Whoever wins the AFC Championship Game, good luck in Super Bowl LIX because you’re about to face a team that’s unstoppable right now.
The Eagles on Sunday made a mockery of their highly-anticipated NFC Championship Game matchup against a Commanders team that had won seven straight games, roared back from 14 points down to beat the Eagles in December and rode the hottest rookie quarterback in NFL history to 14 wins, including a couple road playoff games this month.
Eagles 55, Commanders 23.
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Yep, they put up half a hundred.
This was a good old-fashioned beatdown of a team that hadn’t lost in two months.
That’s the most points ever in an NFC Championship Game, the 2nd-most points the Eagles have ever scored in a playoff game.
The Eagles are rolling into New Orleans with a smoking hot offense, a sizzling defense and a coach who knows how to get the whole thing pointed in the right direction.
Philadelphia Eagles
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See everybody in Nawlins.
1. The image of Saquon Barkley leaping in the air and euphorically waving his arms up and screaming at the top of his lungs after Will Shipley’s 57-yard touchdown run in mop-up duty tells you everything you need to know about the 2024 Eagles. This is the ultimate team and when you have 53 guys who are legitimately playing for each other and not for themselves, this is what it looks like. When you have 53 guys who will sacrifice their own achievements and accomplishments for their teammates, this is what it looks like. Maybe you can stop a great offense and maybe you can stop a great defense, but you just can’t stop a group of men who all set out for a common goal and are willing to do anything to make it happen. And happen to be incredibly talented. This is the ultimate team and this was the ultimate team win.
2. You really can’t have any sort of conversation about the 2024 Eagles without a huge tip of the hat to Nick Sirianni, who is now the only head coach in Eagles history to take more than one team to the Super Bowl. The job Sirianni did this year of rebuilding the team’s confidence after last year’s collapse and instilling this deep, unwavering belief back in the players’ minds and getting 100 percent buy-in was remarkable. This was a shattered team a year ago. A broken team. After losing six of seven – almost all of them in nightmarish fashion – following a 10-1 start? So for this team to be back in its second Super Bowl in three years 12 months after what was literally one of the most spectacular collapses in history speaks volumes about Sirianni’s ability to command a locker room, motivate guys to work their hardest and get them to adopt a team-first mentality. No, he doesn’t call plays. But what Sirianni does for this team is even more important.
3. So much for that knee injury. Jalen Hurts was terrific Sunday. Sharp delivering the football, moved around well with the brace on his knees, drove the ball down the field and once again didn’t turn the ball over and this was just an overall excellent performance by Hurts in his eighth career playoff game. He completed 20 of 28 passes for 246 yards and a 110.1 passer rating with one TD pass, three rushing TDs and no turnovers, and he’s now thrown 206 consecutive postseason passes without an interception, only nine shy of Drew Brees’ NFL record. Hurts has been efficient of late but he was more than efficient Sunday. He was aggressively efficient. The Eagles have been winning with this formula of Saquon and defense and a minimal role for the quarterback, and it’s been a while since they won because Hurts was outstanding, but in the biggest game of the year so far, he showed that he’s still an elite quarterback, and now at 26 years old he’s on his way to his second Super Bowl, something only Tom Brady, Ben Roethlisberger, Russell Wilson and Patrick Mahomes have done before their 27th birthdays. The Eagles needed Hurts to be great Sunday and he sure was.
4. Interesting that in the last Washington game, the Commanders outscored the Eagles 22-6 in the fourth quarter. This time? The Eagles outscored the Commanders 21-0. This was just another monster performance from the defense against a quarterback who torched them for 36 points and five touchdown passes – three in the fourth quarter – just five weeks ago. This group never ceases to amaze me. They shut down the hottest quarterback in football, and they did it with everybody on the field contributing. It wasn’t perfect, because that’s one heck of a talented young quarterback on the other side of the line of scrimmage, but they forced four turnovers – all leading to touchdowns – they were sound in coverage, they stuffed the run, they were tremendous in the red zone and they just played physical and tough start to finish. All the stuff they’ve been doing all year, but they did it Sunday in the biggest game of the year with a spot in the Super Bowl at stake. What Vic Fangio has done with this group of rookies, novices, newcomers and free agents – and without Nakobe Dean or Brandon Graham – is nothing less than a dang miracle.
5. Dallas Goedert is one of those rare players who’s able to truly raise his level in the playoffs, and throughout his career he’s been showing up week after week in the postseason. Goedert’s regular season was a disappointment, with two long-term injuries that sidelined him for seven games and limited him to 42 catches for 496 yards and a couple touchdowns. Playoff Dallas Geodert is a completely different animal. What a beast. Against the Packers, 4-for-47 and a touchdown, against the Rams 4-for-56 and Sunday against Washington 7-for-85 (and 13 more yards on two runs and a 17-yard DPI), including a 26-yarder down to the 9-yard in the third quarter to set up Jalen Hurts’ 9-yard touchdown run. So he had 496 yards during the regular season and 188 during the postseason. With a game left. Goedert has at least four catches in each of his last nine postseason games, the 7th-longest streak in history and 2nd-longest by a tight end. Just about every time the Eagles needed a big play Sunday – and throughout these playoffs – Hurts went to 88. Why wouldn’t you?
