It was nice to watch a Philadelphia Eagles football game without being filled with self-loathing and hate.

This was a quality three-hour investment that did not result in immediate regret, unlike the last 11 or 12 contests that we willingly subjected ourselves to, despite knowing beforehand that we were wasting our time and would have been better served standing in line at the DMV or watching paint dry.

Unlike those games, this one was plenty enjoyable. Not only did the Birds win, but Sean Payton lost to a rookie quarterback making his first NFL start. It’s always nice seeing Sean Payton lose, since he’s a jerk who runs up the score and is mean to our local reporters.

Your Birds improve to 4-8-1 on the season, which, of course, is still terrible, but now we’ve got some renewed vigor thanks to Jalen Hurts, who is going to be the focus of this story. We’ve watched a lot of dreck and slop this season, and suffered through a full week of quarterback controversy talk in the Philadelphia sports media, so we all deserved this kind of performance. Eagles fans, players, coaches, cheerleaders, equipment managers, interns, and security personnel badly needed a game like this one, with a rookie sparking his team to victory and breathing new life into our dead and apathetic bodies, kind of like The Undertaker rising from the casket as Paul Bearer lifts up the urn.

And the nice part was that this team weathered the Saints’ comeback, buckled down, and made some plays. Three starting defensive backs went down and the Eagles found a way, when they could have very easily rolled over.

Let’s talk about some good things, for the first time in a long time.

1. Jalen Hurts – passing

He finished 17 for 30 for 167 yards and a touchdown. Zero sacks and zero interceptions is most important, as he kept it simple and played within himself.

The spray chart, courtesy of NFL Next Gen Stats, shows zero completions beyond 20 yards and just one downfield shot, but that’s okay, because he was taking what was given to him:

Hurts targeted the Dallas Goedert/Zach Ertz combo nine times, threw five times to Miles Sanders and five times to Greg Ward. He hit his tight ends, running back, and slot receiver on stuff that was relatively high percentage. Early on, he had a rollout knocked down, and missed Jalen Reagor on an open look about 38 yards deep, then he got away with that sideline pass that almost turned into a pick six. He had a few iffy throws on the evening, but the most impressive toss of the day was the touchdown pass to Alshon Jeffery, which was a back shoulder pylon target with an unblocked guy bearing down on him. Haven’t seen one of those in a while.

(Of course Alshon made an effort for a quarterback not named Carson Wentz, and somewhere Josina Anderson is smiling this morning.)

2. Jalen Hurts – running

18 carries for 106 yards.  He smashed the 40.5 over that was set at most sports books.

You saw Hurts’ talent in this area on the very first drive. Nobody is open, so he’s got the wheels to pull it down, take off, and reach the pylon. Or you just run him up the gut ala Tim Tebow on 4th down and you move the sticks. Carson Wentz is good on his feet, but not nearly as quick as Hurts, and would not have converted some of those third downs.

You also saw the effective running on the drive before halftime, when he scrambled twice for 40 yards, taking his team into field goal range to set up Jake Elliott for a single doink.

This looks more like a chart that a running back would post:

The only negatives in his running were the fumble, obviously, which made things a bit hairy late. I also didn’t like that sequence where they got stopped on 3rd and 4th down. It seemed like Hurts could have lunged on the third down to move the sticks, or pushed harder to get the extra yard. On the 4th down play, Jason Kelce got shoved back and the QB sneak was blown up.

3. Jalen Hurts – decision making

It was refreshing to watch him make simple reads and decisions instead of playing erratic hero ball. He was extending plays but not doing anything stupid, and it was a beautiful sight to see him simply throw it away when nothing was there. That 3rd and 9 play where he held on as long as possible, then chucked the ball out of bounds, was a thing of beauty, relative to what we watched with Carson.

Protect the ball, punt, and live to play the next drive.

Obviously there were a couple of early cadence issues that resulted in timing and penalty issues. That was to be expected. But it didn’t seem to linger throughout the game and they looked like a relatively-oiled machine in the “same page” department later on.

On the touchdown pass, New Orleans is rushing six, so you know you’ve got man coverage on the outside and Hurts recognizes that and puts this ball where Alshon can get it:

Nice toss. Foles used to throw those to Jeffery.

The mistakes were mostly minor. Obviously the fumble was not the result of poor decision making; he just coughed it up. One of the other small errors that stood out was when he stayed in bounds on that zone read right before halftime, instead of killing the clock, but even in that two-minute drill he looked comfortable and in control.

Good showing in the mental department.

4. Jalen Hurts – play calling to help the man out

Really nice mixing and matching of play calls. It makes me wonder why the hell Doug was not able to do this with Carson Wentz, and/or lends credence to the idea that Wentz was killing too many plays at the line of scrimmage and trying to control the offense himself. That’s an intriguing topic that is pretty hard to gather legitimate evidence on, but the more success Hurts has, it’ll give more backing to that argument.

But yeah, it looked more like a west coast offense at times. Short passes, a swing toss for Sanders early, some jet motion and rollout with the expected zone read, RPO, and designed QB runs. It just looked more complementary and seemed to fit the strengths of the quarterback.

The Eagles didn’t run the ball particularly well early on, but they committed to it and that helped balance the offense out to the point where they were later able to rip off the 82-yard touchdown.

Now to my former CBS 3 colleague, Patrick Gallen:

Love it. Gotta pound the football and keep ’em honest.

