A lot of NFL teams can’t put one decent quarterback on the field, but the Eagles have two that are pretty damn good.

It’s why they won the Super Bowl in February and it’s why they’re still alive for a playoff berth heading into week 17 of this season. The pretty damn good backup was able to step in for the pretty damn good starter, and the Eagles have now won four of their last five games.

That’s my top takeaway. It’s the rare positive outlook from me, the anti-Negadelphia if you will. Is it posi-delphia? I don’t know. That doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but the only thing that matters is that the Eagles head into the season finale with a chance to sneak into the playoffs as a 9-7 wild card team. That seemed inconceivable as recently as 15 days ago.

Of course you would like for them to “control their own destiny,” but they don’t, and wins against the Rams and Texans might only serve to reignite the “what if?” flames that were originally sparked during bogus early season losses against the Vikings and Panthers and Bucs and Titans. Go figure that they’d struggle against some utterly average teams while knocking off a pair of 10-win clubs in consecutive weeks. That adds to the bitterness for sure, because they should have taken care of business back in October and November.

But they’ve still got a chance, and it’s possible to appreciate both Carson Wentz and Nick Foles at the same time without automatically going into some sort of “quarterback controversy” type of hot take on social media or sports radio. God forbid Eagle fans be grateful for what each player has contributed over the past two seasons, but if you want to argue with your friends or family or total strangers on Twitter, I won’t stop you.

1) Big **** Nick

471 yards is the most an Eagles quarterback has ever thrown for.

Ever!

The previous mark was set by Donovan McNabb back in 2004, when he slung it for 464 against Green Bay. Also, this was Nick’s fourth 400 yard passing game, which is also an Eagles record, and his 120.4 passer rating is the 9th-highest single-game mark of his career, the best number he’s logged since last year’s NFC Championship game.

Foles was also 8 yards short of passing Pat Mahomes for the highest single-game total this year, which happened in the 54-51 Chiefs/Rams barn burner a few weeks ago.

The fumble and the interception were the two blemishes on an otherwise stellar game. Nick finished 35-49 with four touchdowns and the pick, and again this week he hit on some deep balls that Carson simply wasn’t trying in weeks prior. Last week Nick was 3-5 in passes thrown 20 or more yards down the field, and this week he went 2-4 in that category, according to NFL Next Gen Stats:

(I counted that green dot on the far left as 20 yards. Looks like it’s maybe 19.8 yards? Close enough)

And what you can say about the final drive? He led an 11 play, 72 yard foray down the field to score the game-winning field goal. He only went 2-6 on the drive but connected on massive 19 and 20 yard completions, which, combined with a penalty and some effective running, got the Eagles close enough for Jake Elliott to do the rest.

I’m not sure what it is, but Nick just has that quality in him, that clutch factor when playing for this team. Consider the fact that he did all of that after getting absolutely obliterated by Jadeveon Clowney, and it makes it even more impressive.

2) When pass/run ratio doesn’t matter

50 passes and 22 runs on the day, which wound up being lopsided because of the nature of the game and the necessity to throw in the fourth quarter.

Therefore, whenever anyone gives you that statistic of, “the Eagles win blah blah amount of games when they run the ball X amount of times,” you know it’s generally bullshit. Yesterday is the perfect example.

Even if you take away the final three series, when the Eagles were leading by two touchdowns, the split would have been this:

40 passes, 16 runs

That includes a QB sneak as well, and it gives you a 71% to 29% pass/run split. They basically built a two score, second half lead while throwing the ball 71% of the time, so tell me again about how Josh Adams needs to see more of the rock. He doesn’t. The whole point of finding a 60/40 split is that it just allows you to balance out the play book and throw different things at defenses while allowing your offensive line to get moving in the run blocking game, but otherwise there are just too many variables to make blanket statements about run/pass split.

Plus, Houston’s defensive strength is in the trenches anyway, and here’s a good exchange between Doug and Jimmy Kempski that sort of sums it up:

Q. You had a lead for most of the game, but the pass/run ratio was pretty lopsided. Was that because they were depleted at corner? (Jimmy Kempski) 
DOUG PEDERSON: Did you see their rush defense today? 35 yards rushing the football. It was hard.

Q. I’m not criticizing. (Jimmy Kempski) 
DOUG PEDERSON: Okay. I thought maybe we needed to run the ball more or something. [Laughter] That’s a tremendous defense now. That’s a great group. That front seven, eight guys with their safeties, they do a really good job. They create different angles for our offensive linemen. So some of the things that we’ve been able to do in the last couple weeks, they just kind of took us out of it. I knew we were going to have to run the ball late in the game, even when we were up by 13 there, 29-16, I felt like we could get a little momentum, run the ball, make them use time outs and maybe we could finish the game at that point, but we didn’t do it. It was just great defense.

