Four key questions facing the Eagles as they reach the bye week

The first half of their season is in the books with the Eagles in an advantageous position for the playoff push at 8-1.

Just beyond the halfway point, here are four major questions that face the team now that it has reached the bye week.

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After surrendering nearly 800 passing yards in the last two games, the Eagles’ dominant defensive performance against the Miami Dolphins is starting to feel like a distant memory.

Even with the impressive Week 7 win over the high-powered Miami offense, the Eagles’ passing defense ranks 27th in efficiency against the pass by FTN Fantasy, which measures defense-adjusted value over average. It’s worth remembering that the Eagles’ passing defense ranked No. 1 in the metric last season.

The problems lie mostly with the secondary, which has been a bit of a revolving door at the slot cornerback and safety spots this season. The Eagles have started 10 defensive backs this year and that doesn’t even count major contributors like Eli Ricks and Bradley Roby. By comparison, last year’s team started just six players in the secondary over the entire season.

With recently acquired veteran safety Kevin Byard in the fold, there’s hope for the secondary shuffle to settle in the coming weeks, barring injury. If it does, the question that remains is what the group is capable of doing with the benefit of continuity.

There will be games when any resurgence would still be a moot point. Even last year’s top-ranked group surrendered 24 second-half points to the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LVII, reinforcing the notion that elite offenses will outdo even the best defenses more often than not. Still, for the Eagles to get where they want to be, there will come times like Sunday when the defense will need to step up and get a crucial stop. Can the Eagles deliver in those moments?

The Eagles are outperforming their turnover differential by a significant margin at the halfway point.

After finishing plus-8 in the metric last year, they’re minus-2 through the first nine games of this season. For comparison’s sake, the other three teams with the same differential are the 1-8 Arizona Cardinals, 3-6 Los Angeles Rams, and 3-5 Green Bay Packers.

Turnovers stats and the luck that comes with them can often be volatile year-over-year. At least two of Jalen Hurts’ interceptions this season certainly felt more like ill fortune than anything else, but there have also been some favorable bounces to balance it out (the Eagles had three fumbles against the Cowboys but recovered each of them).

With the level of competition ratcheting up considerably in the second half of the season and presumably beyond, the Eagles are going to need to make their own luck on the other side of the bye.

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The Eagles have won a fair amount of one-score games this year (five), which is a tough way to make a living.

Some of their tight margins this year come down to slow starts leading to deficits that they’ve been able to overcome. Another part is the absence of the four-minute offense the Eagles have been so good at the last two years once they’ve secured a lead.

The last few weeks, the Eagles haven’t been able to grind down the clock when protecting a lead in the fourth quarter. They did so against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Week 3, bleeding nine-plus minutes off the clock to close out the game.

Against the Cowboys, the Eagles had just 3 minutes, 42 seconds of possession in the fourth quarter compared to the Cowboys’ 11:18. Their three drives in the quarter each lasted just three plays, including the final series, which ended with a D’Andre Swift fumble that fortunately bounced away from Cowboys edge rusher Micah Parsons.

The Eagles have averaged just 86.8 rushing yards per game over their last four weeks after averaging 164 yards in the five previous games.

When asked if the running game is a concern on Monday, Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said there’s more to it than the numbers would suggest, pointing to run-pass options and plays like Swift’s 22-yard “catch” on a jet sweep against the Cowboys when he received a forward pitch from Hurts as examples of runs in the Eagles books.

“I think the run game is executing differently than what you’ve seen,” he said. “Again, when you just look at a stat book, you’re not going to get that information exactly the way it is. ... There’s more to the run game, like those numbers, than just what the stats say.”

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Hurts’ production as a passer the last two games has overshadowed the limitations his injured left knee have placed on him as a runner, but it’s still fair to wonder if he’ll be able to return from the bye closer to full strength and, if not, when that may happen.

As unquestionable as Hurts’ toughness is, getting the quarterback back to his elusive ways would go a long way toward helping the Eagles’ stagnant running game and also make him more capable of protecting himself from rushers like Cowboys defensive end DeMarcus Lawrence, whose helmet collided with Hurts’ left knee on Sunday.

Hurts has dealt with injuries in each of the last three seasons and this one came earlier than the previous years. Getting him close to 100% might not be an outright necessity, but it could be the difference as the season rounds into the final stretch.