Eagles may be flawed, but they're the best team in the NFL
Eagles may be flawed, but they're the best team in the NFL originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia
They don’t run the ball well. They don’t pressure the quarterback like they should, at least not for the first three quarters. They allow way too many big pass plays. They rarely get takeaways. They can’t put teams away when they build a lead. They’re allowing too many sacks. They’re among the worst in the NFL defending on third down. They’re still middle of the pack in the red zone. Only one team has fewer interceptions.
The one thing the Eagles do consistently well is win football games.
I’m not sure anybody really knows how they keep doing it, but there’s something special about a team that week after week finds ways to overcome its shortcomings, that doesn’t fall to pieces when things look like they’re spinning out of control, that almost always responds to adversity in a magical way.
The Eagles go into the bye week at 8-1 with one comfortable win in the bunch. The Bucs, Dolphins and Rams are the only teams they beat by more than one possession. And Miami was a seven-point game until the last five minutes and the Rams was a six-point game until the final four minutes. The Bucs back in Week 3 was the only game where you could even let yourself breathe in the fourth quarter.
On one hand, you’d love to see the Eagles put people away early, coast in the second half and beat somebody 38-10. Wouldn’t it be amazing to watch the fourth quarter of an Eagles game without your pulse racing to about 180?
The Eagles are actually the first team in 23 years – since the 2000 Titans – to get to 8-1 or 9-0 without winning a single game by more than 14 points. And 40 teams have been 8-1 or 9-0 since then.
The Eagles have outscored their nine opponents by 57 points, which is the 4th-smallest point differential by an 8-1 or 9-0 team in NFL history.
So the Eagles are definitely doing it the hard way, and you certainly wonder if regression to the mean will become a factor and some of these close wins are bound to become close losses. Maybe so. You get the feeling they’re playing with fire, allowing teams to stay in games and then drawing on miracles in the final minutes. I don’t know if that’s sustainable.
But there’s something to be said for a team that has that rare ability to shrug off whatever disasters came before and finally make a play at crunch time. Week after week after week.
Opening day, with the Patriots at the Eagles’ 20 trailing by five with under a minute left, and Josh Jobe makes sure Kayshon Boutte doesn’t come up with a 1st-down completion at the 8-yard-line.
A 75-yard touchdown drive in the final minutes after the Vikings closed to within six points.
An overtime stop and 54-yard Jake Elliott field goal after nearly blowing the first Washington game.
A couple Jalen Hurts touchdown passes in the Washington rematch after the Commanders had taken a 4th-quarter lead.
And then pick your play from the fourth quarter Sunday.
Reed Blankenship stopping Luke Schoonmaker inches shy of the end zone. B.G. chasing Dak Prescott out of bounds – again by inches – on the Cowboys’ critical failed two-point conversion attempt. James Bradberry, after struggling all day (really, all season), forcing that Prescott incompletion to Jalen Tolbert on 4th-and-8 deep in Eagles territory with 82 seconds left (and not getting called for defensive holding).
There’s such a deep confidence on this team, confidence that comes from a culture of success.
Nobody ever knows how they’re going to win. They just know they’re going to win.
Since Week 10 of 2021 – almost exactly two years ago – the Eagles are 26-3 when Jalen Hurts is their starting quarterback. That’s actually insane.
And in all three of those losses, they committed four turnovers.
Even with the 2-5 start in 2021, Nick Sirianni now has the 4th-highest career winning percentage of 284 NFL head coaches who’ve coached at least three seasons. The dude is 31-12, and only Guy Chamberlin – who won four NFL titles in the 1920s, including one with the Frankford Yellow Jackets in 1926 – and fellow Hall of Famers John Madden and Vince Lombardi have a higher winning percentage than Sirianni’s .721. And Nick is closing on ol’ Vince.
This team definitely drives you crazy. You’d love to see them put a team away early and finish them off in the third quarter and then coast home. But when you can win despite your flaws, when you can win without being at your best, when you can win no matter what’s conspiring against you, that’s rare.
This team just wins. That’s all they do.
The Eagles have either owned or shared the best record in the NFL for 27 weeks in a row now and that’s guaranteed to increase to at least 29.
And if they can go 3-2 in this next stretch vs. the Chiefs, Bills, 49ers, Cowboys and Seahawks - five teams that happen to be 11-11 over the past three weeks - they'll take an 11-3 record into the season-ending run vs. the Giants, Cards and Giants, which makes 14-3 very likely.
And 14-3 almost definitely gets them the No. 1 seed.
The Eagles still haven’t played a game where they functioned at a high level in all phases. Doesn’t matter. They’re the best team in the NFL anyway.
Can you just imagine how good they’ll be if they ever put it all together and play up to their potential?
If you’re almost unbeatable when you’re not at your best, what happens when you are?