And look, the running backs only carried the ball 17 times. Reagor got a carry and Hurts ran it 18 times, a number of which were scrambles. But the point is that you’re putting less on his shoulders by limiting passing attempts, and the fact that they were actually able to play with a lead was a rare occurrence that allowed them to finish with a 36/30 run/pass split in the final box score.

5. the defense, and takeaways

They came to play. Josh Sweat with a strip sack. Javon Hargrave two sacks. Derek Barnett with three quarterback hits. They looked energized with the change at quarterback.

This defense has struggled all season long in the takeaways department, but they picked off a screen pass that Hill fired 100 miles an hour at Alvin Kamara and then came up with a forced fumble on a 4th down play. That’s the kind of the stuff the 2017 Eagles did.

That interception, specifically, gave them the ball at the Saints’ 32 and set up a short drive for a field goal, which made it a 10-0 game. They went on to win by three. These games have small margins, and usually a big turnover or takeaway tells the story. Credit to the D for showing up.

6. Mistakes and breaks

This category looks a lot leaner with Wentz off the field:

Mistakes:

  1. illegal shift and false start, back to back penalties on 3rd down during the first drive
  2. Greg Ward more boneheaded punt return non-catching
  3. Jake Elliott missed 22-yard field goal
  4. NRC brutal missed tackle 10 yards behind the line of scrimmage

Elliott with another brutal miss. Maybe they should go out and draft Sarah Fuller out of Vanderbilt.

Breaks:

  1. Saints missed field goal
  2. Zach Ertz with blatant offensive pass interference and no call
  3. Taysom Hill interception
  4. Saints thinking Taysom Hill is good
  5. Saints illegal contact on drive before halftime
  6. Saints false start when they were finally starting to move the ball
  7. Saints two defensive holding penalties in the end zone on the same play
  8. Saints kind of giving up/showing no urgency down 24-14 with six minutes on the clock
  9. Saints second missed field goal

Didn’t it seem like New Orleans was half-assing it out there? They obviously came in thinking they were gonna roll the Eagles. NOLA ripped off a nice comeback there and looked like they might take the lead, but when when Philly scored again, they really took their sweet old time moving up the field down by two scores.

Maybe the Saints are who we thought they were. If you wanna crown ’em, then crown their ass!

7. Ancillary wins and losses

Let’s take a look:

  • won time of possession 30:16 to 29:44
  • +1  turnover margin
  • 4-13 on third down (30.7%)
  • 2-4 on fourth down
  • allowed New Orleans to go 5-12 on third down (41.6%)
  • lost 0 yards on zero sacks
  • 2-3 success rate in the red zone
  • 6 penalties for 27 yards
  • 21 first downs, 20 for Saints
  • ran 66 total plays, Saints 63

Wins across the board. TOP, turnovers, penalties, sacks, etc. They had some third down struggles, but ultimately really mitigated errors and that will help you win any football game.

8. Doug’s best call?

I’ve been critical of Doug’s aggression this season, because I think his ‘feel’ for the game is off, but you’ve got nothing to lose at this point in time so getting Hurts some good 4th down reps was a positive thing. The early conversions helped get them out to a lead.

Also, they correctly challenged the Ertz non-catch. I don’t know what the refs were looking at there.

I mean, what the hell is this? –

Looks like two feet down and control of the football, but it was not ruled that way. Even Dean Blandino came on the broadcast after the commercial and said he disagreed with the call. I’m rolling with Dean Blandino on this one. He’s our guy.

Put these refs in the Bagster, as Anthony Gargano would say.

9. Doug’s worst call?

Didn’t like the decision to run on the second 4th down attempt on the first drive. It was a zone read and New Orleans was ready for it.

On the stuffed 4th down later in the game, the QB sneak, I dunno. I guess Hurts is better out of the shotgun where he can pick his spot and hit a gap, but Jason Kelce got pushed back pretty badly. He probably gets the most blame there. I was jokingly saying on Twitter they should have brought in Carson Wentz for that QB sneak, since he’s automatic.

Oh yeah, on the Hurts fumble drive, in hindsight you just run Miles Sanders there and try to kill the clock. No need for the QB to be carrying at that point, right? I think we’re all in agreeance on that.

Good Doug game though. It was a little odd how he downplayed Hurts’ performance, but maybe he just wanted to be careful about over-praising a rookie while simultaneously trashing Wentz by proxy.

Said Doug:

“I have to take into consideration the entire football team. Jalen played well. Obviously, we won the game. But there’s a lot of good performances out there tonight, and again, as I said, defense stepped up, offensive line, some of our young receivers and obviously Jalen. It’s a start and we’re excited to get the win.”

10. The broadcast

Kevin Burkhardt and Daryl Johnston with Pam Oliver.

“Moose” may be a disgusting Dallas Cowboy, but I don’t mind his color commentary. He’s typically steady, and you’ll get good insight like that moment where he identified Kwon Alexander shooting the wrong gap on the 82-yard touchdown run.

He did go down a weird road with that Frank Reich and Christian faith passage, or whatever the hell he was talking about in the third quarter. That seemed a little odd. Maybe we should get Kenneth Copeland in here as offensive coordinator with Joel Osteen as the QB coach and then Carson will start playing well again.

I do want to give props to FOX, as they were able to drop the crawl during the Ertz non-catch review, so that we were able to see if his feet were down. By “crawl,” I mean that lower third graphic at the bottom of the screen that scrolls text throughout the game. Whomever was directing/producing the broadcast did a nice job recognizing that the graphic was obscuring our view and pulled it. It’s the attention to detail that we appreciate.

Finally, this:

Fantastic gesture. RIP John Smallwood, go Birds, and good morning.