Don’t give up on this team. Don’t give up on this team. Don’t go to bed early just because they’re down 10 points against a team that never loses at home and has a Hall of Fame coach and quarterback.
The Eagles just don’t give up. Always.
A national television audience watched the Eagles overcome a 10-point deficit late in the third quarter to defeat the mighty Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium.
The 21-17 win isn’t revenge for the Super Bowl loss, but it certainly cements the Eagles as the best team in the NFL and a legitimate Super Bowl contender once again.
They couldn’t do anything right. Then they couldn’t do anything wrong. And now they’re 9-1 and 2-0 in the six-game killer series that we all know will define their season.
Bring the bills with you. Bring on the 49ers. Bring on the cowboys. Bring them all with you. The Eagles are not going away.
1. This win means so much in so many ways. The most obvious path is for the Eagles to go 9-1 on a weekend in which their legitimate NFC challengers – the Cowboys, 49ers and Lions – all won. And it means the Eagles are 2-0 in the killer six-game series we all had marked on the calendar when the schedule came out in April. Above all, it is a statement that the Eagles will not shy away from playing on the road in the loudest outdoor stadium in the NFL against a team that has played in three of the last four Super Bowls and is coached and quarterbacked by Hall of Famers and defeated the Eagles in the Super Bowl just nine months ago. There were a lot of conspiracies against the Eagles in Arrowhead on Monday night, and the Eagles faced it all and picked up a historic win. That’s two games in a row, now the Eagles have found a way to beat an elite team that has been giving them nightmares of late. They hadn’t beaten Dak Prescott since 2019, and they hadn’t beaten the Chiefs since 2009. It’s one thing to be 9-1, but it’s another thing to be 9-1 with back-to-back wins over combined teams 13-4. Next up are the Bills, the 49ers, the Cowboys again and the Seahawks, so it doesn’t get any easier, but what many of us have believed for a few weeks now – that the Eagles are the best team in the NFL – has stood the test of time. It doesn’t guarantee anything, but if you can beat the Cowboys and Chiefs, you can beat anyone, and that’s a good place to be.
2. This win really showed what the Eagles do best, and it’s not throwing the ball or stopping the run or putting pressure on the quarterback or covering wide receivers. It wins. They’ve done it all year and they’ve done it again. No matter how ugly the game gets, no matter how bad they play in the beginning, no matter what goes wrong, no matter what it looks like, this team never stops fighting and fighting and there is a very deep trust in the locker room. That comes from Nick Sirianni and Jalen Hurts and allows them to win games they probably can’t win. They did it again on Monday night in Kansas City, against a Chiefs team that was 62-6 under Andy Reid when it led by 10 or more points at halftime, and 65-8 under Reid when it started of the fourth quarter. I honestly have no idea how they did it. A few drops from the Chiefs in the final minutes didn’t hurt. But that was all in character for the Eagles. The one thing that never lets her down.
3. Two weeks after holding the Cowboys to six second-half points, this much-maligned defense shut out the Chiefs in the second half on Monday night. Sean Desai knows what he’s doing. The Cowboys scored 17 points before halftime and six after halftime. The Chiefs scored 17 goals before halftime and none after halftime. That’s true against two of the NFL’s most potent offenses. Taking out Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid and the Chiefs in their own stadium in the second half is amazing. I know this isn’t the Chiefs’ offense of old, but it’s the 29th ranked pass defense in the NFL and they pitched a second-half shutout against Mahomes. Unreal. The Eagles got such a big boost from Bradley Roby, who played for the first time since the Jets game and was outstanding, and the other new addition to the secondary, Kevin Byard, was much, much better than in his first two games. Mahomes threw two touchdowns in the first half and after halftime he threw 22 times for 99 yards. They held Travis Kelce to 44 yards, didn’t allow a pass play of more than 17 yards and allowed just four first downs after halftime. An incredible performance from a defense and especially a secondary that has struggled this year.
4. This offensive line deserves so much credit for bouncing back after an almost unbelievably bad first half. The Chiefs recorded five sacks in the first half, including four on six plays in the second quarter. The Eagles had just 78 net yards before halftime and, get this, just 20 net passing yards. But when you have Jeff Stoutland by your side, you have everything. A few adjustments, and after falling behind 17-7, the Eagles put together TD drives of 61 and 80 yards to take the lead and gauge how many sacks they allowed on those two drives. That’s right. None. Zipper. Zero. Zero. I mean, the Chiefs destroyed the Eagles’ offensive front and it got so bad that for a while the Eagles just stopped throwing, especially on third down. They didn’t have an official third pass attempt until midway through the fourth quarter, and by then the O-line had settled down and actually started to dominate the Chiefs. Football is a fun game. You can look so bad for so long, but as long as you still have time and play hard, strange things happen. After totaling 78 yards, 20 net passing yards and seven points before halftime, the Eagles totaled 160 yards and 104 passing yards and 14 points after halftime. Fight on. Keep grinding.
