👋 Good morning! 🎶 You gotta know when to hold ‘em… 🎶

Poor Isaiah. That 40-22 tattoo on his leg is still probably fresh. Have you ever seen how in soccer, a goalscorer will sometimes put their hands up and purposely not celebrate a goal against one of their former clubs as a sign of respect? All class. Well, that was me watching A.J. and DeVonta light up The Gambler. Love that guy.

Tough weekend for the Minnesotans.

Did Philadelphia win every game against the midwesterners this weekend? You betcha! Really, all you can do at a time like this is walk around the Skyway System with some Replacements or Prince in your headphones, pick up some Caribou Coffee, grab a Juicy Lucy and finish up your day with some shopping at the Mall of America. The Minnesotans will be alright, at least they have Zeev Buium. Eduardo Tait will be there soon enough, too. And Anthony Edwards is pretty cool, I guess.

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As always, you can reach me at [email protected]

That was far from a dominant Eagles win, but unlike a few of them so far this season, I thought that was quite an interesting Eagles win. A lot of thoughts to come, but first, the links, the links, the links…

Two more things before we get started:

I thought Bo made a great point here on the post-game show: This had all the makings of a RUN THE BALL game. The last time the Eagles saw Brian Flores, D’Andre Swift ran for 175 yards. D’Andre Swift! When a defensive coordinator like Flores dials up crazy pressure schemes, sometimes the gap integrity suffers and you can hit some big runs. And so far this season, that has been the case. The Vikings’ run defense has been much worse than their pass defense.

Basically, this was not a predictable get-right game for the Eagles’ passing attack. A predictable get-right game would have been last week in New Jersey. Go figure.

Well, despite it decidedly not being a RUN THE BALL game, the Eagles won. And they won because Jalen Hurts put up the third perfect passer rating in Eagles history against what was the best pass defense in the league by EPA per dropback. Heady stuff. The other two perfect passer ratings in the history of the franchise prior to Sunday, which I wanted to mention just because they were memorable games…

On a per-play basis throughout the game, I thought Minnesota was probably the better team. They became the seventh straight team to outgain the Eagles, which is just not a good trend. The Eagles had three straight three-and-outs (and then a fourth drive voluntarily ended by some Nick Sirianni cowardice, which we will get to in a minute) to finish out the first half. It’s really not a 2025 Eagles game without “The Three-And-Out Hour.” Meanwhile, the Vikings punted just once all day.

You could argue that 21 of the Vikings’ 22 players (22 of 23, if we include the kickers) were collectively better than the Eagles’ 21. But guess what? The Eagles’ most-important player was better than the Vikings’ most-important player. And it really was not close.

One quarterback hit explosive pass plays, the other quarterback turned the ball over. That’s your ballgame. I am not celebrating the Carson part, either. That man helped the Eagles win their first Lombardi Trophy. All class from over here.

Wentz and Kevin O’Connell moved the ball up and down the field on the Eagles defense all afternoon. There were some killer missed tackles mixed in there. There was plenty of picking on the No. 2 cornerbacks mixed in there, as after all, it was a day that ends in Y. The last time that Jordan Addison was that open in the flats must have been Pop Warner ball. But despite moving the ball with relative ease, Wentz also had some absolutely horrendous, head-scratching, straight-out-of-2020 plays at inopporune times. Five off the top of my head…

Wentz had a lot going for him, but some major lowlights mixed in. Hurts had very little going on around him, and he got the job done. Top-notch quarterback play from No. 1.

So, how did Jalen do it? As we have noted before, it seems like Kevin Patullo and Nick Sirianni only bring certain chapters of the playbook to each game. A few weeks ago against Denver, they dusted off the RPO chapter. Last week against the Giants, they brought the Empty chapter up the turnpike. Maybe the binder is too heavy, I don’t know?

Well, this week, Sirianni and Patullo pressed a button that everyone had been calling for the last month. But they did not just press it, they smashed that thing.

As EJ pointed out, the Eagles had called a total of five under-center play-action plays in six games. On those plays, they had completed just two balls for a combined zero yards. On Sunday, the Eagles called four of those in just one game. The results: 4-4, 121 yards, and the long touchdown to DeVonta Smith.

That part was good. Maddening that it took this long, but good. A.J. and DeVonta combining for 304 yards and three touchdowns? Also good, wonderful even. But not everything was not all schemed up, as Jalen and his receivers had a ton of success in the scramble drill. The first touchdown to A.J. was a product of Jalen and A.J. improvising. Look at that chemistry! 1 and 11 also combined for the play of the game, as Jamie said here: 3rd and 13 on the final drive, Jalen extends the play with his legs, sprints to the right and throws a dart to A.J. on the sidelines. 👨‍🍳💋

(Plus, by all accounts, the play-action bomb was DeVonta’s play-call.)

I am not gonna pretend that the passing game has been good all season. It has not. But I do know that Sirianni does not have a good enough running game or defense to…

The first decision was just indefensible. You are 20 yards away from a real look at a Jake Elliott kick indoors with those juiced k-balls, and you have a timeout left over! How are you not running a play there? This is not last season, Nick. Your defense is not good enough for you to say “No thanks!” to attempting to score points!

Now, to Sirianni’s credit, the final drive could have been run-run-run. Take up all of Minnesota’s timeouts, and then punt the ball back up six. Trust your defense. Instead, it was run-pass-pass and Jalen delivered. A hopefully instructive moment.

After the game, as Jalen was walking back to the locker room, before he high-fived Howie Roseman, he had a simple message. One that, on this day, he single-handedly made so.

