👋 Good morning! Never a doubt.

You know what else is a winner? Righteous Felon Craft Jerky.

We are gonna go strictly Eagles for today’s newsletter, getting back to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow. As always, you can reach me at [email protected]

Vic Fangio off a bye week is as good as it gets. How about some quick fan fiction?

I am picturing Uncle Vic in his Phillies hoodie in some dark room at the NovaCare Complex last week, putting in a 12-hour shift, ordering in from the Philadium while crunching tape. At some point during flipping back and forth between the Giants collapse and the Chiefs masterpiece, he stumbles upon that same eureka moment he found Week 5 last year. And then, as a celebration, he fires up YouTube and watches the final inning of the 1980 World Series with his feet up.

Then Vic goes home, comes back to work the next day, and begins orchestrating the best defense in the NFL.

As always, EJ’s Early Bird piece will be live on the site, as he tells us what he learned in ‘Sconnie.

I keep coming back to the Formula One analogy with this Eagles team, in that the car is really what makes the driver. Sure, Lewis Hamilton was excellent when he won all of those titles, but the Mercedes engineers had a whole lot to do with it. Sir Lewis was not winning races with, say, Renault’s car.

Anyway, this Eagles roster is one heck of a car. Finely tuned, and worthy of a bad Howie Roseman/Toto Wolff photoshop. It’s like Mercedes during Hamilton’s heyday or McLaren this year. One problem: I just continue to be skeptical of the driver.

Well, I do like the driver half the time in this analogy. Uncle Vic got some new toys to play with in the front four. Notably, Jaelan Phillips sure played like this was the best thing that ever happened to him in his life. We wondered how many snaps Phillips would play in his Eagles debut, maybe thinking Uncle Vic would get him on the field for a ZaDarian 15 or 20. Nope, Vic threw Phillips right into the fire, as he lined up for 42 of the Eagles’ 55 defensive snaps. Don’t expect that to change anytime soon.

And Phillips was awesome! Pressures are not actually real, but PFF had him down for eight of them and I am gonna cite PFF when it fits my agenda. Tackles are real, though, and Phillips had six of them (including one important tackle for loss that we will get to in a second). With this one game, Golden Tate move on over, Phillips is now already the second-best Howie Roseman in-season trade acquisition behind Jay Ajayi (*large round of applause*).

Three huge plays for the defense, on a night that had a bunch of them…

(1) Jalyx Hunt sack: First drive, when the Packers are moving the ball. Not anymore.

Phillips is the guy who gets Love off his spot on this one. In watching some of the cut-ups of his sacks, I was impressed by Phillips’ hands. He is really good at jabbing at offensive linemen, making sure they cannot get their hands on him. He does that to Zach Tom on this play, and Hunt cleans it up. Drive-ender.

As a bonus, Hunt almost unwittingly killed the umpire with his fist pump celebration. Closest call in Philly sports since Joel Embiid almost knocked Lonzo Ball’s block off.

(2) Jordan Love fumble: Fran broke this one down in detail here.

Nakobe Dean played a lot, which again, is kinda weird because Jihaad Campbell got demoted despite being a first-round pick who was playing well. But Nakobe is playing great! And we saw last year that one of Nakobe’s best attributes is as a blitzer. And on one of Uncle Vic’s rare blitzes in this game, Nakobe absolutely wrecked Josh Jacobs and got the fumble from Love.

Speaking of Love, he just lost despite being gifted one of the Eagles’ worst offensive games in years. I am grateful to him for what he did in Jerry World in January 2024, but I do not want to keep reading that he is better than Jalen Hurts. We’re good.

(3) Fourth-down stop: Perhaps the play that won the game, and Phillips’ big tackle for loss. Fran broke it down here.

And on this one, Moro Ojomo makes one of the coolest plays you will ever see from an interior defensive lineman. Not quite Jalen Carter against the Rams in the snow, but man, it was awesome. He screams “INSIDE ZONE THIS WAY! INSIDE ZONE THIS WAY!” and what do you know? It was inside zone that way.

Not only that, Ojomo times the snap perfectly and knifes in between the double team block. He is on the ground, but he is sitting in the hole where Jacobs wants to run the football. And when Jacobs cuts back, Jalen Carter (who had a couple of key batted passes in this one) has bench-pressed the right guard four yards into the backfield. And when Jacobs keeps cutting it back, Phillips is right there, having pushed the tight end into the backfield. Awesome, awesome defense and it all starts with Ojomo being well-coached.

As for the other side of the ball, is it well-coached?

I am so sick of the coward’s draws. So, so sick of Will Shipley getting two surrender runs and a surrender pass on 3rd and 10+ when you have a $51 million Super Bowl-winning quarterback and four skill guys who make a combined $87 million. And in opponent territory, you are really giving us a delay of game on 3rd and 7 and a Will Shipley coward’s draw on the next play? That’s such bad football.

The Eagles continued their march towards history with three 3-and-outs on their first six real possessions. And part of the reason is that Nick Sirianni — I know people want to blame Kevin Patullo for this, but I think this is pretty clearly the head coach’s thing — loves quitting on drives. Loves it!

Bo put it perfectly on the show last night: The Eagles have the Monstars and they are playing Four Corners Offense. It just does not add up.

So, when the Eagles decide to throw on 3rd and 12 later in the game and Hurts finds DeVonta Smith for a first down, it’s pretty maddening. You have great players, why not try to use them? Good stuff can happen if you at least try.

When Saquon Barkley hits the circle button (poor Carrington Valentine, he has been on the other end of some vicious Eagles highlights) on a 3rd and 7 and takes a checkdown 41 yards, followed by a DeVonta Smith Mossing a dude in the end zone, it’s amazing but also frustrating. These guys are on the field the entire game.

On another note, how about Lane Johnson returning for some fourth-quarter snaps after that nasty looking injury? Phew, what a warrior. I am gonna take this tweet to mean that Lane is gonna be alright.

What is also frustrating is that Sirianni decides to be uber-conservative the entire game… and then his team goes YOLO when you should be conservative. It was literally the worst of both worlds. Call that go ball to A.J. Brown with 33 second left stupid, ridiculous, dumb, reckless, whatever you want. Seriously, by all means, I am joining you. But please do not call it an analytics decision. You are supposed to punt that football! Common sense says so, old-school gut instinct says so, the numbers say so. And instead, the Eagles went with the lowest-probability play in the book.

(That play did feel a bit like Jalen and A.J. freelancing against Seattle on Monday Night Football in 2023. Regardless, it was terrible football and the Eagles are very fortunate it did not bite them.)

So, there we have it. I thought Nick Sirianni had a brutal night. And on his brutal night, he beat the 5-2-1 Packers to go 7-2 on the season with some legitimate scalps along the way. Same as it ever was.

On this night, though, the Eagles’ loaded roster ultimately won out. The car’s good.

We will catch up on everything else tomorrow, but how about Mr. Mara firing Brian Daboll (correct) and then… keeping Joe Schoen to lead the next coaching search? What?!?!

The Sixers are playing Boston for the eighth time on the young season tonight.

Your tentative Tuesday schedule at PHLY:

Let's make it a good one.

Rich Hofmann
Daily Newsletter Editor
PHLY SPORTS