Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
More gritty than pretty, Foles and Birds get it done
LOS ANGELES » Carson Wentz made Eagles history Sunday, throwing his record-setting 33rd touchdown pass of the season in the third quarter.
Then, almost as quickly as it happened, the leading candidate for league MVP was gone, his knee damaged on a big hit during a scramble. No one confirmed, or refuted, the reported diagnosis of a torn ACL.
That’s football. Immortal one afternoon, done the next.
The Eagles won despite blowing the lead Wentz had gotten them.
The beat went on with Nick Foles, who wasn’t healthy to start the season, as he led the offense to a couple of fourth-quarter field goals along with a clock-killing drive.
Brandon Graham intercepted a last-ditch Rams lateral on the final play of the game, took it to the house and leaped into seats occupied by Eagles fans to produce the 43-35 final score.
Mix it all together and you’ve got a signature win for these next-man-up Eagles. They’re gritty, not pretty.
“That’s a pretty good one,” defensive end Chris Long said. “I mean, we’re going to need more. But that’s a pretty good football team on the road where a lot of things went wrong for us. We were really resilient.”
Long’s strip sack of Jared Goff was recovered by Rodney McLeod at the 25-yard line of the Rams to set up Jake Elliott’s goahead 33-yard field goal with 3:45 left.
The Eagles stopped the Rams again, who punted on fourth down with two minutes remaining, and Foles burned all but one second off the clock, his nine-yard pass to Nelson Agholor bringing a huge first down.
“We accomplished one goal, that’s winning the NFC East,” Graham said. “And it feels good just the way we won. We played
hard. We easily could have given up, but we didn’t.”
The Eagles top the league alone with an 11-2 record, thanks to the Minnesota Vikings losing to the Carolina Panthers. They wouldn’t have gotten to this point without Wentz, who left the stadium with a knee brace.
The record-setting TD pass was a classic that complemented the venue and the football greats who reigned at the Coliseum.
Wentz hurled the recordbreaker to Alshon Jeffery through four defenders on one leg. The late Norm Van Brocklin, who led the Eagles to their last NFL title, in 1961, would have been proud. The Dutchman set the all-time NFL mark throwing for 554 yards at this very place in 1951 while a member of the Rams. Small world.
It was that kind of day for the Eagles, who were one mistake from going oh for their West Coast road trip that opened with a loss in Seattle.
The Eagles started as poorly as a road team can.
Wentz was intercepted on their third play, and three snaps later Todd Gurley cruised into the end zone standing up. He split McLeod and cornerback Jalen Mills, two of the team’s better tacklers, at the one-yard line. Good to see coordinator Jim
Schwartz’s lecture about shoring up the tackling worked.
The Coliseum was alive and bursting with Eagles fans. But the opening was so jaw-dropping that it silenced them.
At that point Wentz looked more like the guy who had gone just 1-4 with four TD passes and seven interceptions in December, including that Seahawks setback. But Wentz kept trudging, throwing for 291 passing yards to go with the league-leading 33 touchdowns.
Eagles offensive coordinator Frank Reich has seen a lot of tough quarterbacks in his day, having played with Hall of Famer Jim Kelly. But Reich, who was one courageous hombre himself, has never seen such toughness in a quarterback so young.
“We knew when he went down in the end zone, I said it looked like he took a pretty hard hit,” Reich said. “But nobody knew. That’s just his toughness. That’s a credit to his toughness. Credit to him. And credit to the whole team. It was really gutty.”
Wentz’s counterpart Jared Goff threw two touchdown passes. Instead of making the most of his chance to lead an all-time comeback, this part of his story is about the big fumble that proved to be too much for the Rams (9-4) to overcome.
The Eagles didn’t allow the media into their locker room to witness the celebration. The explanation was that it was too crowded.
Wentz, Eagles players there, was waiting after the game to congratulate them as soon as they hit the door. And to urge them to keep pushing.
“I don’t know what to tell a man in that situation,” Malcolm Jenkins said. “I just told him that I love him as a teammate, love him as a friend. Obviously, everybody is feeling for him. But he’s still — if I know Carson — he’ll find a way. And I’m not sure about his injury. If it is something that takes him off the team or out of the games, he’ll find a way to have an impact on this team in a positive way. That’s just his mentality.”
It was a signature Eagles win. And they’ll need more to get where they want to go.