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Glass Remains Half Full – 30 Immediate Observations from Eagles 16, Lions 9
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Sometimes you have to take things at face value, and face value for the Philadelphia Eagles is two primetime games in seven days in which they’ve held the Green Bay Packers to seven points at Lambeau and the Detroit Lions to nine points at Lincoln Financial Field.
That’s the big story on Action News.
The Birds are 8-2, lead the NFC, and are playing lights out defensive football. Five times on Sunday night they stopped Detroit on downs, stuffing Jared Goff and company over and over and over again. Combine that with the Lions’ 3-13 mark on third down, and that’s the recipe for completely shutting down one of the league’s best units. It was an incredible effort from Vic Fangio’s unit.
On the other hand, the Eagles’ offense continued where it left off in Green Bay. They weren’t great, and did little with excellent starting field position, but they made more plays, in particular a 2nd quarter TD drive to reclaim the lead for good, followed by Jake Elliott knocking one right down the middle from 49 yards. Jalen Hurts didn’t have a good game, nor did anybody on that side of the ball.
Yet here we are again. The Birds win, and the glass remains half full. If the defense keeps playing like this, nobody is beating them.
To the observations we go:
1) It wasn’t a completed pass, but you have to like the Eagles opening with Jalen Hurts under center and throwing out of play action.
2) Two rare occurrences on the opening drive. We saw Dallas Goedert drop his first pass of the year and then a Lane Johnson holding call. Goedert only had 16 career drops coming into the game and Johnson only two penalties this season.
3) Cooooooooooooooooooop with the interception. Jordan Davis has the best hands at Lincoln Financial Field since Freddie Mitchell on 4th and 26.
4) We would like A.J. Brown to be involved, but you don’t have to force him the ball. There were four targets on the first two drives, but he only caught two of those, and one was a shallow route for a designed touch that didn’t go anywhere.
5) Checking off the obligatory bump shots, we got the Art Museum and Boathouse Row before hitting the eight minute mark of the 1st quarter.
6) 3rd and 1 near midfield… why no tush push? Por que no push el tush?
7) Don’t think it’s a hot take to say that Lane Johnson has entered the Jason Peters portion of his career. Feels like he’s coming out of every game with some sort of injury. No doubt he’s a warrior, but he’s 35 years old and just doesn’t have the durability he used to have.
8) So… Dan Campbell ran it on 3rd and 8, only to try to get the Eagles to jump on 4th and 6, then ended up punting from the Birds’ 45? What happened to the aggressive Campbell we’ve come to know? (foreshadowing)
9) Honestly was stunned that they showed the U.S. mint before showing a cheesesteak shot. That was going off at +800 at the Crossing Broad sportsbook. Then some highlights from the La Salle and Imhotep game? Holy cow. Nice job by the NBC producers switching things up!
10) What a dumbass series after the defense held on 4th and 1. Jalen has Devonta Smith in double coverage and throws the ball out of the end zone. Then incomplete for Goedert and incomplete for Smitty. Three and out.
11) The Birds WERE NOT FOOLED by the 4th and 2 fake punt. They still had the defense out there on the field and the Lions tried it anyway.
It felt like Campbell was having a bit of a Sirianni thing going on in the 1st half, being aggressive when he should be passive and being passive when he should be aggressive.
12) Not sure why you’d throw that A.J. Brown inside screen to Fred Johnson’s side. It was a good play by the DB to blow it up, but with Lane Johnson out of the game it feels the success chance there wasn’t amazing.
13) If Wyomissing’s Alex Anzalone knew what was good for him, he’d allow his hometown Birds to walk right into the end zone. Need a sleeper agent to help out.
14) More bump shots: Lower Merion/Kobe Bryant and the Palestra.
15) Jameson Williams a real dum dum for that penalty after the touchdown. It pushed back the extra point, which was sliced to the right by Jake Bates. Scoreline at that point was 6-6.
16) Tank Bigsby with an explosive run at a needed moment. At that point, he was averaging 9.5 yards per carry since Howie Roseman traded for him. He had five carries for 12 yards in the one game he played for the Jags. The guy is just a violent runner and you need one of those on every team.
17) 10 plays, 64 yards, and a tush push touchdown to end the half. Nice response from the boys after Detroit scored, and especially pertinent with the Lions getting the ball to start the second half.
18) Jared Goff could have thrown him a better ball, but Williams dropping that 4th and 5 was a killer for the Lions. Amon-Ra St. Brown probably should have snagged the third down pass, too. At that point, they were 0-5 on third down and 0-3 on fourth down.
19) Every week the refs show us a new way in which they stink at officiating the tush push, and it never as to do with the push itself. This time, Detroit lines up in the neutral zone and they call a false start on Tyler Steen. Then Jalen Hurts throws a 3rd down bomb to Kylen Granson and the Birds punt.
20) Looked to me like Goff had Brock Wright on that 4th down attempt that failed. 0-4 on fourth down at that point is crazy. Jaelan Phillips was bearing down, but still:
21) Brian Branch with the mouth piece sticking out of his helmet looks ridiculous. That being said, he got penalized on a helmet-to-helmet hit after Hurts threw what was his best pass of the entire game.
22) We got a LOVE Park bump shot in the third quarter. Getting closer to filling the bingo board.
23) Mike Tirico and Cris Collinsworth suggested that A.J. Brown quit on his route on that failed 3rd and 15. We didn’t get a replay, so it was hard to tell. All we saw was the ball land 10 yards in front of him before a shot of Hurts walking off the field. Would have been nice to get a second look at that.
24) A.J. with a “low block” penalty for 15 yards after losing his footing and clattering into a Lion. That one was particularly excruciating, and kicked off the “we’re going to throw a flag after every play” portion of the game.
25) Captain Obvious observation, but Jalen should have hit Saquon on that deep shot. It’s a ball you feel like he places in there more often than not. That was a perfect matchup and he just missed him.
26) Adoree’ Jackson! Big PBU on 3rd down in the fourth quarter. He honestly played a pretty good game after getting cooked on the Jameson Williams TD. Some people were looking at Birds/Lions as a referendum of sorts on the CB2 position, and he was in good position and made some good plays in the second half especially.
27) Are the Lions going to win a Super Bowl with Goff at quarterback? A rhetorical question.
28) Darius Cooper false starting on the tush push… what?
29) Tush push wasn’t good at the end of the game. Offensive line wasn’t very good throughout. Nick Sirianni should have just punted at the end there. Instead, they dragged this thing out unnecessarily. The false start on 3rd down, the inability to kill off the clock. Just ugly nonsense down the stretch. It shouldn’t have come down to a phantom pass interference call.
30) More analysis on Monday, but we’ll end it with this:
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com