Birds weren’t perfect, but did more than enough to win
PHILADELPHIA » Normally you’d need a shower to rinse away the grime from all of the careless mistakes the Eagles made Sunday in their 33-10 blowout of the winless San Francisco 49ers.
Luckily it rained. Fortunately for the Eagles, they don’t let success get to their heads. You won’t catch them dreaming about a championship parade. There are eight more games to play.
But make no mistake, the Eagles don’t fear what they’ve become or the second half of the season in the least. They’ll stack their 7-1 record, six-game win streak and the assault on the record books by Carson Wentz, who threw his 18th and 19th touchdown passes Sunday, against anyone. It doesn’t mean nearly as much to them as the fun they hope to have in the next game, no matter where, no matter the competition. Bill Belichick couldn’t psyche out this Eagles team.
For one half it sure looked like the Eagles were not immune to the old “trap game” mentality. Instead of focusing on the lightweights in front of you, you think about taking punches from the heavyweights ahead, in the case of the Eagles, the Denver Broncos. That game is next Sunday at the Linc.
By the end of the third quarter, you felt bad for the 49ers. They looked like the fighter who should have stayed down.
“We’re hungry,” Malcolm Jenkins said. “Every game we feel like is an opportunity to establish ourselves, to prove a point and to have fun. That’s the biggest thing. We don’t look past anybody. A game is an opportunity for us to compete. Regardless of who we put out there you’re going to get that same effort, the same speed and enthusiasm week in and week out.”
Eagles tight end Zach Ertz got the fans into the game with a one-yard scoring reception inside of two minutes left in the first half. He handed the football off to super fan Mike Trout, the Angels baseball star seated in the end zone seats, before Mr. Reliable, 37-year-old punter Dirk Johnson, bobbled the snap on the PAT. It made kicker Jake Elliott hesitate, and hook the kick to the left. How many times have we said, “that’s going to come back to haunt them?”
Instead, the Eagle defense rocked C.J. Beathard on the next series, Brandon Graham sacking him for a six-yard loss. Two plays later it was third-and-seven at the 28-yard line of a very loud stadium.
Eagles cornerback Jalen Mills, who studied the rookie quarterback in pregame warm-ups, had an idea the ball would float toward the receiver he was covering, Pierre Garcon. And it did. Mills jumped the route, knowing Jenkins had his back, and picked off the pass, rolling 37 yards for a score with 1:24 left before the intermission. That basically was it for the 49ers, Wentz lobbing a two-point pass to Alshon Jeffery for a 17-0 lead.
The fun continued the rest of the rainy afternoon. Jeffery had a little when he leaped to break up a Hail Mary pass on the last play of the first half. In the third quarter Jeffery, the twopoint specialist, scored on a 53-yard catch-and-run, his longest reception of the season. That was so much fun Jeffery went with a TD celebration that was out there. Ertz, the pitcher, hit Jeffery, the batter, with the football.
I don’t get it, either, but it’s all about having fun.
“We’ve got some more stuff,” Jeffery said. “We’ve just got to get the timing done because coach is always yelling at us, ‘we’ve only got 40 seconds.’ And I got a pass breakup under my belt. The next thing is I’m looking for a pick. End of the half, it’s OK. I wasn’t tripping.”
Let’s try not to get carried with six straight Eagles victories, their longest streak since the 2009 season. Remember when Rich Kotite started 7-2 in 1994? Thank you.
Still, when you look at the winning streak, it’s impressive. The Eagles have outscored the opposition, 182-112. That’s right, they’re averaging 30.3 points and allowing just 18.7 on average in the winning streth.
The Eagles also have won six straight games at the Linc, including four this season.
True, the 49ers are 0-8 for the first time in their 73year history. And they lost another wave of guys to injury. That happens to bad teams. But it also happens to good teams.
The Eagles have laughed in the face of adversity. They’ve kept winning without key starters Darren Sproles, Chris Maragos, Ronald Darby, Jordan Hicks and Jason Peters.
There’s a reason so many different Eagles have performed so well in the old next-man-up tradition.
“It’s a blast right now,” Ertz said. “We’re having a lot of fun. We’re playing extremely loose. We have a lot of confidence each and every week we go out there. We’ve got a lot of unselfish guys that all they care about winning so it’s a really fun environment right now.”
There’s a lot of football to be played.
And for the Eagles, who haven’t been to the playoffs in four years, it looks like there will be a lot of football to play after that.