For what it’s worth, last week Doug Pederson went with 51 shotgun looks for Nick versus 8 under center looks. This week he used shotgun 63 times and again only went under center 8 times, so nothing super different there. The Eagles are a shotgun squad and they run almost the entirety of the offense from those sets. That’s the base for their RPO game, and while they do fire off the occasional screen from under center, yesterday both screens came out of the shotgun.

3) Calling audibles

The 83-yard touchdown pass to Nelson Agholor was actually not supposed to happen. Foles audibled out of it:

I saw a unique coverage that they play. We had a play in our arsenal that wasn’t the one that was called, and I felt like I had time on the clock to check it and really take a shot with some speed with Nelly. We were able to execute it. Nelly made an amazing play to finish it off with a touchdown. It was really all of us being on the same page, recognizing the coverage, understanding how to run the route, and the line gave me time to throw it. It was awesome.

Pederson confirmed that the original play was a pass, and added this:

It was a coverage check that he saw, something Houston had been running earlier in the game. He saw it, got to a play that would attack that coverage and great protection and allowed him to get the ball down the field.

I’m probably going to need the all-22 film to get the best look, but for whatever reason, the Texans use a safety to kind of double down on the weak side of the field, where Alshon Jeffery is lined up. On replay, check out how the 60/40 safety kind of cheats up here in a nickel look:

That allows the Eagles to move the second safety with a post pattern and then you’ve got Agholor 1v1 with Tyrann Mathieu without any safety help over the top at all. Houston plays a lot of zone, and the linebackers just sort of hold here, so Nick obviously saw this look earlier in the game knew he could get “Nelly” down the field with inside leverage while using Zach Ertz to pull the second safety out of the way:

Maybe later this week I can go through the film and try to see where Houston showed that coverage earlier in the game. Nice read, nice audible, even better pass.

4) Scissors

There were a couple of key plays on the game-winning drive, but I think the best quote was from Zach Ertz, on the 20-yard third down grab that he made to keep the chains moving:

“It was just kind of a scissors corner route that we always have, post by number one, I had a corner, and Darren was in the flat. I had been taking a lot of inside releases against him, so I kind of sold the inside release and threw him inside and I think he kind of ran into the linebacker. Something happened where my feet got tangled up so I was kind of off balance and Nick just kind of laid the ball out there and allowed me to run under it. I was able to stay in bounds and make the play. I tried to get out of bounds in that situation.”

Yep. This is a really nice design, and I think they ran the same thing earlier, or something very similar, on their first 4th down conversion of the game:

This is actually more about sealing off the linebacker responsible for the runner coming out of the backfield. Ertz does a really nice job, as he says, selling the inside here, and while he successfully picks off the linebacker, both players actually fall down, leaving Sproles open, but also springing Ertz even further down the field.

Check it out:

 

Huge play to put the Eagles in field goal range. Well designed, well executed.

5) Record setter

Sunday, Ertz set a new record for the most single-season receptions by a tight end.

The Eagles’ PR staff put together the notes in their post game email, so I will courtesy them and drop the information in here:

  • Zach Ertz now has 113 receptions in 2018, surpassing Jason Witten in 2012 (110) for the most receptions by a TE in NFL single-season history. Ertz, who led the Eagles with 12 receptions, posted his franchise-record 10th career game with 10+ receptions. He became just the third TE in NFL history to accomplish that feat, joining Tony Gonzalez (15, 1997-2013) and Witten (11, 2003-17).
  • Ertz moved past Brian Westbrook (426, 2002-09) into 3rd place on the Eagles’ all-time receptions list (currently 434), behind Harold Carmichael (589, 1971-83) and Pete Retzlaff (452, 1956-66).
  • Ertz, who tallied his 11th career game with 100+ receiving yards (5th of the season), moved into 9th place on the Eagles’ all-time list for receiving yards (currently 4,812).
  • Ertz recorded his 5th career multi-TD game and now has a career-high-tying 8 TDs this season (also 8 in 2017), which are tied for the 2nd-most by a TE in Eagles history, trailing only Pete Retzlaff in 1965 (10).

It took Ertz 89 games over six seasons to reach those numbers.

Assuming he continues on a similar trajectory, he’s slated to break Carmichael’s receptions record in three seasons. He actually might get there sooner. He would need 77.5 receptions next season and the following season to reach Carmichael’s 589, which is not inconceivable. Even in 2015 and 2016 he caught 75 and 78 passes, so the record will fall at some point.

