Reliving the Eagles 34-31 Win Over the Commanders

The Eagles won yesterday. It was stressful, made us tear our hair out, and came at the cost of our mental health. But they won. They beat the Commanders 34-31 in Overtime. It gives them their 4th win and keeps them undefeated. And as they always do on the Midday Show, they relived it the next day with the Sounds of the Game in The Audio Vault. Ray Dunne and Andrew Salciunas went through the best moments of the game, and some of the sounds that came after the game.

The Eagles are 4-0. That should be a great thing. But the city is sure not acting like it. After a close win over the Commanders, which was way more stressful than it needed to be, the city is a bit on edge today. Most of the vibe has been negative. People are worried about Brian Johnson as a playcaller. Worried about Sean Desai as a defensive playcaller. Just by listening to how people are reacting, you would think they were 1-3 and suffered a loss yesterday.

And some of those reactions are fair. They have not been as crisp as we hoped they would be coming into the season. Injuries have hurt them early, and the new coordinators haven't quite adjusted or found the right approach yet.

But they are 4-0. So can we have a little positivity? You know who is not 4-0? Every other team in the league apart from the Niners. The Chiefs just swelled out a win over the Jets and lost Opening Week to the Lions. They would have loved if that Lions game was an ugly win. The Bills lost to the Jets. We just saw the Dolphins get blown out of the water. And the Cowboys dropped a game to the Cardinals.

There are no style points in the NFL. There is no committee that weighs these things at the end of the season to determine playoff seeds. Wins are wins, whether it takes a OT FG, or if you win by 3 touchdowns. So far all the Eagles have done is win. And despite how people are reacting, they have done some good things in these wins. So let's focus on those positives. Because again, they are 4-0, people are somehow ignoring that fact.

The general vibe about the Eagles offense seems to be very negative. Which is weird, because they put up 34 points. In fact, in the last 3 weeks, they are averaging 31 points per game. They scored 34 points in weeks 2 and 4, and 25 in week 3. And they gave up a chance to score in week 3, but instead ran out the clock to win the game. The Eagles offense didn’t average 31 points over any 3-game span last year until weeks 11 through 13.  

This team is still scoring points. Are they relying on field goals too much? Sure. Could the Red Zone play-calling be better? Yes. But points are points, and they are scoring a lot of them. They are 5th in the NFL in scoring, despite the awful week 1 performance. That is a good thing.  

Jalen Hurts not looking himself had been one of the biggest sources of worry for Eagles fans going into week 4. But he looked tremendous yesterday. 319 yards, and 2 TDS. And he was not just getting those by making easy throws. He completed 4 passes of over 20 yards through the air. 2 went for TDS, including a dime at the end of the 4th quarter that put the Eagles ahead (until they eventually blew that lead). It was easily Hurts best game of the year. He still could not get going on the ground, which might be a concern. But he was throwing the ball as well as anyone.  

The Commanders’ secondary has actually been good for most of this year. Coming into the week, they were giving up just 219.3 passing yards per game. Well, the Eagles put up 319 on them. 100 more than their average. A lot of that came from AJ Brown beating rookie Emmanuel Forbes. Brown had 175 yards and 2 TDS. Hurts and Brown have found the easy connection they had last year.  

Sticking with the passing game, they are averaging 263 passing yards per game over the last 3 games. The passing yards had gone up each week, before finally getting over 300 in week 4. 263 would be the 6th most per game in the NFL. Better than the Chiefs, the Bills, the Niners, and the Jaguars. Week 1 was bad. Week 2 was still not good enough. But we now have two straight weeks where they moved the ball through the air well. Hurts is still up there among the league's elite passers.  

There was not much with the offense to be positive about yesterday, but the run defense held up once again. Brian Robinson was the best RB they faced all season. They held him to 3.2 yards per carry. Robinson came into the game averaging 4.6 yards per carry. The run defense is legit. The secondary needs to play much better and part of that may be getting injured players back, or bringing in another nickel corner to replace Maddox. But after 4 weeks, you can feel confident in this defense to stop the run at least.  

They also had 5 sacks which was nice to see. The luster of those 5 sacks wears off though when the Commanders had been giving up that many sacks all season and Howell often had too much time to throw. it still was good to see Haason Reddick finally get home though.

And the stat that matters most is they are 4-0. Only one other team can say that, the 49ers. The Chiefs lost to the Lions. The Bills lost to the Jets. The Cowboys lost to the Cardinals. And the Dolphins lost to the Bills. The Eagles have not lost. They have a couple of ugly wins, but no losses. Over 80% of 4-0 teams go on to make the playoffs. Be happy they are undefeated. Are there things they can do better? Yes. But they are winning despite not playing their best.