Eagles-Steelers takeaways: Jordan Mailata’s ‘hate-love’ relationship with Tush Push; Jalen Hurts’ ceiling-raising game

The Eagles turned in yet another statement victory on Sunday, beating the Pittsburgh Steelers in a fashion that further cements them as one of the league’s best teams with legitimate Super Bowl aspirations.

The 27-13 home win extended their winning streak to 10 games and helped them gain ground on the Detroit Lions in the race for the NFC’s No. 1 seed three weeks away from the postseason.

Here’s what we learned:

» READ MORE: A.J. Brown, Eagles passing game do the talking after a week of ‘uncomfortable conversations’

After spending more than 10 minutes of literal game time in a figurative rock fight, Jordan Mailata barely had the energy to jog through the tunnel and into the locker room after the game.

Breathless after greeting comedian Pete Davidson a few dozen feet from the locker room entrance, Mailata made a concession most in Philadelphia would be ostracized for entertaining while talking to a team official.

“I’m tired of that [expletive] Tush Push.”

Blasphemy for some perhaps, but for the gargantuan left tackle tasked with caving in one side of opposing defensive lines to clear a lane for Jalen Hurts, it’s understandable. The Eagles ran the quarterback sneak play with many names twice in an imposing fourth-quarter drive that spanned 88 yards and killed the final 10 minutes, 29 seconds of time remaining.

One of them ended in a first for Mailata: getting his finger stepped on at the bottom of the pile.

“I thought I lost a finger,” Mailata said. “I’m not lying. I was like [expletive], this is ridiculous.”

“I’m [expletive] tired of it, man,” Mailata added, half joking. “It’s a hate-love relationship. Because I know damn well that ball is going to the left side, so I don’t take it for granted.”

There have been a handful of occasions when the Eagles have iced games with long drives in the last few seasons, but Sunday’s win will likely rank near the top of the list. The Steelers had just two possessions in the second half, one that ended in a field goal and a second that dubiously ended in a punt from midfield down two scores. Over the course of the entire half, the Eagles had the ball for 24:10 compared to the Steelers’ 5:50.

» READ MORE: Eagles grades: Nick Sirianni kept the team focused amid drama, and the passing game thrived

Although the word “dominant” comes to mind when describing how the Eagles ran 21 plays to stay on the field despite injuries to Landon Dickerson earlier in the game and Mekhi Becton for a handful of plays on the final drive, Mailata said it felt like anything but in the moment.

“It didn’t feel like that,” Mailata said. “We had to earn every down. That was a great team that we played.”

For all of the first-quarter struggles the Eagles offense has had this season, the ability to kill off games in the fourth quarter shouldn’t be overlooked. Icing fourth quarters the way they did against Pittsburgh is a major asset in big games against talented offenses, which is exactly where they expect to find themselves in about a month.

Despite the convincing performance on both sides of the ball, Saquon Barkley’s 65 rushing yards on 19 attempts against a stingy Pittsburgh front hurt his chances of breaking the NFL’s single-season rushing record.

His case for the NFL’s Most Valuable Player award took a small ding as well after Bills quarterback Josh Allen, likely the front-runner for the trophy even before this weekend, was stellar in a win against the Detroit Lions.

Sunday’s developments might not be the worst thing for the Eagles’ ultimate goal, though. Chasing records wasn’t the priority for Barkley even before Sunday’s game knocked him slightly off the pace to break Eric Dickerson’s 2,105-yard mark set in 1984. After the running back spent extended portions of the win on the sideline because of a minor injury, the next three weeks might be better spent managing Barkley’s workload rather than pursuing history.

» READ MORE: Eagles’ Saquon Barkley deals ‘with a little something’ in Steelers slugfest and will ‘get ready for next week’

With 19 carries and two catches even after spending most of the second quarter sidelined, Barkley is up to 316 touches and on pace to finish with a career-high 383. Only 12 players have broken the 380-touch mark since 2010, with Josh Jacobs and Derrick Henry the most recent in 2022.

It might be time to pare down Barkley’s workload when possible in the next few weeks, especially with the Eagles having reasonable aspirations to play deep into the postseason.

Sifting through the initial numbers on Hurts’ performance, there are two that underscore why the resurgent showing was so encouraging.

One week after averaging a season-high 3.47 seconds time to throw, Hurts was down to 3.27 seconds against Pittsburgh, according to Next Gen Stats. It might not seem like much, but Hurts’ time to throw can often serve as a litmus test for the balance between plays in which he’s operating within the structure of the offense and the ones in which he’s extending plays because things go wrong.

The 3.27-second average falls in the middle of the pack for his averages in games this season, although it will still be one of the longest averages among quarterbacks in Week 15.

» READ MORE: Eagles’ Jalen Hurts says he has a broken left finger

The other number that stands out is Hurts’ expected completion percentage. I wrote a few months ago about Hurts’ often low expected completion percentage, a metric that determines probability of a completion based on several factors that include wide receiver separation and distance from the line of scrimmage. He often ranks toward the bottom in the metric, which can be explained in part by his tendency to target A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith on deep shots outside the numbers even when they have minimal separation.

Still, it can also illustrate how many difficult throws Hurts is either asked to make or how many he’s required to when things break down. For the season, Hurts has an expected completion percentage of 62.4%. It was 64.2% against the Carolina Panthers and 67.3% against Pittsburgh, his second highest this season, just behind the Eagles’ Week 11 win against the Washington Commanders.

Hurts in rhythm and able to find simpler answers within the structure of the offense to balance his ability to extend plays is a winning formula for the Eagles’ passing game. And it unlocks the ceiling of one of the league’s most talented offenses. Last week illustrated the floor for the offense, but Sunday’s showing was a major step in the right direction toward the group peaking at the right time.

Lane Johnson, up: How many tackles across the league can spend an entire game lined up against Steelers edge rusher T.J. Watt without help and still win the majority of the reps? Johnson has been so consistently elite it’s sometimes easy to forget just how important he is to the framework of the offense. Sunday shouldn’t be one of those times. He held Watt to one sack — that arguably wasn’t solely on him — in the type of performance that backs up his claim as the best offensive tackle in football.

» READ MORE: How the Eagles’ stingy defense stopped Russell Wilson and the Steelers

Tyler Steen, down: After a strong relief appearance earlier this season, Steen’s track record coming into games cold took a ding on Sunday. The second-year reserve lineman spent the entire second half at left guard in place of Landon Dickerson and was charged with two holding penalties on his first series. Steen seemingly settled in afterward and has played solidly when needed, but the rough start was hard to overlook.

Nolan Smith’s acrobatics, up: Smith is now up to 5½ sacks this season and had a solid game, but his most impressive athletic display won’t show up in the stat sheet. The second-year edge rusher leaped over Steelers running back Jaylen Warren in the second quarter for one of the most unique pass-rushing strategies I can remember seeing. Sure, he may have been better off trying to contain Russell Wilson in the pocket, but it’s hard to knock the audacity here.