👋 Good morning! When the Eagles open the NFL season at home by unveiling a banner, you should bet the house on a long night and lightning delay.

(And yes, I was working the game last night, that is why you are getting a late-morning newsletter.)

And how about the Birds getting back to .500 for the first time since 1933? Huge stakes next week in Kansas City. We gotta win this one for Bert Bell.

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Let’s get you to the weekend. As always, you can reach me at [email protected]

September 12th, 2005.

When I watched Big Dom escort Jalen Carter to the Eagles locker room, that was all I could think back to. The Eagles were opening what would end up being a cursed 2005 season on Monday Night Football in Atlanta after their Super Bowl loss to New England. And in quite the bad omen, Jeremiah Trotter (Sr.) memorably got ejected for fighting with Atlanta’s Kevin Mathis in pre-game warmups.

Twenty years from now, I wonder if Jalen Carter spitting on Dak Prescott is all we remember from this game. As you can probably tell, I am half-decent at remembering ridiculously specific moments from past Eagles games. I do not have many gifts, but that is one of them. But man, I would be hard-pressed to tell you anything about that Eagles-Falcons opener except Axe Man (Sr.) getting the boot. I vaguely remember a Michael Vick touchdown run? But that is about it.

What a subplot this one was. Carter got booted from the game after the opening kickoff (8:25-ish). It was not until after the lightning delay, a full three hours later (11:30-ish), that we learned Prescott had also spit in his general vicinity a few seconds before. The “second spitter” subplot was very reminiscent of the classic Keith Hernandez Seinfeld episode in which Roger McDowell is not revealed until much after the initial incident.

I hope Nick Sirianni did not shake Dak’s hand and derisively sneered, “Nice game, pretty boy” at him.

I led with the humorous part of this, because the Eagles won the game and that is how the world works. But if CeeDee Lamb does not have a case of The Drops last night, Jalen Carter would be getting absolutely lit up in this city. He is so unbelievably fortunate that his decision did not cost the Eagles a win. Seriously, all offseason we were reading stories about how involved Carter was at training camp practices and how he seemed to be taking more of a leadership role (heading into a season after which he can get paid a boatload of money, too). And right as the season is beginning, Carter is hocking a loogie on Dak’s chest right in front of the ref?

What. are. you. doing.

Carter always plays the game with an edge, and he frequently toes that line pretty good. Clint Hurtt seems like a valuable staff member regardless, but I think it is sneaky necessary to have a massive defensive line coach who can physically get in the way of Carter and whoever he is annoyed with (opposing player, official, Nick Sirianni) on the bench. Seriously, if Hurtt ever gets another defensive coordinator job, Howie needs to hire some huge dude to replace him in coaching Jalen Carter.

But you just cannot do that. Carter took accountability for it, which is the right move. But it is the only move. Because you just cannot do that.

I was sneaky worried about the defense heading into the game. And yes, The Weak-Link Theory was alive and well with Adoree’ Jackson, who does not look long for the CB2 job. Fran did a great job of breaking down the play-action shot play that went to CeeDee for a long gain on the first drive, and while that was good design by Brian Schottenheimer (nailed it, Jerry!), it did seem that the early defensive strategy was to put Quinyon Mitchell on George Pickens and Jackson on CeeDee. Now, was that with the idea of bracketing CeeDee and giving Adoree’ help? Possibly, probably, but that game plan was not executed even a little bit.

To bring it back to Carter, he knew that the Eagles were breaking in two new starters in the secondary (Drew Mukuba was the other one, as it turned out). He knew they were debuting a rookie linebacker. He knew they had just lost two important pieces on the defensive line. There is never a good time for a team’s best defensive player to get tossed before the game even starts, but that was certainly not it! There was so much Byron Young last night, and luckily for Carter, Young seemed up for the challenge. Ditto Jordan Davis, who essentially got two halftime breaks and was able to show off the fruits of all that exerciseexerciseexerciseexerciseexerciseexercise. 53 snaps for the big man!

(The real test for Davis will be this week. He made that awesome play chasing down Josh Allen in that Bills game a few years ago, emptied the gas tank entirely by playing 60+ snaps in the game, and was completely invisible the rest of that season.)

Oh yeah, the offense. It was basically a A Tale of Two Halves for the Eagles in this one. Early on, the offense bailed out the defense. Both teams scored on their first four possessions, and as Uncle Vic and co. were struggling to figure things out, Jalen Hurts and the offense answered every drive. Hurts was efficient in the short passing game, threw an absolute dot to Jahan Dotson on a deep ball and he came up with some super timely scrambles.

Deflating backbreakers for the defense, including a couple of scores. Jalen scores a whole bunch of rushing touchdowns — Ye Olde Tush Push makes him a popular fantasy QB — but he does not usually do a bunch of that stuff unscripted. Last night, he did.

And look who was in attendance to watch Jalen play! They probably smoked some stogies after the game with their Kangols on, bumping “Return of the Mack.”

