LANDOVER, Md. — The play Sunday that told you that the Eagles are an excellent football team, with the potential to be more than excellent, was born of what appeared to be chaos.
It was late in the first half, the closing seconds ticking down on the game clock, the Eagles up 17 points on the Washington Commanders, positioned for a finishing blow. Jalen Hurts had tried to carry the ball into the end zone, but the Washington defense had tackled him one yard behind the line of scrimmage. And the clock was ticking. The Eagles had no timeouts left. And the clock was ticking. Nick Sirianni had made it clear: They would not settle for a field goal. They would go for it on fourth down. And the clock was ticking. Because Hurts had lost a yard on third down, because the ball was now at the Commanders’ 2-yard line instead of the 1, the number and variety of plays the Eagles might use had changed. And the clock was ticking.
Hurts — not Sirianni, not offensive coordinator Shane Steichen — called a play himself. And the clock was ticking. The play, while familiar to the 11 members of the Eagles’ offensive unit, was not in the playbook for this game. And the clock was ticking. Jason Kelce snapped the ball to Hurts with one second left in the half, and Hurts then had time to take his time, to loft a fade to the corner of the end zone, over the head of Washington cornerback Kendall Fuller, that DeVonta Smith caught for a touchdown.
What would be a 24-8 Eagles victory was, effectively, over then and there. But the possibilities for this team were only beginning to reveal themselves. The quarterback had called a play that no one had expected to use, and everyone knew exactly what to do, and everyone did it. The Eagles are 3-0, unbeaten on merit, beating their last two opponents — first the Minnesota Vikings, then the Commanders — by 17 and 16 points, respectively, and leaving everyone, themselves included, feeling like they had or could have won by more. Yet it was that sequence Sunday at FedEx Field, when everything seemed out of kilter when it was in reality right on schedule, that tells you what you need to know: that the Eagles are well coached, that their players are disciplined, that they don’t panic, or at least haven’t yet in an important moment this season.
The small things are often the biggest things.
“We focus on the game plan and our assignments,” running back Boston Scott said. “In our minds, we’re not like, ‘Oh, we got this.’ Ever. I do think we have confidence in ourselves as a team that, if we do what we’re supposed to do, we can be a really good football team. The guys are focused on our job and on producing. That’s all.”
It was interesting to hear Scott say that the Eagles take nothing for granted, because if you were around them this week, it was impossible not to notice their collective confidence ahead of Sunday’s game. Some of those good vibes, surely, came from their familiarity with Carson Wentz, with their knowledge that his twitchy, erratic style of play was a perfect fit, from their standpoint, for the style they wanted to play on defense. This matchup set up so well for them that it would have been easy for them to think they would have little trouble Sunday, and it would have been easy to think they were letting a little arrogance leak out. But there’s a difference between being presumptuous and being prepared.
So they rushed four men, covered well in the secondary, and never interrupted Wentz while he was making the kinds of mistakes he always makes: holding the ball too long and too loosely, spraying passes out of his receivers’ reach. The result was the Eagles’ best defensive performance of Jonathan Gannon’s tenure as their coordinator: nine sacks, two Wentz fumbles, 240 net yards allowed — a figure that Wentz and the Commanders padded during a going-through-the-motions fourth quarter.
“It looked dominant,” said linebacker Haason Reddick, who had 1½ of those nine sacks. “We were dominant.”
A team can be 3-0 and recognize that it is fortunate to be 3-0, that luck and circumstance were on its side early in a season. Heck, the Eagles were 9-8 last season, and no one had a solid sense of how good they actually were. The nature of their schedule — it was back-loaded with weaker opponents — and the manner in which they morphed into a run-first team over the final 10 weeks made them a mystery. Maybe even to themselves.
A team can also be 3-0, though, and know that it is a good team, that it is no paper tiger. The Eagles kept deflecting the complimentary questions that came their way after their win Sunday. But Hurts’ response, when he was asked how this year’s team compared to last year’s, showed that the Eagles have at least an inkling of what they can achieve.
“In terms of us playing to our standard, it’s about the same,” he said. “I think we’re close in terms of executing on a consistent basis. Last year, I remember when I was asked the question, ‘How close are you? You’re saying this every week,’ it’s the same situation here. We have three wins in our column, but I could care less about them because we haven’t played to our standard yet. If we can continue to strive and play to our standard, everything else will handle itself.”
The 2022 Eagles: They handle things. There are worse ways to sum up a team capable of so much.
