NEW ORLEANS — Jalen Carter on Friday gave a blunt assessment of his play through the first two weeks of the season.
“Me being real with myself … trash,” Carter said.
But then came Sunday.
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Carter was dominant against the Saints in the Eagles’ 15-12 win. He anchored a defensive line that shut down the No. 1 offense in the NFL and he filled up the stat sheet in the process. While Carter didn’t have a sack, he did have 4 tackles, 2 tackles for loss, 1 QB hit and 2 batted passes. He was a game-wrecker.
He looked like the star the Eagles need him to be.
So how would Carter assess his dominant performance against the Saints?
“Trash,” he said.
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Really? Really!?
“I still don’t like how I played,” Carter explained. “But I know that we played good as a team today. That’s one thing. I’m happy for that. I think we got some boost in the locker room right now and we just gotta move on to next week and get another dub.”
If you ask anyone else who watched Sunday’s win, they’ll probably tell you how good Carter was against the Saints. He played like the guy the Eagles drafted with the No. 9 overall pick. He played like a guy with real All-Pro potential.
And it probably says even more about Carter that he still wasn’t pleased with his performance.
What would it take for Carter to be satisfied?
“I don’t know. I gotta be like Khalil Mack, get like six sacks in one game,” Carter said. “Nah, I’m just playing. But I don’t know man. I feel like I love sacks, I know that’s big, I love tackles, I love everything, but I don’t know. Just getting a dub as a team makes me happy. But I still gotta see more out of myself.”
If there’s another level to Carter’s game … watch out.
Brandon Graham said it before the season that the Eagles’ defense will go as far as Carter and Jordan Davis — the two Georgia DTs — will take them. Both players had very good performances against the Saints on Sunday and it started with stuffing the run, something the Eagles hadn’t done well before this.
“We talk about it every week,” Carter said. “We want to stop the run. We had grouped up, we brought the D-line and the D-ends together. We said, ‘Yo, this is the week.’ We did bad the first two weeks and we’re not trying to embarrass ourselves no more. And it showed today.”
Coming into Sunday, New Orleans had the No. 1 scoring offense in the NFL and running back Alvin Kamara was averaging a ridiculous 5.7 yards per carry.
The Eagles held the Saints to 12 points and 219 total yards. And they held Kamara to 87 yards on 26 carries (3.3 per attempt).
“We played on their side of the line of scrimmage an awful lot,” head coach Nick Sirianni said. “Jalen Carter played his butt off. Jordan Davis played his butt off when everyone was doubting them all week.
“What are we doing? Why are we drafting these guys? I’ve heard it all. I’ve heard everything. I try not to listen, but I have to talk to the media five times a week. They responded because they didn’t care what anyone thought. If they aren’t riding with us when we are losing, then they aren’t going to ride with us when we win. We heard it all. We heard everything. They heard it and they responded.”
Carter played like a madman during the game and then really showed some emotion in the latter stages of what was a very chippy and physical matchup.
At one point, Carter wanted smoke with everyone and had to be held back.
“They was like, ‘Yeah! Yeah!’ They was getting lit with me,” Carter said. “It wasn’t really nothing serious. It was just getting lit. Stay composed. The game still wasn’t over but we still got to stay composed.”
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