Eagles Postgame Report: Birds Remain Undefeated With Win Over Rams

The Eagles offense came out humming for their first drive in their matchup in LA.

It gave them the early lead in this game but that didn’t last long as the secondary might as well have had no one in it and the Rams quickly tied it up.

The offense stalled and the defense got a stop of it’s own but the Rams took the lead after Quez Watkins opted not to get a first down and the Eagles had to settle for a field goal to match the touchdown the defense would give up immediately following.

Just before the half, with just over 30 seconds remaining, the Eagles went to AJ Brown and a few obvious penalties for a quick score that would send them to the half with a 17-14 lead.

The Rams took the second half kickoff and were gifted a facemask penalty on a play where no one touched the runner’s facemask. That gave the Rams a first down on what would have been something like 4th and 10. Ultimately, the bogus call resulted in the Rams punting from their own 41 instead of their 15.

The outcome was the Eagles being pinned at their five-yard line. The Eagles were rolling and in position to take a pretty commanding league when Jalen Hurts decided just to pass the ball to the Rams defensive backs. Nicholas Morrow missed out on an interception and, two plays later, a fumble that kept the offense from getting that field position back.

The Eagles managed to get back to 8-yard line (an amount of yardage that would have been good enough for a touchdown had they gotten either turnover or not had the bogus penalty gift the Rams 25 yards of field position), but wound up settling for a field goal as Jalen Hurts missed yet another wide-open Quez Watkins. By that point, it was fair to question whether Hurts was just not throwing to Watkins on purpose no matter what.

Haason Reddick made his first appearance of the season at the very end of the game with back-to-back sacks that forced a turnover on downs to give the Eagles the ball back with just two and a half minutes left and a two-score lead.

It was another game where the Eagles simply seemed to be playing an incomplete game below where they have shown the capability of playing, but nonetheless they did enough to turn on a bit of cruise control in the fourth quarter once again.

Offensive MVP: Dallas Goedert

Dallas Goedert has had some huge blocks in the previous four wins for the Eagles this season, but he’s been a non-factor in the passing offense. That changed in LA as Goedert went off for 117 yards and a touchdown. He was the safety outlet fans have been looking for him to be and it was good to see Hurts finally look his way. He had a team-leading eight catches as the Eagles offense looked to keep the chains moving.

Defensive MVP: Haason Reddick

It’s been an extremely quiet season for Reddick, deafening even. The player who many journalists tried to build a pay issue around in the preseason has been all but absent from the first four games of the season. When the Rams had their last shot to win this game, however, Reddick is the one who came up large, putting Stafford on the ground behind the line on third down and then taking away any hope for even a pass attempt with a quick victory off the end on fourth and 12, his second sack of the game that basically sealed the win for the Birds.

Game Notes

• Quez Watkins was back for the first time in three weeks and he only further showed why Olamide Zaccheaus is a better option as the third receiver. He may get open a bit more, but that results in no more catches. His catching out of the backfield is of little value because he has no vision – in fact the lone field goal of the first half came as a result of his having perfect blocks from AJ Brown and DeVonta Smith that made for an easy first down run and he ran outside of them, putting Smith’s work to waste because of Watkins’ poor ability to read a field.
• Jalen Hurts appears to have some lingering problems. He looked far better running the ball than he has all season, but he had so many passes that were either off or where he blatantly missed a receiver left wide-open. That’s without even mentioning that third quarter play where he threw the ball to a defensive back where there was absolutely no way any Eagle could even defend the ball let alone catch it. It’s fast approaching the time of year where mistakes like that shouldn’t be happening so frequently and the rust should be all but gone.
• Nicholas Morrow has been a great story for this team and he’s played well but you just can’t excuse his dropping an easy interception and then not just falling on the fumble two plays later. There aren’t easier turnovers than those that he missed out on.
• There were at least three times I counted where DeAndre Swift just slipped and fell of his own accord in this game. There may have been more instances of it – not sure what the cause for that was.
• Somehow the offense, when “running out the clock” not only took a delay of game penalty, but used both of the team’s remaining timeouts. It’s like the team brought in Andy Reid to be the specialty clock management guy.
• The red zone offense continues to be abysmal. It’s like no coach on the team has any ideas for a reasonable play design within the 15-yard line.

Injury Notes

• There were no obvious/major injuries for the Birds to note in this game.

Philadelphia Eagles @ Los Angeles Rams – October 8, 2023