The offense was far from perfect, though. Nice night for Jalen: 19 for 23 for 152 yards, 62 rushing yards and two touchdowns on the ground. But as EJ pointed out in his excellent day-after column, a lot of Hurts’ individual brilliance was out of necessity. Curious to see what Fran says about the All-22, but the downfield passing game was not clicking in Kevin Patullo’s debut.

DeVonta Smith had three catches for 16 yards. A.J. Brown had one stinkin’ catch, and while it was an important one on the last drive that sealed the game for the Birds, he needs to be much more involved than that. As the game went on, I thought the run blocking got less and less impressive. Landon Dickerson eventually had to leave the game with his back injury, and I wonder if he should have been out there at all. Toth-heads, you are on standby.

On their three final possessions before kneeling out the game, the Eagles punted three times. Two of them were three-and-outs. But the good news is that the defense had woken up by that point and kept Dallas off the board. Maybe the rain delay took everything away from both offenses? I am willing to buy that, it was such a weird game.

Most importantly, it was a weird game that the Eagles won. Over the last two seasons, the biggest lesson of Eagles football has been that how you win eventually matters. Pulling out unimpressive coin-flip win after unimpressive coin-flip win, like last night more or less was, is gonna catch up to you at some point.

But we also learned that how you play in September can be misleading, and that teams can change over the course of a season. I was expecting a bumpy-ish road at the start of this Eagles season, and nothing I saw last night changed my mind. Early on, the main goal is to not fall too far behind in the standings. It was ugly at times, but I think you can happily take the 1-0 start and keep it moving.

Now, will the Eagles be moving with Jalen Carter in Kansas City? We will see.

Just a reminder that September is Big Brothers Big Sisters of America Month! PHLY and ALLCITY is proud to support their mission, and we’re raising money all month long. You can donate — or even learn more about becoming a Big — at http://bbbs.org/allcity

Zack Baun: As bad as Adoree’ was in pass coverage, I wonder if this is the play that most puts his job in jeopardy. Seriously, he runs into Jihaad Campbell’s back, gets spun around like a top for some reason, and takes himself completely out of the play. Asante Samuel would be deeply embarrassed by this run fit.

But Zack Baun got on his horse and bailed Adoree’ out, a seven-point play as it turned out. Great, winning play from Baun. And thank you, Miles!

(Liked some of what we saw from Campbell in his first game. I really think he is gonna be an awesome pass defender in Fangio’s zone schemes.)

And that is probably enough on the Birds, but if that Nolan Smith play is gonna get called taunting, we are in for a hilarious Sunday of football. Who asked for this?

Flyers prospect catch-up: We do not just have Iggles coverage at PHLY. If you are a huge Flyers fan, you need to be reading what Charlie is cooking up regularly. The biannual prospect series is so, so good.

Phils get 2 of 3 in Milwaukee: The Eagles overshadowed our local baseball team, but that is a great, great result on the road. The Phillies are now eight games over .500 in the 35 days since Jhoan Duran and Harrison Bader joined the team. More on those guys in a second.

The most Philly thing to do would be to poo-poo the Brewers, and look, I am not above doing the most Philly thing. Not even close. But the Brewers are a very good team, and downplaying them feels like a disservice to what the Phils just accomplished. Minus Aaron Nola, they played three very good baseball games. They usually play good baseball games, except against the one team that everyone wants them to play good baseball games against. Oh well, that’s life sometimes.

Ranger Suárez? Absolute dog.

If this October is the last time we get to go to war with Ranger, let me be the first to say that it has been an honor and a pleasure.

In preparation for October, we all gotta get our Phillies celebrations down pat. Ranger’s move after every inning, when he grabs some dirt and blesses himself, is a key one. And then I want to see people doing the Harrison Bader Crab Shuffle down the streets of Philadelphia. You cross the street and 17th and Locust? You do the Bader shimmy, to let everyone know that you are locked in.

Not a game-saving play from Bader with the Phils up two, but he certainly bailed Duran out of a run.

As Tyler explains in the video above, Bader needs to be playing every day. He is the Phillies’ best fielder, and his bat is currently en fuego. No-brainer. And judging from the Phillies’ usage in the Brewers series, it looks like Max Kepler is gonna get most of the right-field playing time against a righty. Verrrry curious to see if that remains the case, and if so, how Nick Castellanos handles the situation.

Big series for the Phils this weekend in Miami. After this one is over, they have an astounding 13 of their last 19 games at home (starting with four against the Mets). Six games up on the Mets, three games up on the Dodgers for the No. 2 seed and the first-round bye that comes with it. Hopefully they can keep it going.

Phils have three in Miami, and we have a Sunday of football watching with an Eagles win in hand. Life is good!

Your tentative Friday schedule at ​PHLY​:

Have a great weekend. Let's make it a good one today.

Rich Hofmann
Daily Newsletter Editor
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