PHILADELPHIA — It was 12:28 a.m., nearly one full hour after the buzzer on the Eagles’ 16-9 victory over the Detroit Lions, and Jalen Hurts and Nick Sirianni remained in a corner of the Eagles locker room in an extended conversation. Say what you will about the coach, quarterback, and the team they lead — and much has been said — but they have this much in common: they’re usually in that room after wins.
If anything defines the Sirianni-Hurts Eagles, it’s winning. The defending Super Bowl champions are 8-2. They beat the Lions and the Green Bay Packers in six days while scoring only two touchdowns. They also have victories this year over the Los Angeles Rams, Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers. They don’t blow teams away, as seen by a point differential that ranks 11th in the NFL, yet they’d be the No. 1 seed in the NFC. Their games are often described as “gritty” and “ugly,” which are not the type of adjectives typically bestowed upon such a star-studded roster, but it does not matter to Sirianni or Hurts or these Eagles. As Hurts would tell you, figure out how to win. And the Eagles do.
“There’s something to be said for knowing how to win,” Sirianni said, “and knowing how to figure out ways to win.”
That’s what the Eagles do. Sirianni said the Eagles have a “knack” for finding ways to win. This is the fourth consecutive season the Eagles started 8-2 or better. In two of those previous three seasons, the Eagles made the Super Bowl. They’re atop the NFC with victories over four of the other eight NFC teams with winning records, and that makes them a legitimate Super Bowl contender no matter their point differential or offensive ranking. Their ability to figure out how to win has never been more evident than these past two weeks, outlasting playoff-caliber opponents in playoff-like atmospheres.
“It’s something that you feel, it’s something you sense as a team that you’re being tested on these things,” Hurts said. “So, we went out there and found a way to win a lot of those games like that.”
If this game resembled the postseason based on opponent and intensity, the outcome invites an exciting opportunity for the Eagles. They now have a 50 percent chance of earning the NFC’s top seed, according to The Athletic’s Playoff Simulator. Much can still happen — the Eagles have three games remaining against opponents with winning records, including the Chicago Bears, Los Angeles Chargers, and Buffalo Bills — but they still haven’t hit their stride. Even if you’re skeptical that the offense can become significantly better, it’s difficult to envision it getting much worse.
The top seed would ensure the postseason comes through Philadelphia, in addition to offering the NFC’s only bye. The Eagles have won seven of their last eight postseason games at home — including five by double-digits. This is a daunting place for opponents to visit in January, as the Lions learned on Sunday.
“They got to come through us, come through Philly, if they want to advance,” defensive tackle Jordan Davis said of the team’s mindset.
The 2024 Lions were evidence the top seed does not always lead to the Super Bowl. Detroit’s 15 wins last year and average margin of victory this year demonstrated the formidable opponent they were. The Lions trail only the Eagles for wins among NFC teams since the start of the 2022 season. One week ago, the Lions scored on every drive. That’s why the Eagles’ defense holding the Lions to nine points — Detroit’s lowest output since October 2023 — was so impressive. The Lions had scored in double-digits in 40 consecutive games before Sunday.
“One of the best performances I’ve ever seen,” Hurts said of the defense.
The key for the Eagles? The way they played on money downs. The Lions were 3 of 13 on third down and 0 for 5 on fourth down. Sirianni said the Eagles consider those fourth-down stops turnovers. The Eagles are the second team in 25 years to not allow a fourth-down conversion on at least five attempts.
“Almost disrespectful,” Nakobe Dean said of the Lions’ attempting all those fourth downs. “We came out on defense and played our type of game — we wanted to play on our terms, impose our will physically.”
It started from the opening drive when Davis deflected a pass that was intercepted by Cooper DeJean. (Davis and Jalen Carter combined for five pass deflections.) The Eagles went on to register two sacks and seven quarterback hits, winning at the line of scrimmage, which players insisted set the tone for the game.
“Confident, dominant, game-wrecking,” said Jaelan Phillips, who had his first sack with the Eagles on Sunday. “Any adjective you can describe. … It’s amazing to be part of, for sure.”
The way the defense is playing is why any concern that the Eagles are mimicking the 2023 group seem unfounded. The Eagles started 10-1 that year while insisting they knew how to win, until they didn’t anymore. The cracks that were apparent early in the season caused the team to crumble late in the year. The coaching is better this season, with defensive coordinator Vic Fangio on his way to never needing to pay for a drink at the Philadium. The personnel is better this year, with the acquisition of Phillips bolstering a depth chart that was already maturing and preparing for internal reinforcements.
“I think we have room to grow, but I think what we’ve been putting on the field so far is domination,” Phillips said.
The Eagles winning games by relying on their defense seemed unexpected at the start of the season, considering the Eagles returned 10 of 11 offensive starters and had nine Pro Bowl-caliber players, while needing to replace key players at all three levels on the other side of the ball. But it’s the offense that must play better. The Eagles have only scored one touchdown in each of the past two wins, prompting warranted criticism. It’s their first time with only one touchdown in back-to-back regular-season games since the end of the 2022 campaign, when Hurts was injured. The Eagles had their worst EPA/drive since the start of last season. Next on the list? Last week’s win against the Packers.
The Eagles thought their issues on Sunday were more of the self-inflicted variety, including penalties and drops. There was an effort to get A.J. Brown the ball, and he had a season-high 11 targets. But it remained a lackluster performance, and Brown’s point from earlier in the week about needing to do more for the defense should not be dismissed.
On a more positive note, the Eagles did not turn the ball over for the seventh time this season. They have the fewest turnovers in the NFL and since their Week 5 bye last year, they have only lost the turnover margin twice, going 25-3 in that span.
“We want to be better than what we were tonight, but every game’s played a little bit differently,” Sirianni said. “The way the game is played sometimes is dictated (by) what’s happening in the game. Make no mistake about it, our goal in every single game is to come out with a win, period. Sometimes, the game’s played a little bit differently in that, and we were able to get a 10-point lead. Every game is played to win, but do we have to clean up things on offense? Of course we do.”
It might be “gritty” or “ugly,” but that could be the recipe for the Eagles over the next 2 to 3 months: play good defense, don’t turn the ball over and trust the playmakers to make plays at opportune times.
“It’s hard to win football games,” Saquon Barkley said. “Sometimes people lose sight of that. I think we’re doing a really good job of not losing sight of that.”
Sirianni and Hurts don’t lose sight of that. They’re unapologetic about how it looks. Beating the Packers and the Lions in six days says something.
“We just got to continue to climb, continue to get better,” Dean said. “We want to always hit our stride towards November, December, January, February.”
Yes, February.
You might look at the Eagles’ record and wonder, is it sustainable? Doubt them if you’d like, but more often than not, they’ll figure out how to win.