5. It was definitely encouraging to see D’Andre Swift resemble the D’Andre Swift of the first month of the season. Swift’s production had dropped – from 108 yards per game and 5.8 yards per carry in Week 2 to Week 5 to 45 yards and 3.1 yards per carry in the last four games. But the Chiefs are fourth-worst in the NFL at 4.6 yards per carry, and on a cold, windy and rainy night, Swift took advantage with 12 carries for 76 yards — his best performance since Week 3 — and added 31 receiving yards. Having Cam Jurgens back and having Jalen Hurts healthier than before and showing the ability to run early certainly helped. But Swift also appeared sharper than in recent weeks when it came to sizing up defenders and making cuts, and he skated with authority. He was 5 of 33 on the Eagles’ first-quarter touchdown drive, nearly as many yards as he has averaged per game since Week 6. The Eagles need to be able to run the ball better than them if they want to do that and this was a great start.
6. A few special team performances that shouldn’t go unnoticed: With three minutes left and the Eagles leading 21-17, Josh Jobe made a spectacular play in punt coverage by hitting Kadarius Toney for no gain at the 9-10. Yard line attacked. Toney killed the Eagles’ returning punts – his three longest punt returns in his career were against the Eagles – but Jobe’s play forced the Chiefs to travel 91 yards for a game-winning touchdown and they never got closer than the 34th of Jobe’s career. And how about player Braden Mann putting together another big game? After a slow start, he has been great of late since replacing Arryn Siposs. He averaged 47.7 on seven punts Monday night, and that was so exciting because when you give Patrick Mahomes a short field, you’re just asking for trouble. Then how about Britain Covey? The little guy just keeps playing. Three returns for a 17.7 average in a game where field position would be huge. Great stuff from Michael Clay’s group.
7. On a day where AJ Brown only caught one pass for eight yards, DeVonta Smith was great. Smith caught six passes for 99 yards, including a 41-yarder down the right sideline for the go-ahead touchdown with 6½ minutes left. It’s easy for Smith to be overlooked when playing against a top-three WR in the league, but he just comes up big every chance he gets.
8th. We’ve talked all week about how the Eagles wouldn’t win without a few takeaways and winning the turnover battle. And they committed two turnovers in the red zone – Bradley Roby tackled Travis Kelce and Kevin Byard tackled Mahomes in the end zone – and without takeaways from two of the newest Eagles, they don’t win this game. The Eagles have now won 22 straight games under Sirianni when their turnover ratio is plus-1 or better. Takeaway has been a problem for the Eagles this year. They ranked 31st in interceptions, 26th in takeaways, and 16th with a turnover percentage of minus-2 over the weekend. If this team can really take something away, forget it. Nobody beats her.
9. Jalen Hurts’ stats were ugly. His passer rating of 64.6 is the sixth-worst of his career. He only threw for 150 yards. Didn’t throw a touchdown pass. He had a fumble that he recovered and threw an interception that probably wasn’t his fault. But Hurts has a truly rare ability to ignore all the adversity he faces — mistakes, turnovers, penalties, injuries, double-digit deficits — and make big plays late in games. Nobody goes to Kansas City and comes back from a 10-point deficit in the third quarter. The Chiefs’ dominance early in this game was scary. Hurts took some tough hits, was sacked five times in the first 12 times he dropped back, and endured drives of 13, 6, 5, 3, 1, minus-3 and minus-5 yards before finally hitting gear. Once he does, you won’t be able to stop him. On Monday night, in the NFL’s loudest outdoor stadium, he battled through a ferocious defense and led the Eagles to an improbable victory over the Super Bowl champions. Hurts has a 30-4 record in his last 34 regular season starts. That should be impossible. He is unbelievable.
10. It was on October 27, 2021, when Sirianni gave his Flower Underground speech and was widely ridiculed for it. Type “Fire Sirianni” into Google and you’ll get a series of social media results from October 27, 2021. The Eagles were 2-5 heading into Detroit at the time. They won in Detroit and finished the season 7-2 in key games. Then 14-3 last year. Then 9:1 this year. The math is crazy. Since that conversation with the team, the Eagles are 30-6 in meaningful regular season games. Just think about it for a while. It’s literally unbelievable.
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