A year later, early returns not quite so encouraging
PHILADELPHIA >> By early October of last season, it already was possible to see something different in the Eagles. By the end of the month, it was confirmed.
A 3-1 start included a couple of close victories, one requiring a 61-yard field goal at the horn to stun the Giants, another needing a defining late drive to preserve a road victory over the Chargers. Then came Week 5, and a 34-7 thumping of the Cardinals, as part of what would become a ninegame winning streak.
They were smooth, and they were confident. They were the team trying new tricks, with a coach unburdened by traditional fourth-down expectations. Their quarterback, Carson Wentz, was able to avoid tacklers, even if they were to come at him in a pack of six.
There were other Eagles teams over the decades, some of them very good. But there was just something that felt special about the 2017 champions-to-be, not that they were opposed to that view.
“The sky is the limit,” Doug Pederson would announce, after that Arizona game. And down the hall, Cards coach Bruce Arians would exhale, “Hats off to the Eagles. They played extremely well.”
There is no set time for an NFL team to reveal its worth. Buddy Ryan used to famously say that the real championship-ready teams would not show that before “the snow flies.” But excellence can show early, too. And that’s what happened last year, when the Eagles started strong, then grew even more dominating. They’d drop 34 on Washington and 51 on Denver, and they would win back-to-back games over Dallas and Chicago by a combined 68-12. They were good. They knew they were good.
The league knew they were good.
And they only kept getting better.
Sunday, the Eagles will host Minnesota, that after dropping two of their last three, including a 2623 loss in Tennessee, a game they’d led in overtime. To charge that they are sputtering, or failing, or worse is premature. But it’s already clear that whatever that was they had going for them
12 months ago is no longer easily spotted.
No longer are they capably patrolling the secondary. No longer can they claim to have football’s best offensive line. Passes that magically found willing, magnetic hands last season have been dropped. And while it just might have been overlooked by the media, there was an early quarterback change, with the sitting Super Bowl MVP removed in favor of one requiring a knee brace.
The Eagles haven’t been inept. In regulation, they are 2-1-1. They beat the Falcons, who are supposed to be good. There have been lousy Eagles teams over the years. This isn’t one.
But a great one?
Not this year. Not yet. Says who? Says the man who declared that championship parades would be the Birds’ “new normal.” That’s who.
“For us to play like champions, first of all, we have to understand that we are champions, and you’re expected to play a certain way,” Pederson said. “For the coaches and players here in Philadelphia, with the Eagles, that is my expectation. When you don’t live up to that expectation, we need to just zero down on it and figure out why.
“The sense of urgency from players and coaches needs to heighten just a little bit. It’s not a panic mode, but it’s a heightened awareness of who we are as a football team and where we want to get to. We have to eliminate these penalties because they’re coming at the wrong time. And turnovers are coming at the wrong time. Really there’s no good time for any of them, but that’s just what’s happening.
“We just have to keep coaching them.”
The “Super Bowl hangover” effect is real. At least it has been since 2005, when the Patriots became the last team to win a second consecutive Super Bowl. Personnel changes, a shorter offseason, complacency, luckshifts all can make a difference. Why should the Eagles be immune?
The verbal history of the Super Bowl LII champion Eagles will naturally be diluted through the generations. Eventually, they will be remembered as the team that, with a backup quarterback, rampaged through the playoffs and, in the final game, overcame one of the NFL’s greatest dynasties with a classic, lateseason overachievement. In some corners, that’s already the spin.
But the champion Eagles, who allowed 500 passing yards in that Super Bowl, were not at their best late. They were at their best early, which allowed them to not have to win a postseason road game.
Can they be that way again? That’s up to them, as their coach made so clear. Perhaps they will uncork another October-November nine-game winning streak.
But unlike last year, they have not started early. And last year, that mattered.