Defending the Nest: How the Philadelphia Eagles Defied the Odds
Before the season had even begun, I was ready to give up on the Eagles. I had been pessimistic about them ever since they flamed out last season by losing six of their last seven games. I went as far as projecting them to miss the playoffs in my preseason predictions.
I wasn’t going to let a week one win over the Packers convince me that last year’s struggles had suddenly been resolved. “Give them time and this team will come crashing down to Earth,” I would tell people.
I was the first person to jump on Saquon Barkley for dropping a game-sealing pass against Atlanta that caused Philly to ultimately lose in heartbreaking fashion. “I told you so” were the words I may or may not have uttered to the Eagles fans in my life.
In week three, Philly only scored 15 points, leading me to believe that when their defense inevitably started letting up, the offense wouldn’t be there to pick up the slack, and the team would crumble.
But it wasn’t until the Eagles’ week four playoff rematch with the Buccaneers that I was fully convinced that their chances of reviving a two-year run as one of the most dominant teams in the NFL were zero.
Baker Mayfield carved them up in the first half of the game and established a 24-0 lead in fewer than 23 minutes. It was at that point that I turned to my roommates and declared that the Eagles should fire Nick Sirianni, look to trade Jalen Hurts, scrap their veterans on defense, and worst of all, I pronounced that the Saquon Barkley signing was a mistake and that the running back market would never return to peak form—otherwise known as “blowing it up.”
In my week 5 power rankings, here’s what I wrote about the Eagles.
18. Philadelphia Eagles (down 5)
How this season can be a success: The Eagles must win a playoff game to redeem themselves from last year’s failure. Of all of the successes for every team, I see this one as the most unrealistic, but for a fanbase and a front office with such high expectations, just making the playoffs is nowhere near good enough.
I handpicked every team’s definition of success for the season and out of all 32 teams, I said that the Eagles WINNING A PLAYOFF GAME was the most unrealistic. By that logic, I thought the 49ers winning the Super Bowl, the Cowboys reaching the NFC championship, and the Jets winning a playoff game this season were more realistic outcomes. Back then, I didn’t have any vision for the Eagles besides failure.
Since that moment in time, they have done nothing but prove me wrong. Week after week, I lived in denial while they stacked win after win. Here’s what the season-long discourse looked like.
Week 6: Eagles beat Browns 20-16
Why I didn’t trust them: They beat lowly Browns by one point and a seemingly uncontrollable Nick Sirianni was caught screaming at his own fans.
Why I should have trusted them: It was a scrappy win on the road, it was Jalen Hurts’ best game of the season to that point, and Sirianni’s rowdy style fires up his team more than anything.
Week 7: Eagles beat Giants 28-3
Why I didn’t trust them: Come on. It’s the Giants. New York was 2-5, trending downward, and is always terrible against the Eagles and at home.
Why I should have trusted them: Saquon Barkley had his first signature game as an Eagle with 176 yards and a score on 10.4 yards per carry. It would be a sign of things to come.
Week 8: Eagles beat Bengals 37-17
Why I didn’t trust them: Let’s not pretend that the Bengals were a good team at this point in the year. They were 3-5 with their only wins coming against the Panthers, Giants, and Browns.
Why I should have trusted them: Their defense which had allowed 9.5 points per game in their last two wins held Cincinnati’s explosive offense to just 17 points—tied for the Bengals’ second-lowest output of the season. It was also Joe Burrow’s lowest passer rating of the year.
Week 9: Eagles beat Jaguars 28-23
Why I didn’t trust them: They nearly surrendered a massive fourth-quarter comeback to a pathetic Jags offense led by an injured Trevor Lawrence, and the Jags were yet another terrible team that couldn’t give me a real sense of whether Philadelphia would be able to match up with the contenders of the league.
Why I should have trusted them: It was another huge Saquon game. He totaled 199 yards on the ground and through the air and scored twice. They suffocated the Jags for much of the game, logging more than twice as many yards as them.
Week 10: Eagles beat Cowboys 34-6
Why I didn’t trust them: I sound like a broken record, but the Cowboys were terrible. The first four Cooper Rush games were abysmal for Dallas—the team scored an average of 11.5 points, and Rush’s average passer rating was 64.4. Further, Jalen Hurts was getting by without having to make any big throws which I thought would come back to bite the Eagles.
Why I should have trusted them: Hurts throwing the ball fewer than 25 times is actually the Eagles’ recipe for success. It allows them to pound the ground which they did to perfection in this game, notching 187 more rushing yards.
Week 11: Eagles beat Commanders 26-18
Why I didn’t trust them: Jayden Daniels was dealing with his worst rib pain of the season, and rookies never win primetime games on the road in the cold. However, I’ll admit that after this game, which put the Eagles at 8-2, I began my period blindly doubting the Eagles because there weren’t many negative standpoints to take besides the “there’s no way Sirianni can win a Super Bowl” narrative.
