Just before halftime, while his team was trying to humiliate its divisional round opponent by inducing players to jump offside on a two-point conversion attempt while already leading 27–0, Eagles coach Nick Sirianni turned to a referee and uttered a phrase that will be on every bootleg parking lot T-shirt in Philadelphia from now until the remainder of time.
“I know what the f--- I’m doing.”
While he was referring specifically to the legality of where he was standing (Sirianni was being chastised by the officiating alternates for his location outside the coaching box as he watched the offense), it could have been about anything and we would have believed him. Football. Culinary arts. Business. Fabrics and textiles. It will, as a viral declaration, be about everything from here on out. On a night when the Eagles emerged from an end-of-season slumber that caused us to possibly forget the scope and breadth of their dominance this regular season, Sirianni reminded us. There was no disagreement among the tens of thousands of gleefully drunk Eagles fans at Lincoln Financial Field singing along to Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ On A Prayer.”
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This game was as much a panic-free advancement as it was a signal flare to their remaining opponents to approach with caution. Throughout the game, Sirianni was in rare form. He head-bobbed rhythmically for a roving digital camera on the sideline like a demonstrative backup singer. He nearly separated his offensive coordinator’s shoulder after a vigorous attempted post-touchdown chest bump. In the third quarter, he again attempted to draw the Giants offside, while up 21 points, by using a fake punt (the kind of confident needling one can only do if they’re prepared to wear a bull’s eye the size of an oil tanker for the rest of their time in the NFC East).
Take your pick of people in Sirianni’s orbit who exuded that same confidence Saturday.
Like DB C.J. Gardner-Johnson, for example, who was hollering the moment he left the field, through the tunnel and into the locker room, looking at no one and nothing in particular as he rambled about the NFC’s No. 1 seed. The crux of his message: “I told y’all that s---.”
Like Pro Bowl corner Darius Slay, who, after telling reporters that he would punch anyone who ever touched his quarterback, Jalen Hurts, said: “[The Giants] kept saying, like, you know what we’re hearing, that they think it’s going to be easy. They felt like it was close when they had their starters out [in Week 18]. But it wasn’t … at all.”
He added: “I know people had a sour taste in their mouth after the [end of the regular season] but s---, we knew what time it was.”
Within the most minute of details, the game was as artful a takedown of a familiar opponent as we’ve seen all year. By now, you’ve probably seen the slow-motion clip of Eagles center Jason Kelce right-hand chokeslamming Giants defensive tackle Justin Ellis in the second quarter a few plays before a Boston Scott touchdown put them ahead by three scores. Kelce forced the 334-pound Ellis to collapse his stance and wedge his feet together, making Ellis a leaning tower of disadvantageous proportions. Kelce hoisted him the way one of us might try to throw a shot put for the first time, or chuck a wet bag of leaves into the back of a pickup truck.
Ellis was spelling star defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence, the Giants’ best player, who was taking a breath on the sideline. In that moment, their entire offense changed to knifing runs up the middle of the field, exposing the loss of Lawrence on the Giants’ front. When Lawrence was in, the run game was designed around pairing Kelce with either the right or left guard, who would work in tandem to either downblock Lawrence, trap him by inviting him upfield and running elsewhere, or zone block him in unison, allowing him to overpursue and wash him out of the play. Once, the Eagles also used a running back to step up and jam Lawrence on the shoulder. The Giants tried shoving two players on Kelce. They tried lining up Lawrence almost diagonally like a missile. Nothing could stop the crush, down after down.
When Lawrence was in, save for the notable exception of a 40-yard play to DeVonta Smith on the opening drive, the Eagles’ passing game was quick, disallowing the Giants any time to collapse the pocket and generate enough of a rush to get to Hurts. When Hurts ran—his six designed runs in the first half were among the most he has executed over the span of two quarters in a game—they were mostly on misdirection runs that ensured Lawrence was pinned opposite the play, preventing any uniform breakdown of the protection that would cause Hurts to get swarmed and hit.
And, again, when Lawrence was out, the remaining front seven was simply flattened to make way for a clock-grinding run game. Eagles backs Miles Sanders, Boston Scott and Kenneth Gainwell combined to run it 35 times for 234 yards, an average of 6.7 yards per carry.
While this is just one example, it is emblematic of what the Eagle Way has been this season. They can tear you down in a way that is both extremely disheartening to you and wonderfully convenient for them.
Playing with an injured shoulder, Hurts threw the ball 24 times but didn’t have to chuck it. He also ran the ball without putting himself in harm’s way (very often, at least). Only a small handful of times did we see a drop-back and route concept deep enough to put him in real danger of a hard shot from one of Giants defensive coordinator Wink Martindale’s notorious free runners. A taxed and injured offensive line was given a lot of responsibility but it was a shared lift, placing some of the onus on the Eagles’ physically superior skill-position players who could contribute with a well-timed block (see: A.J. Brown bulldozing Adoree’ Jackson like a pile of dead tree branches on Smith’s first-quarter touchdown).
Kelce said after the game that football is beautiful because out of struggle can come something like this.
Coaches often draw up game plans in this way, in some sort of dream scenario that makes their team all at once dominant, confident and, most importantly, refreshed for another do-or-die game the next week, but how many of them can make it happen that way?
Few of them can truly say with the same degree of confidence that Sirianni did Saturday that they know what they’re doing.
