https://www.nbcsportsphiladelphia.com/n ... ns/752399/We saw Jalen Hurts at his worst and then we saw him at his best.
After his second interception of the game put the Eagles in a deep hole with six minutes left, he capped a magical 65-yard game-winning drive with a 3-yard touchdown pass to Darius Cooper with 9 second left to rally the Eagles to a heart-stopping 24-20 win over the upset-minded Titans at Nissan Stadium in Nashville.
Hurts was 6-for-8 for 61 yards on the game-winning drive, and it was his 19-yard strike to DeVonta Smith down to the 3-yard-line with 20 seconds left that put the offense in position to win the game.
The Eagles haven’t played a complete game yet, but they’re somehow 2-0.
Magical.
1. To really appreciate how remarkable that last drive was for Jalen Hurts you have to keep in mind just how bleak the situation was going into that last drive. The Eagles couldn’t run the ball. They couldn’t protect the quarterback. They had 66 offensive yards and had scored just three points in the second half. It doesn’t matter. With Hurts nothing else matters but himself and his receivers because he has that rare ability to ignore everything that’s happened around him and just shut it out and focus on the moment. He was brilliant on that last drive. Twenty yards to Dontayvion Wicks on a 3rd-and-6. Nine and six yards to DeVonta Smith. Then 19 yards down to the 3 to Smith and the game-winner to a wide-open Cooper. With the game on the line, the turnovers, the misfires, the sacks, the absence of a running game, none of it mattered. All that mattered is that the 17th-best quarterback in the NFL picked up his teammates, made big throw after big throw, and willed the Eagles to a win they absolutely had to have.
2. I mean, how freaking good is DeVonta Smith? Are you kidding me? If there was ever any question whether he could be WR1 after what’s his name left for New England – which there shouldn’t have been – there can’t be anymore. Smith finished 10-for-117 with a touchdown for his 16th career 100-yard game. On the game-winning drive, Smith had four catches for 38 yards, including a miracle toe-tapper on the right sideline and the big 19-yarder down to the 3-yard-line. The dude catches everything. He’s a total team guy. He’s unselfish. He’s tough. He’s steady. He’s consistent. He’s clutch? What else do you want from a WR1? Oh, and most importantly, he loves being an Eagle and doesn’t want to leave. He’s the total package.
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3. You have to love Darius Cooper catching the game-winner. What a story this kid is. He went to a tiny college that even the most ardent football fan has probably never heard of – Tarleton State in lovely Stephenville, Texas. Undrafted but had such a good training camp last summer that he made the Eagles as an improbable undrafted rookie. Caught just nine passes but showed up on special teams and impressed everybody around him with his dynamic work ethic, team-first attitude and boundless confidence. Comes back this summer and he’s even better in training camp, catching everything in sight. But still hard to imagine where he fits in on this new-look wide receiver room. But makes three special teams tackles in the opener and then finds his way into the rotation on Sunday and in the most crucial moment of the game he’s out there on offense because he’s earned the trust of his coaches and teammates. Then on the final play of the game, when he’s only out there to run interference to help open up DeVonta Smith, he winds up wide open and the ball comes his way because Smith slipped and fell and he catches his first touchdown since Dec. 7, 2024, when he caught a TD for Tarleton State in a loss to South Dakota in the FCS playoffs in Vermillion, S. Dak. How do you not root for this kid?
4. I could spend this paragraph criticizing the offensive line, and the reality is to a man they did not play very well Sunday. Hurts was once again under constant pressure, was sacked three times, eluded pressure on snap after snap and just never got the protection he needed to play at a consistently high level. With two guys playing their first career game at a new position – Drew Kendall at center, Cam Jurgens at left guard – you had 40 percent of the offensive line out there trying to block Jeff Simmons (and failing for much of the game). But with the game on the line? They got the job done. It never should have come down to a game-winning drive in the final couple minutes, but it did and when it absolutely, positively had to come up huge, the o-line finally buckled down and gave Hurts the protection he needed on those final nine snaps, and Hurts made the most of it. There’s still a lot of work to do here and who knows when or if Landon Dickerson will come back healthy. This o-line still needs to play a lot more consistently. But when they had to Sunday, they did.
5. Can we declare that Jake Elliott is officially back? Nick Sirianni showed a lot of faith in Elliott in the third quarter when he let him attempt a 58-yard field goal and Elliott crushed it through to tie 5th-longest field goal in franchise history, and that was huge because it extended the Eagles’ lead to seven points at 17-10. Elliott is now 7-for-9 in his career from 58 yards and out, and only Brandon Aubrey and Matt Prater, with 10 apiece, have made more 58-yarders in NFL history. Elliott’s 78 percent accuracy from 58 yards and out is highest ever by any kicker who’s attempted more than five from that range. Elliott was statistically the worst kicker in football over the last two years. He had a strong training camp and is now 2-for-2 in the regular season, and he is definitely paying the Eagles back for the faith they’ve had in him. Because it would have been easy to replace him when he missed 15 field goals over the last two years.
