NBC on Yahoo SportsDarren Sproles sparks Eagles to stunning win over Colts on FG at :00
If you watch Darren Sproles and sometimes you can’t even figure out how he’s doing what he’s doing, you’re not alone. The Eagles feel the same way.
“He does some stuff that we don’t quite understand how he does it,” Malcolm Jenkins said. “But he gets it done.” Sproles got it done in electrifying fashion Monday night.
The 10-year veteran produced one of the wildest performances in recent Eagles history Monday night, turning just 25 offensive snaps into 178 yards of offense, an acrobatic touchdown and two 50-yard catch-and-runs in the Eagles’ dramatic 30-27 win over the Colts Monday night at Lucas Oil Stadium (see Instant Replay and 10 observations).
Acquired over the offseason from the Saints for a fifth-round pick (see Drew Brees' tweet), Sproles caught seven passes for 152 yards, most by an Eagles running back in 10 years, and added 26 yards on just four carries in a career-best performance.
In addition to his high-wire 19-yard TD run that tied the game at 20-all in the third quarter, Sproles had catches of 51 yards down to the 6-yard line to set up Nick Foles’ game-tying TD pass to Jeremy Maclin in the fourth quarter and 57 yards in the first quarter.
He’s the only NFL player with a 40-yard run and a 40-yard catch this year and the first Eagles' back with a 50-yard reception in five years. And he had two.
It was an electrifying performance that recalled Brian Westbrook at his best.
And the Eagles needed every bit of it to get a win in Indianapolis, where the Colts were 13-3 under Andrew Luck and have lost just 19 games since 2004.
“When the game is kind of in the balance and he gets the ball in his hands, he always does something good with it,” Eagles offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur said. “As he goes through the season, he’s going to be a big part of it.”
Sproles isn’t a starter and doesn’t get many snaps, but he’s been one of the big stories in the NFL so far this season.
He’s played only 58 snaps all year on offense — just 35 percent of the Eagles’ offensive plays – yet he’s sixth in the NFL in yards from scrimmage.
“He’s just a special player,” Eagles head coach Chip Kelly said. “We knew the first day we had him it was, ‘How many different ways can we find to get him the football?’
“He is just a dynamic football player and we are really excited. He can run it, he can catch it, I mean he can do it all. He’s a complete running back and he really came up huge for us [Monday night].”
Sproles already has 263 yards of offense, which puts him sixth in the NFL after two games.
He had 824 yards all last year with the Saints, so he’s already almost a third of the way there.
Two games in, LeSean McCoy is averaging only 3.7 yards per carry, Brent Celek has 15 receiving yards and the starting receivers have just one catch over 20 yards.
It’s unimaginable where the Eagles would be without Sproles.
Probably 0-2.
"I used to always play with him on the video game back in the day so yeah I know what he can do,” Foles said. “He got me a lot of points when I used to play with him. He’s a talented guy. We’ve just got to make sure we keep giving him the ball where he can do the things he does."
Sproles is at his best taking screens, running through traffic and making people miss.
He really is Westbrook good on screens.
“Couple screen runs he had were terrific and sort of made the difference,” Shurmur said. “We felt like we could screen them a little bit. We went into it thinking we were going to get something out of it, but we never knew we were going to get that much out of it.
“Through the course of his career, he’s always been a good screen runner, even going back to his days at the Chargers. Norv Turner and I talked about that. Their screen game kind of fell off when Darren left. He’s got a feel for it, he’s quick, I think he sort of gets lost in there a little bit and all of a sudden he pops out and he’s in position.”
Sproles’ 152 receiving yards are fifth-most in Eagles history by a running back, behind only Westbrook’s 156 against the Packers in 2004 and three games by Timmy Brown in 1962.
The numbers are off the charts. Sproles is a running back, and he has more receiving yards than all but six NFC wide receivers. But Jenkins, his teammate for three years with the Saints, said he’s not surprised.
“Yeah, especially in this offense, where you get him in space on 1-on-1 matchups,” he said. “No matter who you put on him, it’s going to be a mismatch.
“I think the biggest attribute he has is that he hits everything downhill, so he’s getting on the second level defenders very very fast and it’s hard to get him in the open field and he breaks tackles against people that are twice his size. He’s been explosive the last two weeks.”
Sproles is the proverbial guy who lets his play do the talking. He’s the nicest guy in the locker room but says little.
Asked if this was the best game of his career, he just smiled and said he didn’t know. Asked how he kept his balance at the 5-yard line on his 19-yard TD run, he just said he doesn’t know. Asked what it meant to have a career game on Monday night when not a lot else was going right, he smiled again.
“As long as we win,” he said. “It’s big though. It’s big. We’ve got to keep this going. Might want to start a little faster though.”