Why I should have trusted them: First of all, news flash: if a guy makes it to a Super Bowl two years prior, it probably means he’s capable of winning one. Secondly, I obviously should have taken stock of the Eagles shutting down the league’s best offense to that point as well as another breakout Saquon performance.
Week 12: Eagles beat Rams 37-20
Why I didn’t trust them: More blunt ignorance from me that overstated Sirianni’s weaknesses and overstated the importance of a head coach on a team with as much talent as the Eagles have. Additionally, at this point, I was being stubborn about my preseason Eagles opinions and wasn’t willing to come around easily.
Why I should have trusted them: I don’t know, maybe because Saquon broke the franchise for most yards in a single game? Perhaps because Jalen Hurts had only thrown one interception in his last eight games? Or maybe because Philly’s defense allowed 14.7 PPG in their now seven-game winning streak? How about all of the above?
Week 13: Eagles beat Ravens 24-19
Why I was starting to trust them: I was officially running out of answers after this game. I watched every Ravens game this season, as I have been doing since 2018, and I hadn’t seen Lamar Jackson this confused by a defense yet. I was finally realizing how elite this Eagles D was and how naive I had been to completely disregard potentially the best unit in the NFL outside of the Lions’ explosive offense. Here’s how I described my feelings about the Eagles in that week’s power rankings.
3. Philadelphia Eagles (no change)
I debated putting the Eagles at #2 but stuck with #3 only because the Bills didn’t deserve to slide. However, it’s clear now that this Eagles team is the real deal and I feel like a fool for not buying in until this week. Their defense has been the best in the NFL in their 8-game win streak and their offense refuses to turn the ball over. And we all know about Saquon Barkley. I’m not sure if Nick Sirianni has done anything this season besides pump up his guys on the sideline, but kudos to him for getting out of the way and letting the players cook.
Why I should have trusted them earlier: Philly’s defense had been playing lights out since week five. Their points per game were the fewest, their yards per game were the fewest, their DVOA was the best, and their young players such as Jalen Carter, Cooper DeJean, Nolan Smith Jr., and Quinyon Mitchell were all developing into stars.
Week 14: Eagles beat Panthers 22-16
Why I didn’t trust them: I had finally accepted the Eagles were better than I could have ever imagined, but after barely squeaking out a win at home against Carolina, I was once again ready to drop them from their new standing as a contender. What’s more is that after Jalen Hurts passed for a mere 108 yards, ripples of frustration emanated from the Eagles’ wide receiver room—particularly from A.J. Brown. Brandon Graham even shared on his podcast that the friendship between Hurts and Brown had been fading over the years.
Why I should have trusted them: Brown, like everybody else in the NFL, is a competitor. He wants to catch the ball. End of story. This should never have escalated into drama in the first place—Hurts and Brown have always had a good relationship and any frustration that Brown showed was either worded incorrectly or overblown by the media.
Week 15: Eagles beat Steelers 27-13
Why I was starting to trust them again: They had responded to the outside noise. Brown had eight catches for 110 yards and a touchdown and Hurts went 25-for-32 for 290 yards and three scores. Their defense held Russell Wilson and the Steelers to 128 passing yards and 13 points. The Eagles were 12-2 and I officially trusted them again.
Why I should have trusted them earlier: Quite literally every other team in the league has drama whether on the field or off the field. Choosing to invest in the Eagles’ drama blowing up in their face was yet another example of my stubbornness to accept that they were a Super Bowl contender.
Week 16: Commanders beat Eagles 36-33
Why I didn’t trust them: Forget the fact that Jalen Hurts went down with a concussion—I was gravely concerned with the Eagles’ defense allowing twice as many points to the Commanders as they did in week 11. My prior suspicions about the Eagles’ defense’s fraudulence seemed to be coming true, and we all know that defense wins championships.
Why I should have trusted them: If a student takes 17 tests in a semester and receives 10 straight A+’s and a D on the 11th one, would you expect them to get D’s for the next six tests? No. They’re probably an A+ student who had a one-time slip-up.
Week 17-18: Eagles beat Cowboys 41-7, beat Giants 20-13
At this point, the Eagles weren’t playing for anything more than pride (that includes the single-season rushing record), and any doubts I had about them would be kept for the postseason.
I’ll give myself a little bit of credit; I picked the Eagles to win every one of their playoff games against the Packers, Rams, Commanders, and Chiefs. But those predictions weren’t made without skepticism. At some point in the week prior to each of those games, I thought the Eagles were going to lose. For whatever reason, my gut always told me that the Eagles were vulnerable to choking when it mattered most.
The Eagles proved me wrong. As they ran up the scoreboard on offense and assaulted Patrick Mahomes on defense in the Super Bowl, it hit me that I was witnessing one of the all-time great defenses and I hadn’t appreciated them until the final game of the season.
Luckily for me, I’ll have a second chance because this Eagles team will be on the upper echelon of football for years to come and I won’t ever take them for granted again.
One of the greatest sayings of all time: Defend The Nest.
I picked against the Eagles in every playoff game.