6. Two games in, Dontayvion Wicks is looking like a steal. Coming off his 2-for-73 game with a 64-yard catch and a touchdown, he was 5-for-74 Sunday in Nashville and made a bunch of big catches – a 27-yarder on a 3rd-and-12 and a 7-yarder on a 3rd-and-4 in the first quarter, a 5-yarder on a 4th-and-2 and a 15-yarder on a 3rd-and-12 in the second quarter and a 20-yarder on a 3rd-and-6 on the game-winning drive. He just kept getting open on big downs and Hurts kept finding him. The connection they’ve developed in a short amount of time is impressive. This is a guy who never caught 40 passes in a season with the Packers, and he’s been fantastic so far and really established himself quickly as the WR2 the Eagles desperately needed across from DeVonta Smith. Wicks is the first Eagle with 70 or more receiving yards in his first two games in 18 years, since rookie DeSean Jackson had 106 yards in his first NFL game against the Rams and 110 a week later against the Cowboys.
7. What the heck is going on with the Eagles’ running game? They just can’t get things going, no matter who the back is and no matter who the left guard is. There just aren’t any holes there. You hoped getting five healthy offensive linemen in there would make a difference, but they were even worse than last week against a mediocre defensive front. Saquon Barkley missed all but the first play of the first half with a stinger he suffered on the first play of the game, but although Tank Bigsby scored a short touchdown and Will Shipley did have a seven-yard run, the backs combined for just 66 yards on 24 carries for 2.8 yards a pop. Barkley returned in the third quarter but things didn’t get better. He ran four times for nine yards with a long gainer of four yards. The Eagles want to build this offense around a dominating running game and right now they're far from it, and that’s putting a ton of pressure on Hurts and the passing game. They’ve got to figure this thing out.
8. Defensively, again, good enough to win but not up to the standard you expect from a Vic Fangio unit with this much talent against this level of opponent. The first touchdown came after a long INT return following Jalen Hurts’ interception and was just a 10-yard drive. So that’s more on Hurts than the defense. But the Titans’ scoring drive just before halftime was concerning, with Cam Ward completing passes on consecutive snaps of 28 yards to Ayomanor on a 3rd-and-13 and 27 yards to Spears to set up a field goal at the end of the half. Can’t let that happen. Then they let Ward pick them apart on a 69-yard TD drive after halftime, with the defense starting to look gassed. For a second straight game, they didn’t record a takeaway, only the third time since 1950 they’ve failed to force a turnover in their first two games (also 1996 and 1998). Then came that late field goal drive by the Titans, which included a ridiculous 27-yard run by Tyjae Spears on a 3rd-and-22. They had just two sacks and only three through two games. They gave up another 122 rushing yards. They let the Titans convert 46 percent of their third downs. This is a veteran experienced defense, most of which has been together for three years now. They need to be better.
9. The offensive line as we wrote about above was not very good, but we should give credit to Drew Kendall for hanging tough in his first meaningful NFL start. Kendall drew a very tough assignment, sharing responsibility with the other interior guys for five-time Pro Bowler Jeffery Simmons, one of the best interior linemen in the league. Kendall was a beast Sunday – six tackles, a sack, a tackle for loss, three quarterback hits – but ultimately he didn’t do enough because the Eagles won the game. This is a very challenging ask for a 24-year-old kid who’s never played high-leverage snaps in the NFL and is being asked to start on the road in tough 95-degree conditions. And while it wasn’t perfect by any means, Kendall battled to the point where the Eagles could score 24 points and win a football game with a three-time Pro Bowl offensive lineman on the bench. This was one start. Kendall will only get better, but it was an auspicious debut.
10. Dallas Goedert’s knee injury really puts the spotlight on just how badly the Eagles need to beef up the tight end room. Johnny Mundt is a good blocker but he’s not a pass catcher and E.J. Jenkins has one career reception, and when Goedert is out they really don’t have a second receiving option at tight end. The Eagles drafted Eli Stowers in the second round, but after a lackluster training camp he went on Injured Reserve and who knows when he’ll be back. We’ve been talking about this all summer. The room is just not good enough and while we don’t know how serious Goedert’s injury is yet, either way Howie Roseman needs to find a second tight end who can catch the football. Zach Ertz makes the most sense, but it has to be someone. Their tight end stable right now is just not good enough.
