Birds are ready for primetime
Eagles can take big step towards clinching NFC East with a victory over Redskins
PHILADELPHIA » Nigel Bradham made some eyeballs pop when he called the Eagles’ Monday night showdown with the Washington Redskins at Lincoln Financial Field (8:30, ESPN, WPHL17, WIP 94.1-FM) the “conference championship.”
In a way, he was right. At this point the Redskins (3-2) are the only real NFC threat to the Eagles, who own a league-leading 5-1 record. A half-hour later the veteran linebacker was every bit as emphatic addressing the stakes in this heated rivalry matching the top teams in the NFC East.
“It’s a championship game and that’s our mentality,” Bradham said. “It ain’t a normal game. And that’s how we approach it. We’ve got to play big. This is it for us.”
This basically is it for the Redskins, as well, as they were beaten by the Eagles in the season-opener and can ill afford to surrender the head-to-head tiebreaker.
The Philly victory snapped a five-game losing streak in the
series, a seven-game road losing skid and Kirk Cousins’ mastery of them in four straight games. Overall Cousins is 4-2 against the Eagles with 13 touchdowns and four interceptions. The numbers are relative to Cousins, who says each game is its own entity.
“The best game I played there was probably 2014 when we lost,” Cousins said on a conference call. “So it goes every which way. You just try to stay focused, play to the last whistle and know that in this league, in this division and in this rivalry, anything can happen all the way to the last play.”
The Eagles haven’t beaten the Redskins at the Linc since Cousin’s best game against them, the quarterback throwing for 427 yards and three touchdowns in a 37-34 September setback.
This Eagles team, however, is nothing like that one or any of the others in nine years. This team gets amped up ridding itself of the last time this, that or the other thing stats.
“We’re made different this year,” quarterback Carson Wentz said. “We have different character makeup in that locker room and nobody is ever going to settle for anything less than greatness. So we’re going to go out there every day and attack it.”
This is the time of the season when the good teams start putting the competition squarely in the rearview mirror.
“This is when you want to hit your stride,” Eagles safety Rodney McLeod said. “I feel like we’re doing that right now. We’ve been battle-tested so far, playing four out of six games on the road. And we’re excited to get back here and play at the Linc, with a division opponent coming in.
We’re still on target to do a lot of things that we set out to do at the beginning of the season. This is a big game for numerous reasons. It’s the next game, it’s a home game and it’s a division opponent. So there’s a lot riding on this game but we’re up for the challenge.”
What the Eagles don’t want to do is revisit that 2014 season, win over the Redskins at home or not. That Chip Kelly-guided team started 5-1 and finished 10-6 and out of the playoffs. Kelly was fired last in the 2015 season.
The Giants are a worthy opponent with Jay Gruden, one of the more underrated head coach in the league.
“I think it’s a great rivalry with a great history,” Gruden said. “And it’s always a physical matchup, and that’s what I can appreciate. Week 1, they were more physical than us. And I would never have thought that about any of our teams but they were. Their defensive line was more physical than our offensive line and quite frankly, that’s the only time that’s happened this year. I think it’s just always been a physical, hardcore matchup and fun games to watch. Every game we’ve played it seems like has come down to the wire. We’ve won the last five of six but they’ve all been close.”
With Wentz trending upward and Cousins’ future with the Redskins uncertain, this could be the last knockdown, drag-out game in the series for a long time. Gruden said the Redskins want Cousins to stay. Cousins didn’t think enough of the team’s contract proposal to tear up the oneyear franchise tender worth almost $29 million.
Cousins sort of waxed poetic talking about the quarterbacks in the Eagles-Redskins series. The 2012 fourth-round pick out of Michigan State thinks about what might have been every time he sees Nick Foles on the Philly roster.
“I think it’s just been such an interesting saga for so many reason, over the last 5 1/2 seasons,” Cousins said. “I even think about the fact that I visited the Eagles before the draft and sat with Howie Roseman and we talked, and sat with Andy Reid and thought there was a chance that I might end up there. And they chose Nick Foles instead, several picks ahead of me. It’s just very interesting how as time passes how things have played out and how they’ve transpired.”
Right now there isn’t much distance between the games. And that makes the Monday nighter a battle for the ages.
“The middle stretch of the season is where teams separate themselves,” Eagles offensive tackle Lane Johnson said. “A lot of teams start off fast and some teams tank. It’s the consistent teams who can go through this middle stretch and win those tough games that separate themselves.”