Magical ride ends in New Orleans ... right?
Saints are big favorites but red-hot Eagles can’t be counted out so quickly.
Drew Brees and the Saints are loaded and favored to win the Super Bowl. They rested while Doug Pederson's team squeaked past the Bears 16-15 on Sunday in an NFC wildcard game at Soldier Field.
Plus, New Orleans demolished the Birds 48-7 on Nov. 18.
Those are all logical, sensible points. Problem is not much about what the Eagles have done during the past four weekends qualifies as logical. Remember, this team dropped to 4-6 after the debacle in New Orleans.
The Week 15 road victory over the Rams, who were 11-2 at the time, was the biggest regular-season surprise and set the stage for a playoff push. A home win against the playoff-bound Texans and season-ending shutout in Washington, coupled with the Bears' Week 17 victory over the Vikings, resulted in the Eagles ending up with the conference's sixth and final postseason berth.
Chicago (6 points) was the biggest favorite among the four games last weekend, yet Nick Foles and company found a way. Understandably, the Eagles opened as a 9-point underdog, which is again the largest spread, for Sunday afternoon's NFC divisional playoff game.
Pederson is 4-0 in the postseason to begin his head coaching career, despite his Birds not being favored once. A year ago, the top-seeded Eagles were underdogs in their two home conference games primarily because Foles didn't play well late in the regular season after Carson Wentz went down with a serious knee injury.
Foles is also 4-0 in the playoffs with Pederson. He became the third quarterback to defeat the NFL's No. 1 regularseason scoring defense (the Bears this year and the Vikings from 2017) in consecutive postseasons since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger. The other two are Hall of Famers Joe Montana and John Elway.
Foles wasn't perfect Sunday. He and the offense are going to have to be more productive vs. the Saints than in the first half last week, when the Birds trailed 6-3. Foles' late second-quarter interception in which he underthrew a wellcovered Nelson Agholor in the end zone cost the Eagles at least three points and looked like it could've been a differencemaker.
But Foles produced more late-game magic with the winning 12-play, 60-yard drive, culminating in a 2-yard pass to receiver Golden Tate on fourth and goal in the final minute. Foles' unflappable demeanor cannot help but rub off on his teammates in the huddle.
“I realize that I'm blessed to wear this jersey at least one more week,” Foles told reporters afterward.
If the Eagles are going to upset the Saints, they're going to have to keep Brees off the field by controlling the ball with the running game and the defense must limit the big plays by the ageless Brees (32 touchdown passes to five interceptions, league-best 115.7 QB rating), back Alvin Kamara (883 rushing yards, 81 catches), receiver Michael Thomas (NFL-leading 125 catches on 147 targets, with five games of doubledigit receptions) and the rest.
Two encouraging signs are that the Philly secondary isn't nearly as depleted as in the first meeting and the defensive line has been much more consistently applying pressure on the quarterback than was the case for most of the season.
“This team believes,” said Pederson on Monday. “This team believes in everything that we're doing. You saw it [Sunday]. It's a different mindset. It's a different football team.”
One area that needs to be tweaked involves rookie cornerback Avonte Maddox. While he's an aggressive playmaker, Maddox let receiver Allen Robinson get behind him three times, the most glaring of which occurred when he bit on a second-quarter double-move resulting in a 45-yard completion. That cannot keep happening.
The Saints earned the conference's top seed with a 13-3 record, only losing to the Cowboys, Buccaneers and Panthers. Nine years ago, they won the Super Bowl after going 13-3, securing the No. 1 seed and losing to the same three teams. Will history repeat? We'll see.
Yes, New Orleans is a formidable foe and it's going to take a terrific performance to beat Sean Payton's squad. But counting out Foles and the resilient Eagles would be a mistake.