Through the better part of three quarters of football on Sunday afternoon, the Philadelphia Eagles and New Orleans Saints were locked in a world’s ugliest dog contest. Just one week earlier, the Saints were rolling over the haunted remains of the Cowboys and everyone got a piece of the action: Alvin Kamara got four touchdowns; quarterback Derek Carr threw for 243 yards and two touchdowns and even got in on a QB sneak on the way to a 44-19 win.
On Sunday, the Eagles led 3-0 thanks to an early field goal and head coach Nick Sirianni’s commitment to salvaging genius from ineptitude. The Birds had three blown fourth downs early in the game: a blocked punt, a Jalen Hurts sack after a penalty for too many men on the field, and a busted run play at the end of the first half in place of an easy field goal.
It appeared no one was particularly interested in winning the game. And then at the beginning of the fourth quarter, the Eagles remembered that Saquon Barkley existed. Barkley—who was on the receiving end of that busted run play at the end of the first half—took the handoff at the Eagles own 35 on second-and-2, found his lane and left his worries behind, taking it 65 yards for a touchdown.
It was Barkley, again, who put the Eagles up for good after another series of late game misadventures—including an ill-fated 60-yard field goal attempt—left Philadelphia down 12-7 with two minutes left on the clock. It took another big lift, in the form of tight end Dallas Goedert taking a catch across the middle 61 yards with a little over a minute left. Barkley got the call on the next play and took the ball up the middle for a four-yard touchdown run, followed by the two-point conversion to put Philadelphia on top 15-12. An interception from Eagles safety Reed Blankenship sealed the deal on the Saint’s final drive.
This doesn’t exactly stop the questions around Sirianni’s relationship to time and space in the management of an NFL game. A bad pass or a blocked run can live in a vacuum, but those things tend to add up when your team finds itself in a Groundhog Day-like scenario each week. It becomes even more glaring when all it takes is just 17 carries and 147 yards from Barkley to alter the course of a near disaster of a game. I dunno, man—might want to look into doing more of that.