6) NFL “officiating”

Jesus H. Christ, was it bad.

In no particular order:

  1. The missed facemask call on Foles was outrageous.
  2. The roughing the passer call on Brandon Graham was one level below outrageous.
  3. The roughing the passer on Clowney was iffy. I honestly don’t think there’s anything wrong with that hit, but if you think his head is lowered there as he makes contact with Foles, then you could make a case that he’s breaking the rules. Honestly, if that was called against an Eagle and not a Texan, I think there would be a ton of complaints.
  4. Alshon Jeffery threw an illegal screen on the second Ertz touchdown catch. He literally just ran straight forward into the defender and made no move to disguise the pick at all.

I think the helmet contact penalty on Tre Sullivan was a good call, same with the roughing on J.J. Watt, who hit Foles in the head while trying to bring him down. The unnecessary roughness on Cre’Von LeBlanc I though was somewhat of a borderline call, because he hit the ball carrier with his shoulder as that guy was going to ground. Those are weird plays, aren’t they? It’s hard to pull out of those at the last minute if the offensive player is dropping his head or trying to avoid contact.

7) Auxiliary battles

Some good, some bad:

  • won time of possession, 34 to 26 minutes
  • -2 turnover margin
  • 9-16 on third down (56.2%)
  • 4-4 on fourth down
  • allowed Houston to go 3-10 on third down (30%)
  • lost 9 yards on 1 sack
  • 1-2 success rate in red zone
  • 11 penalties for 105 yards

They against crushed a team in time of possession, but that -2 turnover margin was a killer, as were the penalty yards, which were almost double what they’ve been over the past three weeks.

Those third and fourth down numbers are the reason they won the game. Foles was just phenomenal playing “situational football” throughout, and the line’s ability to protect him yesterday outside of one sack and the fumble was a big deal.

8) Doug’s best call?

I thought he really nailed his fourth down play calls.

The wheel route to Sproles was perfect. The play action pass to Dallas Goedert, complete with pre-snap motion, would have gone for a touchdown had he not slipped. Ertz ran a brilliant route on his first touchdown catch.

I also thought the draw play on the final drive really caught Houston off guard after the Eagles threw the ball seven times in a row to chunk their way down the field. There was no better time to throw them for a loop with a delayed hand off type of design.

It was just really nice stuff all around from Doug yesterday, who looked like the 2017 version of himself with aggressive decision making and calls that made a lot of sense when factoring in down, distance, and the time remaining on the clock.

9) Doug’s worst call?

Going for two when you’re up 13-9? That’s really the only one that comes to mind.

I guess the idea there was to extend the lead to six instead of four, which would force Houston into two field goals to tie the game. Or, if they score a touchdown, that would also put a little more pressure on the kicker to hit an extra point to go up 16-15. I’m just not sure it was necessary at the time, and they could have used that point in the fourth quarter, when Houston scored to take – you guessed it – a one-point lead.

10) Can’t be bothered in the broadcast booth

I kind of like Ian Eagle, but Dan Fouts seems like another color guy who is just sort of there, another guy who treats the game like it’s just another day at the office, as if he’s working some sort of 9-5 job.

That manifested itself I think in the goofy exchange where they were talking about Big V and didn’t attempt to say his first name. They sort of laughed it off to the tune of, “I’m not even gonna try to pronounce his name.”

Yeah? Well isn’t that your job?

Imagine if a home builder said, “well that nail is way up there, I’m not even gonna try hammering it in.” Two years later, the house falls apart because dude was lazy and/or inattentive to detail.

Imagine if an electrician, like Tom Cudeyro, said, “yeah I guess I could connect these two wires, but I don’t feel like it.” And then the lights in your brand new house simply don’t work.

Or, imagine if a paralegal said, “yeah, well I’m just going to omit this line about beneficiaries because I’m trying to hit my lunch break at Chipotle.” Then, when you croak, your kids can’t get your money because this person didn’t feel like finishing the task at hand.

See how dumb it really is?

Plus, it’s really not that hard if you go over it a couple of times:

Halapoulivaati Vaitai.

Ha-la-pool-ee-va-tee.

He played in the Super Bowl last year, so it’s not like the dude is brand new. He didn’t just sign yesterday.

They also borked the name of Boston Scott in the first half, calling him “Austin” instead. Otherwise everything about the broadcast was suitable.

Happy holidays. Enjoy whatever you celebrate – Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or maybe a Festivus for the rest of us.