So much for being rusty. That was one of the most satisfying Eagles wins of the last ten years.

They came out ready to play, jumped all over a division rival at home, and ran out to a 28-0 halftime lead before throttling down to 2nd gear en route to a comfortable 31-point win. Jalen Hurts looked healthy and played very well. Miles Sanders resembled his early-season self. Jonathan Gannon called a fantastic game and there were monstrous individual sequences throughout. The Birds played a clean game as well, logging only a handful of penalties while turning the ball over zero times. It was a comprehensive performance.

For the second time in six years, the Birds will host the NFC Championship Game at Lincoln Financial Field.

To the takeaways:

 

1) You see Nick Sirianni accidentally spit on himself before kickoff? Thought that might have been a bad omen, but alas, it was not.

2) Crowd sounded amazing on television. The pop when DeVonta Smith caught that ball on the opening drive was sick. Great job everyone. You drunken mongrels.

3) Absolutely loved the stiff arm from Dallas Goedert on the third play of the game. Talk about a tone-setter. Then to follow it up with the one-handed TD catch and bulldozer? Fantastic job getting him established early.

Also, gotta shout out Zach Pascal for selling this pick play perfectly. Last year’s Eagles got flagged for this a bunch of times, but Pascal made a noticeable effort to get out of the way here at the last moment while still throwing off the defender:

4) A lot of talk about the Giants defense coming into this one. They led the league in blitz percentage and played a ton of man during the regular season, but showed a ton of zone in the Minnesota win. We don’t have the data immediately after the game, but it did seem like they were much less aggressive in this game, especially early on when they played some soft coverage and gave up a couple of easy first downs. Wink Martindale had a rough one, but seemed a little passive even before it got out of hand.

5) If we have chips in the football, do we even need the chain gang? A question for the philosophers.

6) Good call from Gannon on 4th and 8 during the Giants’ first drive. Instead of rushing four and dropping seven, he put five on the line and stunted Haason Reddick inside, with that push reaching Daniel Jones.

EROCK got a good view from the stands. You can see center Jon Feliciano pull off the double team of Ndamukong Suh and he just gets shoved backwards:

7) From a New York perspective, going for it there was highly questionable. 4th and 8 from the 40? No clue what the analytics chart says, but after a sack that lost yardage, you don’t have much momentum and much juice at all there.

8) What a block from A.J. Brown on the Smitty touchdown. He just shoved the dude into the end zone. They totally out-physicaled them on that drive (out-physicaled is not a word but that’s okay, as Joe Cordell would say).

9) Another great Gannon call on the James Bradberry revenge pick, basically another zone wrinkle on the 5-man front with Reddick and Josh Sweat dropping into coverage, C.J. Gardner-Johnson blitzed from his SS spot, and then Bradberry jumped the hot route:

10) Daniel Jones man. They knocked the dude’s contact lens out and Giants burned a timeout. Good TV snap shot of the first half right there.

11) Jason Kelce pancaked a guy with one hand.

12) Clete Blakeman’s crew let ’em play. They could have called a ton of holding on both teams, though I think that’s probably consensus during the regular season too. If you look hard enough, you can find holding somewhere., on every play.

13) Boston Scott anytime touchdown was anywhere from +300 to +400 before kickoff. Cash it. Bang bang.

14) There were a couple of obvious passing downs where Gannon dropped seven into soft zone and sent four. The four took a while to get home, but with seven on the back-end and average receivers losing the numbers game, Jones just couldn’t find anywhere to go with the football. I know you all love a soft zone.

15) Miles Sanders was a monster in the New York road win and a monster in this game. 90 yards on 17 carries and then Kenny Gainwell going over 100 with extra carries going his way. Overall they went for 268 on the ground, garbage time included.

16) Kayvon Thibodeaux was really unhappy with the refs. There was an audible “he’s fucking holding me” on television and he threw up his arms once before that, on a previous series.

17) Speaking of great hot mic moments:

18) Got ’em again with a safety blitz on the first drive of the second half. This time K’Von Wallace coming off the edge and Jones seeing the hot read but just missing it. The Birds’ coaching staff must have seen something on tape RE: blitzing with defensive backs..

19) Imagine paying 895 dollars or whatever for that Giants tailgate at Xfinity Live, then watching this game. Carl Banks should work on a refund for those poor saps.

20) We had two administrative delays in this game. That’s gotta be a record.

21) 10 plays and 88 yards on the Giants’ only touchdown, but they needed more than six minutes to do it. By the time they got the ball back after the ensuing Eagles drive stalled, they were down three scores with 1:19 on the clock in third quarter.

22) Should the Eagles have just kicked the field goal on 4th and 8 from the Giants’ 38? Dunno. They hit it, game over. They miss and New York has good field position and some momentum. You can go either way there, but they played it safe and went for the low-risk option.

23) New York’s dipshit punter made it through an entire Eagles game without screwing up, so good job by him.

24) FOX took us to a commercial break with Spacehog’s “In the Meantime.” One of the best one-hit wonders ever. Right up there with Friends theme song and the Macarena.

25) Jalen Hurts? Shoulder looks perfectly fine. They were able to limit his overall workload, both passing and rushing, with volume from Sanders, Gainwell, and Scott but overall Hurts did very little wrong, maybe just one bad play on the fumble and recovery, while going 16-24 with two touchdowns in the passing game and adding 34 on the ground with a rushing score. It was HUGE to see him play the way he did after the way the past month has played out.

26) Lane Johnson held up well enough. It’s hard to pay close attention to one lineman during a live watch of the game, but nobody should have been surprised to see him grabbing at himself on the first series. He went into the game injured and wasn’t going to be 100% from the jump.

27) Five NFC Championship Games at Lincoln Financial Field and Veterans Stadium now going back to 2002. That’s close to a 25% rate, which is insane if you think about it. Seattle hosted three but I’m pretty sure nobody else has more than that.

28) Ho hum, Reddick with 1.5 sacks, a tackle for loss, and three QB hits.

29) LeBron more or less destroying Chris Simms right here:

30) You knew it was over for the Giants when Xavier McKinney showed up looking like the BDSM version of pregame Harden:

Go Birds.

EDIT –

Bonus take #31: “good win, but they should never have given up that touchdown” – Seth Joyner