’ fourth quarter as your reason for hope in this season of dismay.

Use A.J. Brown’s six catches for 116 yards and a TD as a light in the darkness, including a 40-yard reception after the two-minute warning that pretty much clinched a 20-16 win, plays or options conceived of by embattled offensive coordinator Kellen Moore.

“Kellen called a perfect game — at the end of that game,” said head coach and chief fan chastiser Nick Sirianni, whose team moved to 3-2.

Take comfort in the fact that, for the first time in 10 games, Jalen Hurts did not turn the ball over.

“Just coming out and playing clean,” said Hurts.

His 126.1 passer rating was his best in 13 games. He went 16-for-25 for 264 yards, with touchdowns to each of his biggest weapons, largely without tight end Dallas Goedert, who left early with a hamstring injury. Hurts hit his understudy, Grant Calcaterra, four times for 67 yards.

“I thought Jalen played an unbelievable game today,” Sirianni said.

Delight, perhaps, in the fourth-quarter drive that supplied the winning touchdown, the most efficient the offense has looked since Game 1. Saquon Barkley began it with 6 of his 47 rushing yards. (Cleveland schemed to stop him, and did.) Brown kept it moving with a 12-yard, catch-and-run on which he broke a tackle. DeVonta Smith finished it off with a 45-yard catch-and-run that made it 20-13 with 7 minutes, 54 seconds to play.

“It’s all about chipping away,” said Smith, acknowledging how defenses have adapted. “We knew we’re not going to get the big plays, probably. Eventually, it’s going to come. One is going to pop.”

Rejoice, maybe, in the defense’s proficiency. It allowed just three field goals. It sacked Deshaun Watson five times. It was pretty good.

“We just have to stop making it a week-to-week thing,” said Josh Sweat, who had one of the sacks. The Jekyll-and-Hyde defense has surrendered 29, 22, 12, 33, and now 16 points — but, really, just nine, because the Browns’ touchdown came off a blocked field goal.

”I know we can be dominant,” Sweat said. “This week was a big step.”

Against a 1-5 Browns team?

“Yeah, I’m gonna be real,” Sweat said. “Some of these games shouldn’t even be close.”

Perhaps. Perhaps not.

For the moment, for your own mental health, ignore the score. Just because the Eagles were a nine-point favorite for most of the week, that doesn’t necessarily represent the most likely result.

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There are no style points in the NFL. There are no voters to cast votes for rankings. The Eagles are 3-2. They have winnable games the next three weeks.

So, don’t fret so much about the end of the first half, which went like this:

Barkley, the best player on the team, ran out of bounds short of the first down, untouched, ostensibly to preserve one of the Eagles’ three timeouts. The Eagles, typically disorganized, needed to use a timeout anyway before the next play, even though the clock was stopped.

On the next play, Barkley whiffed trying to block blitzing linebacker Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah, which forced the Eagles to try a 57-yard field goal.

Myles Garrett hopped clean over Tyler Steen and blocked the kick. Former Eagles safety Rodney McLeod ran the ball back 50 yards for a tying touchdown. It was 10-10 at halftime.

Don’t worry about the latest slow start.

The Eagles somehow completed their fifth first quarter without scoring a single point. They remained the only team among the 32 in the NFL without a first-quarter point. On the other hand, they scored less than two minutes into the second quarter, which is the earliest they’ve scored so far this season.

“It’s all fixable things,” Hurts said.

Look, the Eagles offense remains a work in progress.

Blame that on the absence of participation of the principal players in the preseason. Blame it on injury: The Birds have been without Brown, Smith, and right tackle Lane Johnson for a game or two apiece. Blame it on Hurts’ regression; NFL defensive coaches clearly have caught up with Hurts, whose dynamism has been muted for 12 consecutive games.

But, if nothing else, the Eagles provided on Sunday afternoon a beacon of hope for a town lately bludgeoned by disappointment: two postseason collapses by the Sixers, two postseason collapses by the Phillies, a second-half collapse in Super Bowl LVII, and last year’s collapse at the end of the Eagles’ regular season and a playoff blowout loss.

Maybe the Birds showed something Sunday.

“Today,” Hurts said, “we played Eagles football.”