October 31, 2021
It would be easy to just shrug off the Eagles' 44-6 dismantling of the now 0-8 Lions as them simply beating down the NFL's worst. After all, the weaknesses and problems this Philly team has struggled with through the first half of the season are far from easy fixes, and with so much ground to make up in the NFC East and wild card races, a win against a crappy team shouldn't make fans suddenly start thinking about playoffs.
The Lions barely put up a fight on defense, and barely moved the ball on offense, mustering just 228 total yards from scrimmage and a measly 4.3 yards per pass attempt.
As a whole, Detroit ranks in the bottom 10 in just about every single measurable team stat this season and despite some close calls they obviously haven't found the win column yet. The Eagles are bad — but they aren't "lose to a winless team destined to pick first overall" bad.
And maybe they aren't even as bad as we think.
The Eagles did impress in a few areas that were sort of independent of how bad the Lions are. Maybe they are turning a corner after all.
If you predicted that all Nick Sirianni needed to start running the football was to lose Miles Sanders to an ankle injury, good for you — let's hope you decided to start both Boston Scott and Jordan Howard on your fantasy team.
Sirianni ran it early and often, not waiting until he was in the lead to put his foot on the gas on the ground. In fact, leading 17-0 at the half, Jalen Hurts had thrown only eight passes — in contrast to his averaging nearly 35 pass attempts per game over the season's first seven contests. He would be relieved by Gardiner Minshew after tossing the ball just 14 times in the win, adding 71 yards on the ground. There clearly will be better results for this football team if they do not need 35 throws from Hurts to win games.
Hurts' 71 yards helped contribute to the Eagles eclipsing the 200 yard mark (with four rushing TD) despite missing Sanders. And even though the fact that the defense they were facing off against is one of the worst against the run in football, there was a clear commitment to the run before things got out of hand, something we hadn't seen in past games, no matter how bad that week's opponent was against the run. And while that may be a baby step against the Lions, Sirianni seeing what his team can do to control the football is certainly a positive as this team moves forward.
Speaking of Sirianni, he's been accused (rightly so most of the time) of being bland and lacking imagination when calling plays through the season's first half. On Sunday, he ramped it up a little bit using end-arounds (which were very successfully executed by Jalen Reagor, by the way), some motion behind the line of scrimmage, and even a flea flicker.
His decisions to keep the Lions on their toes and do things differently than the team had through the first seven games has to be freeing, and could perhaps be a sign of things to come. Sirianni needs to get confidence as a play-caller, and he needs to backlog some successes. Aside from Philadelphia's Week 1 explosive win against Atlanta — and perhaps their shootout loss to the Chiefs — there hasn't been too much by way of interesting offense coming from the Eagles. Will this be the turning point?
The key defensively for the Eagles was their front four harassing Jared Goff all afternoon long. This came a week after complaints from Fletcher Cox that the defense wasn't being aggressive enough. The Birds tallied six sacks in the game and the first team defense was able to pitch a shutout for three-plus quarters (before a meaningless garbage TD in the 4th) against a Lions team that is bad — but perhaps not shut out by a 2-5 opponent at home bad.
The defense as a whole should get a lift from this performance, and like Sirianni with play-calling, defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon can use this as something to build off of as he schemes against better teams.
The Eagles led the NFL with 8.3 penalties per game heading into Week 8. They committed just two through three quarters, when the starters were taken out of the game. That's progress.
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