Eagles dismiss Giants ... and any doubts
PHILADELPHIA — Just as it grew clear months ago, on time and with authority, the Eagles on Saturday won a chance to play for a spot in the Super Bowl.
Nothing else would have made sense in the NFC.
Nothing else would have satisfied the football senses.
Nothing else would have been considered a success for a team so complete that it has won 15 of the 16 games started by its preferred quarterback.
Healthy and motivated, enthused and experienced, the Eagles dismissed the New York Giants, 38-7, in the conference semifinals. The team that once was 13-1 also dismissed every lingering doubt — real, imagined or feared.
The Eagles proved they were playoff ready. They showed that their quarterback had sturdy enough shoulders to throw deep, at will, and for multiple six-point plays. They proved they were soothed, not troubled, by a bye week. They showed that a late-season lull was not to be worth a worry.
“We’re professionals,” A.J. Brown had said. “It’s what we do. We know if we don’t come out and play our best ball, it could be our last time that we play. It’s just about how you handle things, and how you look at things. We just try to look at things on the positive side and not on the negative side.”
After a thorough victory that dropped them into the Final Four, the Eagles have scant negatives to consider. That was not, though, the case before they dismissed the Giants, as has been their habit for a decade.
Though they established their postseason readiness early, they were far less than that a year earlier in a 16-point loss to the Buccaneers. Thus, Nick Sirianni and his coaching staff had to prove Saturday that they were up for the after-hours challenges typically presented in the tournament. So they did, presenting a team that was relatively mistake-free, motivated and even to be a little unpredictable, once lining up to run one of their signature inch-long quarterback-sneaks only to have Hurts sneak a short pass to Kenneth Gainwell.
“You try to improve,” defensive coordinator Jonathon Gannon said last week, recalling that Tampa Bay affair. “Playoff game. Regular-season game. In OTAs. Training camp. You try to continually improve with what you’re doing in your process all the time.
“Really, that was just another opportunity to play another game, and we knew that it wasn’t good enough, and then when we got done with that game, we said, ‘Hey, here’s how we need to adjust moving forward.’ ”
With substantial boosts from their magical front office, the Eagles began the season at 8-0 and continued to improve from there. Though they slipped a bit at the end of the season — in part
because Hurts missed two games with a crooked shoulder — they had to wait until Week 18 to secure the No. 1 seed in the NFC playoffs. Still, there was the question Saturday about whether they would be sufficiently sharp in the quick rematch, given that they had not been at their best since a 48-22 road victory over the Giants on Dec. 11.
In the interim, the Eagles struggled to win a game in Chicago, lost twice with Gardner Minshew dialed into the play-call speakers, accepted a glorified walk-over game when the Giants didn’t need
a victory, then had a bye week to crowd the stadium hot tubs. Yet it took all of 4:54 and eight plays to show they were fit for the moment Saturday, Hurts capping a 75-yard game-opening drive with a 16-yard touchdown pass to Dallas Goedert.
Before the end of the first quarter, Hurts was 7-for-7 with two touchdown passes, including one to DeVonta Smith on the second possession. Haason Riddick had two sacks. All-Pro James Bradberry - whom the Giants weren’t creative enough to finance for the season - had an interception. And New York had virtually no chance
to avoid losing its 10th consecutive Linc game, and the 16th of its last 19.
With that, Sirianni, in just his second season, is a little over a week and four quarters away from forcing area sporting goods stores to remain open for 24 hours to sell freshly minted Eagles Super Bowl LVI merchandise.
He has little reason to do much but whatever it was that he just did for 20 weeks.
“Just because you’re in this moment doesn’t mean you change anything about how you go about your business,” Sirianni said last week. “You don’t put more emphasis
on ball security or taking the ball away. We got good experience of being in the playoffs last year. Obviously it didn’t end the way we wanted it to end, but it was my experience with everything last year really is like don’t look too far ahead, stay in the moment.”
The next moment for the Eagles will come at 3 next Sunday, with either the 49ers or Cowboys in for the NFC final.
They will have the home field advantage, the season record and the talent.
As for questions, they no longer have any.