6. That was some incredibly gutty work by Landon Dickerson and Cam Jurgens tag-teaming the center spot. Neither one of them was really healthy enough to play, but Dickerson gutted it out as long as he could with a worsening knee injury before giving way to Jurgens, who wasn’t supposed to play because of a back injury but was less banged up than Dickerson. You could tell neither one was anywhere near 100 percent, but this is what team football is all about. You sacrifice yourself for the good of the team, and that means going out there and giving it everything you have when you’re dealing with a pretty serious injury. We watched Jurgens warm up and take some snaps before the game, and you could tell he wanted to play, but he looked stiff and the look on his face when he went over to Jeff Stoutland and got official word that he wasn’t going to start spoke volumes. But he was active because you never know. And he stayed ready and when his team needed him he didn’t hesitate. His back had to be killing him, but he did what he had to do for his brothers. And kudos also to Tyler Steen, who hung in there at Dickerson’s left guard spot in the biggest start of his career. Jeff Stoutland does such an incredible job getting everybody ready for anything, and we all saw that on Sunday.
7. This team’s knack for forcing turnovers is something special. Wow. Four more takeaways Sunday on top of four against the Packers and two more against the Rams. That’s 10 takeaways in the postseason so far, the 2nd-most they’ve ever had in a postseason behind 12 in 1980. And all four led to touchdowns. Zack Baun, Oren Burks and Will Shipley forced fumbles, Reed Blankenship, Kenny Gainwell Baun recovered fumbles and Quinyon Mitchell picked up another interception. Just tremendous team football. What’s most incredible is that they’ve got those 10 takeaways but they also have no turnovers. That’s plus-10 in the postseason, which is insane. Only eight teams have ever been plus-10 in an entire postseason – most recently the 2004 Patriots – and while that number will likely change in the Super Bowl it gives you a sense of just how huge protecting the football and taking it away is for this team. Going back to the end of the regular season, the Eagles have 15 takeaways and no turnovers in their last five games. That’s truly remarkable. The Eagles were minus-6 before the bye and they’re an absurd plus-27 since. Team football. Tough to beat.
8. Saquon Barkley again with the huge run to start off the game and really set the tone for the rest of the game. His seventh 60-yard TD this year, which is more than twice as many as anybody else has ever had in a season. Incredible. The Eagles didn’t need a ton of Saquon, and he only carried 15 times but still finished with 118 yards with three touchdowns. Barkley now has 442 rushing yards, a 6.7 rushing average and five touchdowns in the postseason on top of 2,005 rushing yards, 5.8 per pop and 13 touchdowns in the regular season. We’re seeing perhaps the best running back season in NFL history, and he never lets us down. With one game left, Barkley already has the 7th-most rushing yards in a single postseason His 2,447 yards this year are just 29 shy of Terrell Davis’s single-season regular season plus postseason record – the winner’s record - set in 1998 and I have a hunch he’s going to break it next Sunday. Barkley isn’t just the best running back in the world, he’s the ultimate team guy, and he’s a winner. He played six years with the Giants and won more than six games once. Think about that. And now he’s off to a Super Bowl. Incredible story.
9. I can’t say enough about Nolan Smith, who just continues to make plays for this defense. This is a kid who had one sack in 21 games coming out of the bye and all he’s done since is record 6 ½ sacks in the last 12 regular-season games, then 4.0 sacks in the postseason. That breaks the franchise record of 3 ½ set by Haason Reddick two years ago. All the great pass rushers in this franchise’s history – Reggie White, Clyde Simmons, Hugh Douglas, Brandon Graham, Fletcher Cox, William Fuller – and Smith – still only 23 years old – has more sacks this year than any of them ever had in a season. Smith has 4 ½ career postseason sacks and only B.G. has more, with 5 ½. He’s just so relentless, so physical, so tough, so active, so intense. Something just clicked for Smith around the bye week, and he’s been one of the NFL’s most effective pass rushers since.
10. And I also can’t say enough about Lurie, who I really believe is one of the great owners in pro sports history. This is four Super Bowls now since Lurie bought the franchise from Norman Braman, four Super Bowls for a franchise that went to one Super Bowl before Lurie took over in 1995. We can talk about the players, the coaches, the GM, everybody else, but the whole essence of this franchise changed 30 years ago when Lurie came in and created a winning culture, started hiring world-class coaches and scouts, built a state-of-the-art practice facility and just set a certain standard of excellence that people wanted to be a part of. The Eagles were a middling franchise for most of their existence, with a few blips of success here and there. But since 2000, they’ve reached the postseason 17 of 25 seasons, they’ve made it to eight NFC Championship Games and now four Super Bowls. And five losing seasons. So one more losing season than Super Bowl appearance in the last 25 seasons. I believe Jeff Lurie is a Hall of Fame owner, and I don’t think any of this happens if he doesn’t own this team.
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