Remarkable performance by defense leads Eagles past Saints

The offense that couldn’t be stopped managed 12 points, 219 yards and 12 first downs.

Courtesy of the defense that couldn’t stop anyone.

The Eagles’ defense, which struggled so badly the first two weeks of the season, rebounded in a huge way against an offense that scored 91 points in wins over the Panthers and Cowboys.

“They kept us in the game,” Jordan Mailata said. “What a way to respond. What a way to respond. I’m so proud. Geeze. It was just play after play, guys making plays for one another, man, and that’s what you need out of your defense. 

“They showed up. They had our back. When we came out there and we were skunking, that was not good. That was not a good look. But every time we came off the field, the defense was there, it was like, ‘Hey, don’t worry, we’ve got your back.’ That was very reassuring.”

First two games: The Saints scored 11 touchdowns and four field goals on 15 drives with David Carr at quarterback. 

Sunday: The Saints scored one touchdown and two field goals on 10 drives with David Carr at quarterback.

This was a complete defensive performance. The Eagles did everything Sunday in their 15-12 win at the Superdome that they didn’t consistently do against the Packers and Falcons.

They covered. They tackled. They hit. They pressured. 

The Saints have played 190 games at the Superdome since 2002. This is only the fifth time during that span they’ve netted fewer than 220 yards.

“We got the best secondary, the best d-line, the best front seven in the league,” Chauncey Gardner-Johnson said. “They said we were down and out, talking about last week, now look at you now.

“Everyone was saying No. 1 team and all this. Man, listen. At the end of the day it’s football. It’s only Week 2. How are you the best offense and best team if there’s only two weeks played? Still got 16, 17 weeks to go. 

“We just had to tune out the noise and understand who we are and play Eagles football, and that’s what happened.”

At the heart of the magnificent defensive effort was the Eagles' ability to slow down Alvin Kamara, who came into the game with an NFL-best 5.7 rushing average. 

The Saints’ game plan was essentially running Kamara as much as possible against a defense that had allowed 6.7 rushing yards per carry (not including kneel downs) through two weeks, one of the highest figures in NFL history.

The Saints kept feeding Kamara, giving him eight carries on their first drive alone. But for only 18 yards. It never got much better. The Eagles bottled him up on the line of scrimmage and got numbers to the ball when he got to the second level. 

Kamara needed 26 carries to gain 87 yards and didn’t have a run longer than 16 yards. He's only the fourth running back in the last 25 years to run 26 or more times and gain fewer than 90 yards against the Eagles.

Without an effective running game, Derek Carr was pressured into just 14 completions and 142 passing yards. Reed Blankenship’s second interception of the season with 55 seconds left sealed the win.

“We had pressure in his face all day, and once that happens, any quarterback is going to start looking down and shorten their throws,” Blankenship said. “He was staring that route down, I just broke on it, trusted my technique and got the job done.”

The guys on defense heard a lot of criticism over the past week, most of it justified. But they deserve a ton of credit for doing exactly what they said they would do. Clean up their technique, tighten up their tackling, communicate better pre-snap.

Everybody on defense played better Sunday than six days earlier at the Linc. Everyone.

“I said last week no matter what’s called, it’s about playing on the right side of the line of scrimmage … and then tackling," Nick Sirianni said. "That’s what they did. You don’t want to lose, but sometimes you get better from those losses.”

For the seventh straight game, the Eagles’ edge rushers didn’t get a sack. 

But Jalen Carter and Jordan Davis were massive generating pressure from the inside, Brandon Graham was all over the field, playing more like a 26-year-old than a 36-year-old, Zack Baun bounced back from a subpar game, Nakobe Dean had his best game as a pro and Gardner-Johnson made plays all over the field against his former team.

A true team effort. And the Eagles needed every bit of it.

“It took everybody in this room,” Blankenship said. “We play in Philly. I love our fans to death and they’re going to hold us accountable and it’s great to get the job done today.

“Just believing in one another. Everybody knew what their job was and everybody just knew how to execute it. Yeah, we had bits and pieces here and there that needed to be fixed but at the end of the day just count on (each other).”

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