Wasn’t it enjoyable to watch good football this weekend?

The Eagles season is finally over, which means we no longer have to subject ourselves to the slop we supported from the beginning of September. It was a change of pace to watch competent quarterback play, see dynamic game-changing ability at the skill positions, and watch talented defenses get stops and force punts.

Oftentimes, the best way to understand your own team is to take a step back and look at how other teams perform, and here’s what we learned about the Eagles, and the NFC East, after Wild Card weekend:

1. Washington will probably turn the corner under Ron Rivera

Raise your hand if you had Taylor Heinicke and the Washington Football Team losing by one score…

Yeah, me neither. Alex Smith didn’t play, Tom Brady threw for 381 yards and a pair of touchdowns, and yet Tampa only won this game by eight points. It was a one-score game for most of the evening, and twice Washington answered Buccaneer scoring drives by engineering long touchdown drives of their own.

Washington could have folded when they went down 9-0 after Heinicke threw a pick on the second drive, but he came back and led a 10-play, 75-yard scoring drive in which he completed passes of 24 and 18 yards while scrambling for 10 as well.

And when Tampa scored to make it 28-16, Washington responded with an 11-play, 75-yard scoring drive in which Heinicke threw the ball 10 times.

They played tough, Washington. They didn’t commit a lot of penalties and moved the chains on third down. And when you look down their roster, there’s a young and talented core on both sides of the ball.

Consider the age of the following guys:

  • Chase Young – 21
  • Antonio Gibson – 22
  • Kamren Curl – 21
  • Daron Payne – 23
  • Steven Sims – 23
  • Tim Settle – 23
  • Montez Sweat – 24
  • Terry McLaurin – 25
  • Jonathan Allen – 25
  • Kendall Fuller – 25

So on, and so forth. There’s good talent on this team. They have a coach who knows what he’s doing. If they stumble into a franchise quarterback, things get hairy in the NFC East and we’re no longer making fun of these guys for being a no-name laughingstock.

2. Other coaches make dumb decisions

I think we’d all agree that Mike Tomlin and Mike Vrabel would be in the top half or top twelve of any NFL coaching list or “power ranking.”

Sunday, both committed egregious errors of a conservative nature to essentially blow the game for their teams.

In Tomlin’s case, Pittsburgh had just scored on four straight possessions, but still found themselves down 12 points at the beginning of the fourth quarter. Instead of trying to continue that furious comeback, Pittsburgh lined up to punt on 4th and 1 from their own 46 yard line, and gave the ball back to Cleveland, who went 80 yards on six plays to score a touchdown and extend their lead to 19 points.

In Vrabel’s case, Tennessee had a fourth and two at the Ravens’ 40 yard line, trailing by two points, with 10:06 remaining on the clock. Instead of going for it, the Titans punted the ball 25 yards, Baltimore took possession, and then went 52 yards for a field goal while taking nearly six minutes off the clock. Tennessee came out with 4:13 on the clock, threw an interception, and that was all she wrote.

Say what you will about Doug Pederson’s inability to read the game this past season, but he would have kept his offense on the field in both of those situations. The Eagles may not have converted, but they would have gone down in a blaze of glory instead of meekly punting the ball to the other team.

3. Takeaways matter

This season, the Eagles finished bottom ten league-wide with just 19 takeaways. That was eight interceptions and 11 fumbles, a good portion of which took place in the final few games.

The NFL takeaway leader in 2020 was Miami, with 29, and during the 2017 Super Bowl run, the Eagles finished with 31 takeaways, so that’s where they need to be if they want to recapture the success of a few years ago. They need to be forcing upwards of 25 takeaways to land themselves in the top ten during a typical NFL year.

Saturday and Sunday, you saw the importance of interceptions and fumbles as such:

  • In the Seahawks’ home loss, Los Angeles ripped off a pick-six and then forced a fumble on a punt return. They controlled the clock for nearly 34 minutes and won 30-20 with a limited QB playing through a thumb issue.
  • In the Washington/Tampa game, both teams scored touchdowns off an opponent turnover.
  • In the Tennessee/Baltimore game, the Ravens pretty much sealed the win with a pick.
  • In the Saints/Bears game, Chicago scored their only non-garbage time points on a forced fumble and recovery inside the New Orleans 25.
  • In the Browns/Steelers game, we all saw what Cleveland did with a +5 turnover margin.

Takeaways matter. The Eagles were terrible in this department in 2020.

4. “running” quarterbacks in a passing league

In Buffalo and Baltimore’s wins, Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson were the leading rushers for their teams.

It would be incredibly goofy to sit here and label Allen a “running” quarterback, because he’s become an elite passer in his third NFL season, but the bottom line is that he still plays the game like a dual-threat guy, using his feet to extend plays and drives and keep that offense rolling.

Check out the passing and rushing logs for each team this weekend:

Allen ran the ball more than Devin Singletary and Zack Moss combined.

Baltimore:

 

Jackson accounted for 46% of Baltimore’s running.

If Jalen Hurts is the Eagles’ starter in 2021, this is the blueprint you’re looking at. I don’t know if his NFL ceiling comes anywhere close to Allen or Jackson, but if it does, then this weekend should make Birds fans feel confident that this type of QB is able to find postseason success.

Here’s the other thing to think about :

For as much as we complain about Miles Sanders not being 20-carry type of running back, there just aren’t a lot of those guys who become the primary postseason offensive focus.

Derrick Henry did it last year, but on Sunday he only had 40 yards on 18 carries. J.K. Dobbins only got nine carries and Gus Edwards eight. Cam Akers, who ran the ball 28 times, is a bit of misnomer since the Rams started the game with a backup quarterback and then went to Jared Goff and his bum thumb after John Wolford had to leave the game with a head injury.

It’s true that the Eagles would look much better with a downhill, between-the-tackles complement for Sanders, but multiple teams won this weekend without a bona fide “bell cow” type of player. Even with Leonard Fournette, Alvin Kamara, and the Nick Chubb/Kareem Hunt duo, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, and Baker Mayfield still attempted 40, 39, and 34 passing attempts while playing with the lead for vast majorities of those games. The pass/run splits still skew heavily in favor of the former, because the NFL remains a passing league.