The Eagles meet a standard that the Cowboys and the rest of the NFC East can’t reach

Dallas owner Jerry Jones maximizes attention and distractions. The Eagles generally avoid such self-inflicted wounds.

Jerry Jones (right) seems to love distractions while Jeffrey Lurie (left) and the Eagles try to avoid them at all costs.Read moreDavid Maialetti / Staff Photographer

Published Nov. 12, 2024, 5:00 a.m. ET

Sometimes people in the NFL — coaches, players, owners — say interesting things, and when they do, there are generally two standards that are used to evaluate what they said. The first standard is, Did it help or hurt the team? Fans and analysts focus on this standard a lot.

That’s why, for instance, Nick Sirianni’s unintentional revelation Friday that Jalen Hurts had an injured ankle drew so much attention. Coaches try to keep as much health-related information secret as they can, because making those details public provides their opponents with obvious soft targets. So it was noteworthy that Sirianni misinterpreted a question and let everyone know exactly where Hurts was hurting.

The second is simpler: Just how interesting was it? This is the gold standard for those of us who cover the league or a team without a rooting interest, from as detached and objective a perspective as possible. As one example, Andy Reid is among the best coaches in NFL history, and Rex Ryan had a winning record just twice in his eight years with the New York Jets and Buffalo Bills. Yet the choice between listening to Andy time’s-yoursing everyone to death and fact-checking the fallout of one of Rex’s mushroom-cloud press conferences was no choice at all. What can I say? Some men just want to watch the world burn.

Which brings us to the Eagles’ 34-6 rout Sunday of the Dallas Cowboys, Jerry Jones’s postgame remarks, and the significance of those remarks. Did you read them? Did you hear them? Oh, it was a scene. Jones speaks to the media after every game, even when the Cowboys are terrible — and make no mistake, the 2024 Cowboys, now 3-6 and likely without Dak Prescott until next season, are terrible. So Jones was already angry and frustrated, and someone asked him about the rays of sunlight that beamed through the windows of AT&T Stadium and quite literally blinded players on both teams. What about some curtains, Jerrah?

“Well, let’s tear the damn stadium down and build another one,” Jones told reporters. “Are you kidding me? Everybody has got the same thing. Every team that comes in here has the same issues. I’m saying the world knows where the sun is. You get to know that almost a year in advance. Someone asked me about the sun. What about the sun? Where’s the moon?”

Now, let’s go back to those two standards. If I covered the Cowboys regularly, I would sprint to their locker room each week to listen to Jones. Let him go on and on about Prescott’s contract and Mike McCarthy’s employment status and the sun and the moon and the Rolling Stones for all I care. All of it would be endlessly fascinating and make for wonderful commentary fodder.

But if I were a Cowboys fan, I would want Jones to shut up. I would want him to stop cultivating an environment in which every member of the organization feels emboldened to point his or her finger at everyone else. I would want him to stop allowing fans to tour the team’s headquarters — and charging them between $40 and $90, according to ESPN — while the coaches and players are working there, a scenario that, according to one former Cowboy, “feels like a zoo.” I would want him to stop chasing attention, because if he and his player-personnel staff managed to build a Super Bowl team — which they haven’t done in nearly 30 years — they’d get all the attention Jones desires and more. I would want Jones to stop creating … and here’s the most dreaded word in the NFL … distractions.

The Eagles, on the whole, and certainly in comparison to the Cowboys and several other franchises, minimize those self-inflicted hindrances. It’s one of the big reasons they’ve been the team to beat in the NFC East as frequently as they have over the last decade. They’re not as chaotic as Dallas. They’re not as old-fashioned and backward-thinking as the Giants. They’ve maintained a level of competence that Washington couldn’t establish under Daniel Snyder and might only be approaching now, with Jayden Daniels and Dan Quinn.

Sirianni, really, has been the primary source of whatever distractions the Eagles faced recently. His behavior during and after the team’s victory over the Browns a month ago was a perfect example — but also the latest. He hasn’t been guilty of anything similar since. Yes, the Eagles have faced a slew of subpar teams during this five-game winning streak. Yes, Saquon Barkley has been remarkable and the defense has been excellent and Hurts has cut down his turnovers. But of the Eagles’ last four wins, three have been one-sided and one should have been, and that stretch, their best in two years, has coincided with Sirianni’s exhibiting a calmer, more controlled public demeanor.

Could be just correlation. Could be something more. Could be that Sirianni’s change in conduct is helping the Eagles. Could be that it’s just not hurting them. Either way, they’re meeting a standard that their counterparts in the division rarely approach, and Jerry Jones’s team is stuck where the sun don’t shine.