The Eagles’ season-opening victory over Patriots is ugly, with a capital UGH

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — It took the Eagles defense shrugging off the kind of mistake that makes a stadium full of people and millions more watching at home gasp — a fumble by Jalen Hurts, by a team’s quarterback, by a team’s best player — and that suddenly casts doubt on the outcome of a game that looked like an assured victory. It took Jordan Davis and Josh Sweat sacking Mac Jones on one play and Milton Williams pressuring Jones on the next and the Eagles turning away the Patriots on one final fourth down.

It took the Eagles defense shrugging off the puzzling decision-making of Nick Sirianni and new offensive coordinator Brian Johnson, including an odd-looking pass play on fourth-and-2 with two minutes left in regulation — a pass that fell incomplete and set up the Patriots to seize a late lead and, maybe, the game.

It took Jalen Carter shrugging off the Patriots’ pass-blocking and sacking Jones on second down and the rest of the unit holding up on third and fourth downs as the clock at last left the Eagles with nothing else to fear.

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Eagles 25, Patriots 20.

Whew.

It took a lot.

It took Haason Reddick shrugging off the Patriots’ offensive linemen just like Carter did, finally finding and grabbing Jones on an earlier fourth down, making his first play after a long late afternoon of coming after Jones and getting nowhere close to a sack or a hit or a hurry until little less than 10 minutes remained in regulation.

It took Hurts and A.J. Brown shrugging off a beautiful-but-overturned 48-yard completion to connect three more times on a 52-yard drive that ended inside the New England 35-yard line.

It took Jake Elliott shrugging off a missed extra point to boom three long field goals in the second half, each of the last two from more than 50 yards, each more important than the last.

It took the Eagles shrugging off some major special-teams messiness and a defense whose middle was as soft as marzipan and Johnson’s odd affinity for running the ball on third-and-long.

It took all that shrugging and struggling for the Eagles to emerge from Gillette Stadium with a victory in their season opener. Put it this way: If the next 16 games are anything like this one, every pharmacy in the Greater Philadelphia area is going to sell out of antacids by Christmas.

This was ugly, with a capital UGH. The Eagles were the more talented team but didn’t play like it. They were outcoached, which, in fairness, could be expected, given Bill Belichick was on the opposite sideline. It took them the first half and then some to decipher Belichick’s coverage and blitz schemes. “That’s what the NFL is,” Hurts said. “It’s a league of disguises.” And Belichick is a master. He had them flummoxed. They ain’t the first.

But they won. It is all that matters in this league, and they can still come away from this game, this morass of mistakes and sloppy play, with a couple of reasons to be upbeat. Carter — their rookie defensive tackle, their first-round pick in this year’s draft, the consensus best player in that draft — was a force. He was in Jones’ face all day. He had that vital sack and six pressures to boot. He was everything the Eagles hoped he would be.

They can still rely on Brown and DeVonta Smith for big plays, to open up the rest of the offense. Everyone should consider the possibility, even the likelihood, that the Patriots will have one of the better defenses that the Eagles will face this season, even one of the better defenses in the entire NFL. They certainly have, in Belichick, the best defensive mind in the game.

“Shoot,” Sirianni said, “a Bill Belichick-coached team, it’s going to be well coached. We just didn’t finish some drives. We got in a rut in the second quarter, then didn’t finish some drives late in the game.”

So as conservative and unimaginative as Johnson’s play-calling was at times, the Eagles still have enough talent to overcome it.

It’s just not something they want to try on a regular basis. Hurts took that solid hit from Jabrill Peppers, and the ball popped into the air and ended up in the mitts of Marcus Jones, and from here, from 300 miles away, you could hear all of Philadelphia moan and scream in disbelief ... then sigh in relief at the result.

So much of last season was so easy for the Eagles — the 14-3 regular-season record, the two lopsided wins in the NFC playoff tournament, Hurts’ rise to excellence, big leads, dozens of sacks. This was one week. This was a unique opponent, with a brain trust that can test any coaching staff. And this was a victory. They got their rear ends kicked and won anyway. That’s nothing to shrug off in the NFL.