PHILADELPHIA — It was a weird night Monday at Lincoln Financial Field. You get an unbeaten Eagles team in a prime-time game against an NFC East opponent, and you would expect emotional sparks and fire bursts from the start of the evening until its end. Yet compared to the crowd at the average Eagles home game, Monday’s was strangely subdued throughout the team’s 32-21 loss to the Washington Commanders. Was it the 10-day layoff between games? Was it the presumption that the Eagles would roll to another win? Was it the manner in which the Commanders took control in the first half, with a demoralizing and time-consuming rushing attack? Was it the exhausting, traffic-snarled commute to the stadium?
One could ask the same questions of the Eagles themselves. Their postgame locker room was not a wasteland of sullen, brooding athletes. It was not an especially dark place in the aftermath of defeat. Quez Watkins was not distraught over his costly late-game fumble. Brandon Graham welcomed a horde of media members at his locker to talk about his unnecessary-roughness penalty against Taylor Heinicke. T.J. Edwards summed up what seemed to be the players’ collective attitude toward their first loss of the season.
“It’s one game,” he said. “Can’t let it affect the rest of the season.”
