8-0 Eagles keep on keeping on

When an NFL team is still undefeated in mid-november, everybody asks the same two questions.

How long can it keep winning? And does it have a legitimate shot at going unbeaten through the Super Bowl, to join the 1972 Miami Dolphins as the only NFL teams to run both the regular season and playoff tables?

This year’s last undefeated team, the Philadelphia Eagles, takes its 8-0 record into a Monday Night Football game against the visiting Washington Commanders (8:15 p.m. ET, TSN via ESPN).

It’s an NFC East game, not that the Commanders, at 4-5, have any realistic chance of unseating the Eagles from their division-leading perch.

One factor that could hurt the Eagles is they might be a bit out of rhythm. Because they had a bye in Week 7 and last played on Nov. 3 (a win at Houston), this is only Philly’s third game in 29 days.

How have the Eagles kept sharp both mentally and physically?

“Just going about the same process every (practice),” head coach Nick Sirianni said. “And that’s dog mentality, that’s your process, however you want to say it.

“You can’t ride the waves of the season. I get it, you guys got to ask those questions, right? But we don’t think of it that way. We’re just like, hey, we’re working this week, and we’re working today, to get ready for this upcoming game — and nothing else. So that’s just our process (that) we preach over and over again.”

The trick, of course, is getting your team — your individual players — to buy into it not just some of the time, but all of the time.

And that, Sirianni said, starts with the head coach.

“You get what you preach,” he said. “That might not be every single time, but I think if that’s on your mind at all times, and if I’m constantly talking to you about (it) ... at some point you’re like, yeah, he’s said to me a million times.”