It was a clever attempt at bending the narrative from Philadelphia Eagles coach Nick Sirianni, who, after the game, said one of his messages to the team this week dealt with the idea of opponents improving the deeper his team traversed into the playoffs. While it sounds obvious, it’s also a convenient way of obscuring how it all comes together for Philadelphia, a team that, over the past two weeks—and, really, in longer stretches this year—looks more like a club trying to positively spin a near drowning as a common feature in a synchronized swimming routine.
The Eagles’ 28–22 divisional round win over the Los Angeles Rams, much like their 22–10 wild-card win over the Green Bay Packers, was strange in that it featured almost mesmerizing moments of sheer dominance that managed to gently conceal perpetual questions about the team that remain difficult to answer. Green Bay fumbled a kickoff, had receivers vanish like sofa change and committed egregious personal fouls. The Rams did have two footballs punched loose in a game blanketed with thick, watery snow, but more notably couldn’t capitalize on Philadelphia’s maddening insistence on dropping back its injured quarterback, or hurling him into harm’s way at the strangest of times, or ignoring all the other opportune times to weaponize its best offensive player. The win over the Packers seemed like the team being the beneficiary of some luck, which, to Sirianni’s point, is simply part of the cosmos when it comes to postseason football. The latter, though, seemed like an almost miraculous survival—another game that makes one simultaneously admire the way they keep winning (16 times in 19 games) and wonder how it’s been so sustainable.
