Eagles stats: Jalen Carter’s career day, run-block domination key win over Jaguars at the halfway mark

The Eagles beat the Jacksonville Jaguars, 28-23, on Sunday and probably should have won the game by a much larger margin instead of what actually happened — a late end-zone interception sealed a win that almost was improbably ripped away from them.

The game featured a few plays that will be remembered around here for a long time and continued some trends that have been prominent during the team’s four-game winning streak.

Here are three stats that help tell the story of Sunday’s win, and one that summarizes where the Eagles stand through eight games:

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Saquon Barkley and DeVonta Smith stole the spotlight with their out-of-this-world athleticism, and Nakobe Dean’s interception put a bow on another good day by the defense, so you could be forgiven if you didn’t notice how good Jalen Carter was Sunday.

He had one of the best games of his career, according to Next Gen Stats.

Carter tied a career high with six pressures, and three of them came against double teams, also tying a single-game high for Carter. What’s more, Carter generated five of his six pressures against Jaguars right guard Brandon Scherff, a five-time Pro Bowl selection and 2020 first-team All-Pro. Scherff, according to Next Gen Stats, had not allowed more than four pressures to a single player over the last seven seasons.

Carter did this while playing an astounding 96% (52) of the team’s 56 defensive snaps. The 52 snaps matched the second-most he has played in a game, and the percentage share was the highest of Carter’s 25-game NFL career.

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How good has Barkley been? He has nearly surpassed his 2023 rushing yards total with the Giants (962 in 14 games) with 925 in his first eight games with the Eagles.

The big difference? Reserve offensive lineman Nick Gates, a former teammate of Barkley’s in New York, was onto something at the beginning of the season when he said he was excited to see Barkley run behind a line that can block.

Even without starting left tackle Jordan Mailata, who remains sidelined with a hamstring injury, the Eagles had their best run-blocking day of 2024 on Sunday, according to Pro Football Focus, which graded the team’s run blocking at 75.6, just ahead of the 75.5 grade from the Week 1 victory in Brazil.

Leading the way was Mekhi Becton, who returned after missing last week’s game in Cincinnati with a concussion. PFF gave Becton a grade of 92.3 for his run blocking, the highest number of his career. Lane Johnson (91.2) also had a dominant day.

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A.J. Brown’s departure from the game with a knee injury after halftime opened the door for Smith to be the featured pass catcher in the offense. He sprinted through it.

Smith’s greatness often is hidden by Brown and Barkley, but he remains an elite route runner and catcher.

His 45-yard touchdown catch last week in Cincinnati was his first reception of the season that Next Gen Stats classifies as a “deep” catch (20-plus air yards). Smith added two Sunday a few plays apart. First, Jalen Hurts waited for Smith to finish a perfect route and hit him in stride on the left sideline. That set up what would have been the game’s best play had Barkley not hurdled backward over a defender: a one-handed, toe-dragging catch in the back of the end zone.

According to Next Gen Stats, Smith now has 5.8 receptions over expected, a metric that calculates the difference between actual receptions and the receptions a player is expected to haul in.

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The Eagles are at a pseudo-halfway mark, with their Week 9 game in the rearview. There is no real halfway mark in a 17-game schedule, but there are 18 game weeks in the NFL season, so here we are.

There has been enough narrative this season about an offense that at times isn’t firing on all cylinders, and that sometimes has been the case. But the Eagles ended Sunday posting 377.1 yards of offense per game, which ranks sixth in the NFL, and they’re increasingly becoming a run-first offense that features Barkley in a big way.

The Eagles are second in the NFL in rushing yards per game (174.8) and 20th in passing yards (202.4).

They’re lagging behind a little in the points department. Despite being sixth in yards, they’re 11th in points per game (24.9), which probably is a reflection of what happened Sunday, when they left quite a few points on the board.