Why Is The Eagles Passing Game All People Care About?

The Eagles are 16-3. They are 1 win away from going to the Super Bowl, and 2 wins away from a parade. They have lost only 1 game since the start of October, and that was a game where Jalen Hurts left in the 1st quarter. Yet for some reason, both locally and nationally, all people want to talk about is the struggles of the Eagles' passing game.

I am not going to sit here and say the Eagles' passing game has been good in the playoffs. It hasn't. They have not moved the ball well through the air.

They also have not turned it over, but there is certainly room for improvement. Saying the passing game should be better is fair. I won't get into the specifics though because that has been done nonstop by everyone else.

The problem is when people ignore everything else about this team. They laser focus on the Eagles' one flaw but ignore the many things the Eagles do well. So let's talk bout those things, and why they can make and win the Super Bowl even if the passing game never improves.

Let's start with what the Eagles do best. This is a Super Bowl-caliber defense. It is the best defense in the league, and certainly the best defense still standing.

Since the bye week, they have given up more than 20 points twice. The Commanders got to them the 2nd time but besides that the defense got the better of every offense they faced. They held the Bengals to 17 points, the Ravens to 19, the Rams to 22 and 20, and the Commanders to 18 the first time.

They gave up 278.4 yards per game, the least in the league. The next-best team gave up 311.2 yards per game. They gave up 17.8 points per game, the 2nd best number in the league. The next best team still alive, the Chiefs, gave up 19.2 points per game. The team they are playing this weekend gave 23 per game.

The Eagles' defense has forced 15 turnovers in their last 4 games, excluding the Giants game where the starters didn't play.

This defense is elite. They are good at everything you need a defense to be good at. They have a great secondary, an All-Pro LB, and one of the best defensive players period in Jalen Carter. But apparently, that is not worth talking about.

Saquon became the 9th RB to ever have 2000 rushing yards. As a team, they just ran for 285 yards. That is more yards than the Bills and Chiefs had in their wins this weekend total. The Eagles average 179.3 rushing yards per game.

This team has proven they can run on anyone. Even if you stack the box, they can still run. That second Saquon run came vs a stacked box. The problem with stacking the box against the Eagles is that when Saquon slips into the 2nd level, there is no one left to stop him.

Usually, you leave a safety back to stop a big pass play. Teams do that vs the Eagles to stop the run. You need a man back there because Saquon is that explosive. He now has 8 50 yard TDs. That is more than any WR has. He is the most explosive player in the league, and he is doing it on the ground, not through the air.

He also has the most 10-yard runs, 20-yard runs, 30-yard runs, and 40-yard runs. He has the most 40 or 50-yard plays period.

But apparently, they can't win like that. People will tell you they need to throw it better. You can't win when your running game is better than most teams passing game.

No team has won the turnover battle and lost in the playoffs. 3 teams lost with no turnovers, but that is also because they didn't force any either. The team that wins the battle is 7-0 so far in this postseason.

The Eagles are +6. They have turned it over 0 times, and taken it away 6 times. That is not new either. Since the bye week, they have turned it over only 5 times with Hurts in the game. One of those was the bogus fumble call where Barkley was clearly down.

That is a winning game plan, clearly. The Ravens made mistakes and it cost them. The Rams made mistakes and it cost them. The Lions made mistakes and it cost them. The Eagles don't make those mistakes. They protect the ball first and foremost.

But again, no one wants to talk about that. Let's hyper-focus on the one area the Eagles need to improve, and forget they are the best team in every other aspect.

Do not fall for the negativity. This is a fantastic team. Are they flawless? No team is. You can poke holes in all 4 teams still standing. Would it be nice if they passed the ball better? Of course. If they do that no one can stop them.

But the narrative that they can't win the way they have been winning, is foolish. They can play exactly like they did vs the Packers and the Rams and win it all. How do I know that? They have done that all season and no one has stopped them yet.

This is a fantastic team. There are some very good teams in their way. They may not win just because the Chiefs and Bills are great too, or the Commanders have found some magic in their young QB. Nothing is guaranteed. But we need to admit this is a fantastic team, that can win it all and are currently the favorites to win it all.

Let yourself dream of a parade down Broad Street. This team is great enough to give it to you.

Once again the Eagles won, and once again that win has come with a lot of worrying. "They can't play like this next week," has been a popular thing to say in the wake of the Eagles' 28-22 win over the Rams. It has been a popular thing to say all season.

Related: Eagles Make Us Sweat But Advance To NFC Championship

Despite the fact they have lost 1 game since the start of October people continue to insist they won't keep winning. "You can't beat the Commanders like this..." Well, they did. "You can't beat the Ravens like this..." Well, they did. "You can't beat the Rams like this..." They did that twice. Turns out you can keep winning like this.

The only time this team lost in the last several months, was when Jalen Hurts was knocked out of the game with a concussion in the 1st quarter. Other than that they have rattled off 14 wins to that 1 loss. They now beat the Rams and the Packers in the playoffs by 18 combined points.

