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The Eagles’ run game was pretty terrifying Sunday night. And look, the Packers’ defense hasn’t been great in that area, so I’m not signaling a modern-day reincarnation of USC’s Student Body Right is on its way. But consider these two things.
1) In the first quarter, the Eagles rushed for 153 yards on 18 carries, threw the ball just five times and had possession of it for 9:51.
2) In the fourth, they rushed for 92 yards on another 18 carries, threw just four passes and completed one of those for a single yard, and had possession for 11:41 of the final 15 minutes.
They finished, as you’d expect, with a lot of rushing yards (363), with Jalen Hurts going for 157 and Miles Sanders going for 143. And that, above all else, is the reason that Philadelphia was mostly able to keep struggling Green Bay at arm’s length all night.
“I mean, you gotta give credit to the O-line. I always do. We go as they go,” Sanders told me after midnight. “When you have guys like that, that love to run the ball and play smashmouth, it just gives you a lot of confidence. So that fourth quarter, we knew we had to just run the ball. We’re very capable of running the clock out with eight minutes left, too, so being able to do that—impose your will like that—it just gives me a lot of confidence.
“Like I said, just give credit to the O-line and Coach Stout [line coach Jeff Stoutland].”
There was plenty to go around, and point to, as the Eagles moved to 10–1. There was the opening drive—in which they covered 78 yards on 10 plays—with runs on seven of the final eight snaps. There were soul-sucking drives of 14 and 10 plays in the fourth quarter. More than anything, this game showed, one more time, who the Eagles can be.
And that, of course, is not just one thing. It’s what they need to be every week. So if you’re the type to get all excited about a great passing game, there’ll be weeks when Hurts, A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith and Dallas Goedert give you that.
This week demanded something else.
“We don’t really have like a legit-like ‘thing,’ a go-to, that we’re gonna do this game,” Sanders said. “It’s kinda like just feeling it out. If we feel like we can throw the ball all day, we’ll do that. If we feel like we need to pound the ball, we’ll do that. It’s just feeling the defense out and seeing what they’re trying to give us, and just making adjustments. You gotta give credit to the coaches, too, making the adjustments and realizing that we need to just run the rock.
“And that’s what we did.”
And being able to should serve a really impressive team well when it counts.