Straight Outta Ithaca: This defense needs the bye in the worst way. But they made a huge play on a (*Bo Wulf voice*) simmy simmy.

Two things I loved here:

(That said, I looked it up and Young Jalyx was no match for Coach Flinn’s Princeton Tigers in 2021. There is no doubt in my mind that crisp fall day in Ithaca prepared Jalyx for that moment yesterday.)

Injuries: Adoree’ Jackson suffered a concussion, which brought Kelee Ringo back into our lives. You cannot escape Kelee, he is inevitable. And speaking of guys we cannot escape, even the TothHeads are saying, “Uncle!” at this point. Cam Jurgens left the game with a knee injury, which meant Toth had to play center.

Between Jurgens and Dickerson, it feels like the interior of the line is still paying for that NFC Championship Game.

PHLY Sports partner Brandon Graham: (*Russell Westbrook voice*) Ahhh, that’s pretty interesting…

Flyers 2, Minnesota 1 (OT): The links, the links, the links…

The two stars of the game are two guys that have been good for the Flyers in the first five games.

Owen Tippett had the right skill-set for this type of game. Midway through the second period, the Orange and Black had played a tight-checking game. The Wild had scored during a dominant early portion of the second period for them, but the Flyers had carried play for other stretches. But they were down a goal, and not creating much in terms of offense.

So, The Red Rifle just started doing Owen Tippett Things… the biggest thing being “skating really fast through the neutral zone and creating something out of nothing.” The game changed, and he eventually scored on a little bankeroo off the goaltender’s back in the third period.

And man, I am so Dan Vladar-pilled right now. As Charlie let us know, he seems like a wonderful guy who really wanted to play in Philly. And through five games, Vladar has a .934 save percentage and 2-1 record against some excellent competition. Meanwhile Dustin Wolf, the golden boy who has to actually play against good teams this season, is 1-4 with an .850 save percentage. Take that, Calgary! Seriously, Sam Ersson better start playing better or he is definitely gonna lose some ground in the 50/50 timeshare.

And yes, another rough night for Matvei Michkov. Let’s keep it positive, though.

Prospects galore! Man, there were Future Flyers everywhere in Beantown this weekend. This play sums up the state of affairs pretty well: Carter Amico turnover (bad), but Porter Martone goal (good). Do the Alonzo Mourning GIF, if you must.

Sparty won both games over BU, but the Future Flyers were well represented. Porter Martone had a goal and assist, ditto for Shane Vansaghi. And for BU, Jack Murtagh chipped in with an assist. Good stuff all around.

Sixers 126, Timberwolves 110: I do not care that it was against the Timberwolves’ third-stringers on the second night of a back-to-back. All the Knicks fans were wowed by their normal rotation’s ball-movement against the Sixers’ third-stringers in Abu Dhabi just a few weeks before. This team’s vibes are good for the first time in a while, there is just no getting around it. And yeah, I get it, it’s the Sixers. The vibes could go bad at any second. But right now, they are unquestionably good.

And what do you get for beating the Timberwolves’ third-stringers? You get a Neubeck article, you get a Bodner article and you get a rollicking post-game pod from Mssrs. Givens and Hofmann.

Joel Embiid was passing the ball, taking shots at The Ringer, and looking pretty darn normal out there. Not as athletic as the guy who won the MVP in 2022-23, but pushing off on the left knee and looking much more confident than we saw a season ago.

And the best part, by a mile? The Rothman Orthopaedics Swell-o-Meter (I just made that up) was not off the charts. Joel pushed off on that left knee, took a few Very Joel falls in 20 minutes of action, and was good to go for an intense practice a day and a half later. That’s the whole ballgame.

I loved Joel’s outlet passing in this game. In the past, he is a guy who would grab the rebound and push the ball up the floor… which would create chaos when a skilled gigantic center got cross-matched against a pip-squeak point guard.

Joel can’t run like that anymore, not consistently anyway. But if he throws an outlet pass to Tyrese Maxey, V.J. Edgecombe or Quentin Grimes, those guys can all scoot. Add in Dominick Barlow, Kelly Oubre and Adem Bona, and you have a much more athletic team than a year ago. No more decrepit Lowry-Gordon lineups.

The Sixers were both small and slow last year, which is not a good combination. They did not do a ton to get bigger in the offseason. Embiid is gonna have to bridge most of that gap, and he can only do so much. But they clearly upgraded in terms of team speed. Edgecombe, who stole the show with 26 points, 6 rebounds and 5 steals and 3 assists on Friday, is absolutely shot out of a cannon.

Bob Myers, Daryl Morey’s boss? And oh yeah, Bob Myers is also now the president of Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment. Kyle and Derek podded about it here.

Busy day today, I will probably write more about this tomorrow, but maybe ol’ Bob just wants to know what makes Jack Hughes tick? Crystal Palace is top half of the table, maybe Bob has some thoughts on Jean-Philippe Mateta’s hat trick this weekend?

Decision Day: The Union will play the winner of the Chicago Fire/Orlando City wild-card match. The three-game conference quarterfinal series will start on Saturday in Chester.

Man, Giants-Broncos was a doozy. Sean Payton gonna be riding the bus all over the place after that one. Brutal loss for the Giants.

Flyers-Seattle tonight at Xfinity Mobile Arena (7:00 p.m., NBC Sports Philly).

Your tentative Monday schedule at PHLY:

Let's make it a good one.

Rich Hofmann
Daily Newsletter Editor
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