The Eagles are looking back to being a very good team in the NFC. Is this an accident? Luck? Mirage?
They’ve always had very good talent. Last year they imploded culturally and is that really any surprise when they were firing coaches mid season and hiring Matt Patricia, the culture killer of all-time.
This year, they appear to be back.
I was very concerned to see that Vic Fangio was hired by the Eagles. He is one of the all-time best DCs there is. His head coaching run didn’t go so well in Denver but they had a top defense. Is it any surprise that the Eagle defense is all of a sudden good again?
Fangio’s defense with the bears was so dominant against McVay and Goff that McVay hired Staley to come run his defense, which statically was #1 overall that year. Now Fangio’s defense is dominating young QBs.
Is this a concern for the Lions? I feel pretty comfortable that Goff has figured out the Fangio defense and has had a lot of growing success against it in the last 7 years. Much like Flores pressure defense, it’s somewhat unique in the way it uses LBs. The holes are there in the middle if you know how to exploit and Goff does.
As to their offense? It’s always felt like Jalen Hurts is one of the best 2 read QBs out there. It’s a High/Run offense and if you can eliminate his first read and contain his run, he’s beatable. It was pretty clear when he was hurting and couldn’t run that his QB play fell off a cliff like a lot of mobile QBs. The Lions secondary will present Hurts problems. The question is if the DL can contain him. Richards will be a decent test this week as he does the same kind of High/Run read.
I still dont buy their culture long term… when you draft a bunch of work ethic/love of the game questions i just dont think they stay motivated long term but hey they have looked decent of late
Saquon makes a huge difference. Big upgrade over Swift. But I’m confident our defense can contain him. Hard to believe the Giants let that guy go. They decided to die on the Daniel Jones hill. Just because you picked a quarterback in the first round does not mean you have to re-sign him. They doubled down on the same mistake. Imagine having to write out a check for Daniel Jones every week.
I still think that Saints win was a really good one at the time. They were flying off that 2-0 start, were fully healthy with Olave and Shaheed, in NO, the place was going crazy, and Philly was coming off that baffling home loss to Atlanta. I remember everyone hammering the players in that game in DFS… only for it to be a defensive struggle.
The Saints fell apart quickly when all their guys got hurt basically at once, but they were a pretty legit team to start the season.
I mean, sure, have to take that into account, but overall, I don’t find a team that is 8-2 with the 2nd easiest schedule so far to be that impressive. Like I said, let’s see how they perform over the gauntlet of their schedule. Maybe they’re legit, maybe they’re not. Gonna learn a lot about them over the next month.
Oh there’s no doubt they’ve still got a lot to prove, it’s just one of those ‘the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence’ situations.
SF ran through a gauntlet last year, much tougher schedule than ours, but none of that mattered once we met in the NFCCG. Two years ago the Eagles cruised to a 14-3 record on the back of the league’s easiest schedule, and yet were arguably a defensive holding call away from beating the Chiefs in the Super Bowl.
Sometimes beating bad teams gets exposed (Bears this year, Vikings 2 years ago), but just as often it doesn’t. Winning breeds belief. For this version of the Eagles, I would bet the latter. They’re gonna be a tough out.
Not disagreeing, I just think asking “can they be stopped?” when they’ve basically played no one of measure seems a bit hyperbolic. I’ll reserve answering that question until they’ve played some good teams. Because my guess is that they can be stopped and probably will get stopped a couple times over the next 5 weeks.
The Eagles shine will dull a little this weekend when they lose to the Rams. We really don’t have a peer in the NFC. Buffalo, KC, and Baltimore are all bigger threats than anyone in the NFC, IMO. I understand Baltimore isn’t leading their division currently, but they are still one of the best teams in the league and I still am not confident that we won’t struggle against a running QB like Lamar.
Assuming we, Philly and Minny+ GB take care of business, the bracketology looks like Philly gets WC3, which smells more like Washington than NFCS2 or NFCW2.
If they pass, then they get winner of NFCS vs WC1, which to me is Tampa ( with Evans back they make a run here late) vs Minny.
We get bye, winner of NFCW vs WC2 (GB), then face PHI/WAS vs Tampa/Minny winners.
What made the Vikings 13 win season extremely unique was HOW they were winning games. It seemed like a combo of dumb luck and the refs throwing them wins. They did what they had to do to be in position to take advantage and win the games. But it certainly wasn’t a sustainable formula. They are really well coached, though. I will give them that.
