Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Birds come up big, better late than never
Long out of options to use it to collect grand achievement, the Eagles Thursday had a chance to mine a late blast of self-worth from a difficult year of pro football.
Scuttled by injuries, particularly to the offensive line, and by the 10-game suspension of Lane Johnson, and by the inexperience of Doug Pederson and Carson Wentz, perhaps it was predictable that they would bump into their last two games with little to accomplish. In many ways, some through their own doing, 2016 was not to be their finest season. So it wasn’t.
Yet there the Birds were Thursday, not only trending back toward whole, but in the Linc for an important game from a greater NFL view. They would play the New York Gi-
ants, who were still looking to win their way into the postseason. And they would do it in a televised showcase, one of plenty they will hope to star in as Wentz grows from rookie to legend.
With that, there was a certain in-house buzz unbefitting a host team that had lost its last five and 10 of its last dozen. Johnson, as recently as 2013 the fourth overall pick in a draft, was back from his suspension. Wentz, just days ago leading a lastchance drive to a touchdown only to be tormented by the demand to adorn it with a two-point conversion, was ready to try again. Darren Sproles was freed from the concussion protocol. Even the booing of Nelson Agholor during pregame introductions suggested the customer base’s absence of apathy.
No, it wasn’t what the TV programmers had planned when they reserved a prime-time spot for an NFC East rivalry game in December. But it’s all the Eagles had.
“I just want our guys to go out and compete and play hard every week, spoiler or not,” Pederson had said. “A lot of times in this situation you take less stress off yourself and you really perform. Sometimes it creates a loose environment. Players are a little more loose, not necessarily in their planning, but in the way they play sometimes. The energy level’s high.
“I’ve been on a couple teams where we’ve been out of it, but we actually play our best football at the end of the game. For whatever reason, the psyche of it is you go out and you just enjoy playing, playing with your guys. That’s kind of going to be the message.”
It was a message the Birds clearly understood, at least early. That’s when they smothered Eli Manning for a first-possession three-and-out, took the ball and brazenly, efficiently parading 78 yards for a touchdown, using seven plays, including Sproles’ 25-yard sprint into the end zone.
Unsatisfied, the Eagles continued to bother Manning
on the ensuing Giants possession, which lasted three plays, the third being an attempted pass to tight end Will Tye that Malcolm Jenkins intercepted and returned 34 yards for a touchdown.
The two-touchdown head start would be plenty, and the Eagles would win, 24-19, never trailing. They nearly confronted disaster when Wentz was pushed first to the ground and then into the locker room after a hit from Olivier Vernon left him woozy. But the quarterback passed every required test, returned to lead a fourth-quarter scoring drive, and finished a night when he made multiple clever plays.
There will be no postseason for the Eagles, who should be haunted by the reality that they have not won a playoff game since 2008. But had they slumped into the offseason on a seven-game losing streak after not having won an NFC East game, they would have faced more than the standard questions. They would have wondered if Pederson was unlucky, or just inept. And they would have been forced to question the standard narrative that Wentz is guaranteed greatness.
Instead, as they so often have, the Eagles made Manning nervous and incapable. At a time when the Giants needed so much more, it was the Eagles who used the moment for one belated blast of defiance.
“As a head coach, I’m learning every single day, every single week,” Pederson has said. “And it’s great for me because, No. 1, as a play-caller and managing the game and talking to your quarterback, a young quarterback, we kind of work through some of these situations together. So there’s been a great benefit.
“And for me it has just heightened my awareness of the overall game procedure and the trust that I have in Carson and the offense. I think there are a lot of benefits of definitely doing this together first year.”
With one game remaining, on New Year’s Day against the visiting Dallas Cowboys, it is a year that will end the usual way for the Eagles. Yet because of their display of growth and competence Thursday, it will not end as catastrophically as it recently seemed.
Belated self-worth is not the most valuable NFL accomplishment. But on a night when that’s all they had to seek, the Eagles could have done worse.