After the Lions lost, the Eagles are currently favorites to win it all. Their line this weekend, despite playing a red-hot Commanders team, opened at -4.5. The only people who don't feel good about the Eagles right now, are people who live in the Philadelphia market. Vegas is telling you they love the Eagles, which makes sense since we are talking about a 16-3 team.

But if you are one of those nervous people, who don't think they can keep this up, I am going to try to change your mind. Not only by showing you how good this team actually is but by showing you the teams they are facing the rest of the way all have problems of their own.

Turnover differential is a massive deciding force in games. Case in point, the teams that win that battle are 7-0 this postseason, with 3 games having no turnovers. The Texans are the only team to turn it over and still win, and they still won the turnover battle vs the Chargers in that game.

What does this have to do with the Eagles? Not only have they yet to turn it over in the playoffs, but they are taking the ball away at an increased clip of late. In the last 4 games where the Starters played they are +13 in turnover differential. They had 2 takeaways and no turnovers vs the Rams, and 4 takeaways and no turnovers vs the Packers.

Protecting the ball was especially impressive vs the Rams given the conditions. We saw the Rams were having a hard time holding onto it. We saw later in the night the Ravens struggle to protect the ball in the snow in their loss. But the Eagle she'd onto the ball. They never coughed it up. That made all the difference. The Eagles got 6 points off the Rams 2 fumbles and obviously went on to win by 6.

Since the bye week, the Eagles have just 7 turnovers and had zero turnovers in 11 of their 15 games. Two turnovers came in a game where Kenny Pickett was the QB.

The Eagles also forced a turnover in each of the last 7 games, forced at least 2 in 4 of them, and forced at least 4 in 3 of them. That can win you a game. Regardless of any other concerns, if they protect the ball, and force turnovers on the other side, you can win any game.

People are concerned by the Eagles' lack of passing yards. But what if I told the teams with the most passing yards are 3-7 in the playoffs? 5 of the 10 winning QBs failed to reach 200 yards. Stafford in his win over the Vikings had 205. 3 of the 4 winners this week failed to reach 200.

This week, the 4 losers outgained the 4 winners through the air 1125 to 731. Jalen Hurts, despite his meager stats had the 2nd most passing yards of the 4 winning QBs. While we sit here and worry about Hurts lack of passing yards, it has been a trend for all the winning teams except for Jayden Daniels. The Eagles are a running team, and Hurts contributes to that. It is working, it is working, and it is working for teams besides the Eagles.

He needs to be better in the passing game. That is not only on him though. It is also on Kellen Moore, and maybe AJ Brown needs to actually catch the ball. But people hyper-focus on the Eagles passing game and fail to notice the Eagles are not the only team winning despite low passing yards.

We knew Jalen Carter would be good. We knew he would be great. But even with our lofty expectations, we might have underestimated him. He dominated on Sunday vs the Rams. Two sacks, a forced fumble, a pass deflection, and 7 pressures.

He played 97% of the snaps and was double-teamed on most of them. And yet he still had the energy to get the sack on the game-ending drive, and then get a pressure that forced an incompletion on 4th down the next play. Apart from just being insanely good, his conditioning has been insane. He has hardly left the field all season. We saw him wane late in 2023, but that has not been the case this season, despite playing even more snaps and getting double-teamed more often. He deserves all the credit in the world for the work he did this offseason to make sure he doesn't hit a wall.

Carter is already a top 5 defensive player in the league. Thank you again to all the teams that let him fall to the Eagles.

Saquon Barkley can break a game wide open at literally any moment. Case in point, his two long runs vs the Rams. The first 1 came while down 7-6, and put the Eagles up 13-7. Later once the snow had completely blanketed the field, they were up only 1 score, and he did it again. It was a tension-relieving run. Things got close again, but in the moment it felt like a huge sigh of relief.

Saquon now has 8 60-yard runs, 9 40-yard runs, 12 30-yard runs, and 19 20-yard runs. He had a chance at another long one late vs the Packers, but instead, he went down to end the game.

That type of game-breaking ability is a big reason why the Eagles are where they are. And it is why despite the surface-level issues with the offense, the Eagles have scored at least 20 points in 14 straight games. The offense has issues, but as long as Saquon is running like this, you can never count them out. They can go from having a tough day to being in the end zone at literally any moment. Barkley is that explosive. You don't often think of a run game being explosive, but the Eagles offense is actually the most explosive offense in the league because of Saquon Barkley.

The defense had a few issues late vs the Rams as the snow really started to accumulate. Snow befits the offense. As it becomes harder and harder to get traction, the offense benefits because they know where they are going, and the defense has to react. So those 2 final drives were a bit ugly, though they got the stop anyway after giving up 60 quick yards on that final one. But before then they held the Rams to 272 total yards and 15 points on 10 drives.

That is nothing new. The Eagles' defense has been great pretty much all season long. In fact, this is only the 4th time since the bye week they allowed 20 points. One of those times was only 20 because of a defensive TD, so take that out and you have 3 out of 15 games where the defense allowed 20 points, and in one of those games it only got to 20 because of a last-second meaningless TD.

They have held the Ravens, Bengals, and Packers under 20. All 3 are top 10 in points per game. We already talked about how great they are at forcing turnovers, but they have also just been great at keeping the opposing team off the board.