National Football League

Eagles' weakness exposed in loss ... will other teams be able to replicate?

Updated Nov. 15, 2022 9:12 p.m. ET

The blueprint was obvious. Ron Rivera and his coaching staff saw it as soon as they turned on the film. The way to beat the Philadelphia Eagles was with a relentless ground assault. The holes in their defense jumped right off the screen.

And now the Commanders actually did it, knocking off Philly 32-21 on Monday night, with the Eagles knowing every other team they face will try to do the same. But they probably shouldn't worry too much about other teams doing what Washington just did.

They know it'll take a lot more than that for most teams to pull it off.

"We know that we made mistakes, right?" Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said after his team fell to 8-1 on the season. "We made uncharacteristic mistakes. We didn't play our type of game. We made mistakes. We had penalties. We had uncharacteristic fumbles. We threw an interception."

"You create your own luck," Sirianni added, "and we played like crap."

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That is an underrated part of why the Commanders (5-5) became the first team to beat the Eagles this season. Yes, Rivera's old-time football strategy was sound. The Commanders ran on 60% of their plays, ran for 152 yards and held onto the ball for more than 40 minutes. They took what they learned on film, what they saw the Texans do to Philly 11 days earlier, and used it to wear the Eagles defense down and keep Philly quarterback Jalen Hurts off the field.

But they not only needed their ground game to work to near-perfection, they also still needed breaks and uncharacteristic Philly mistakes. The Eagles, as Sirianni noted, turned the ball over four times — stunning for a team that had only turned it over three times in the first eight games of their season. And their NFL-best secondary left far too many holes for Commanders receiver Terry McLaurin, who took advantage of the soft coverage to catch eight passes for 128 yards — nearly every one of them big.

And still, the Eagles were basically inches from winning the game. They had two huge plays that ended in disaster, which essentially cost them the win. There was a 41-yard pass to A.J. Brown in the second quarter that Hurts put right into his hands around the Washington 14-yard line. But that was before Commanders safety Darrick Forrest somehow pulled it away with a spectacular interception. And there was Hurts' 51-yarder to Quez Watkins in the fourth quarter that would've set up the Eagles inside the Washington 20, in perfect position for a go-ahead touchdown — if only Watkins hadn't tried to get up, only to get hit by Commanders cornerback Brian St.-Juste and then fumble the ball away.

Those are mistakes the Eagles haven't been making. Those are breaks they normally go their way. If they hit on just one of those plays then they probably win, and score 30 points, on a night when they only have the ball for 19 1/2 minutes. And despite everything else, it took a couple of questionable penalty calls and non-calls — like the missed facemask on the fumble by tight end Dallas Goedert, and the inexcusable roughing-the-passer penalty on Eagles defensive end Brandon Graham late in the fourth quarter — for Washington to seal the win.

That's how good the Eagles are. And that's how fortunate their opponents need to be.

"We didn't do a good enough job and it feels like things go against you," Sirianni said. "Those plays, those scenarios that happen when you play like that, get magnified, whether it was the right call or wrong call.

"So, we made our own luck today and it was bad."

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That said, there's no doubt the Washington blueprint is sound. And there's no doubt the Indianapolis Colts with Jonathan Taylor, the Green Bay Packers with Aaron Jones, the Tennessee Titans with Derrick Henry and the New York Giants with Saquon Barkley will all try to emulate that in the coming weeks. Especially with rookie defensive tackle Jordan Davis out at least two more games, the Eagles can expect a steady diet of clock-eating runs against them as teams try to wear them down and take their offense out of the game.

But even that strategy has its flaws. The Commanders only gained 3.1 yards per carry during their ground assault. They weren't plowing through the Eagles defense as much as they were nudging it back. But they were committed to it. As Rivera said after the game: "The one thing that you've got to do is you've got to stick with it. You've got to pound on it."

They were even committed to it on third downs, where they converted a remarkable 12-of-21. That included 12 of their first 15 through 2½ quarters, as a matter of fact. And during that stretch, they converted 7 of 8 third downs when they ran.

"They were five yards on first down, two yards on second down, or three yards on second and they were converting on third," Sirianni said. "They had 21 third downs. That's a lot. So they stuck to their game plan."

Sure, other teams might be able to do that — maybe even as effectively. But even if they can, all it does is increase their odds and puts the Eagles on a tightrope where they can't afford those uncharacteristic mistakes they made on Monday night. Because they are still a talented, often-times dominant team. The Eagles still had 264 yards and three touchdowns in their 19½ minutes on offense. And that's in a game where their usually dominant rushing attack didn't top 100 yards and Brown, their top receiver, had just one catch for seven yards.

That's not going to happen a lot, even if better teams mimic the Commanders' game plan. Because it still took a perfect storm to end the Eagles' perfect season.

"That's pretty simple," Sirianni said. "The three turnovers lost us the game. The time of possession losses you the game. We lost it together: offense, defense, special teams. We lost it together. That's what lost us the game."

It wasn't strategy. It wasn't a better team. It wasn't anything unfixable. The Commanders may have shown everyone how to beat the Eagles. But knowing how to do it is only a fraction of the equation.

It's still not going to be easy for anyone else to do.

Ralph Vacchiano is the NFC East reporter for FOX Sports, covering the Washington Commanders, Philadelphia Eagles and New York Giants. He spent the previous six years covering the Giants and Jets for SNY TV in New York, and before that, 16 years covering the Giants and the NFL for the New York Daily News. Follow him Twitter at @RalphVacchiano.