Eagles News: Philadelphia’s offensive linemen are putting out a Christmas album

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Fly, Santa, Fly! Eagles Jason Kelce, Jordan Mailata, and Lane Johnson to release ‘A Philly Special Christmas’ album. - Inquirer
The Eagles are putting out a Christmas record. No, not the band the Eagles. The undefeated, 6-0, E-A-G-L-E-S Philadelphia Eagles. In December, Vera Y Records will release A Philly Special Christmas, a seven-song album that showcases the vocal talents of Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce and his offensive tackle teammates Lane Johnson and Jordan Mailata. The album is produced by Charlie Hall of The War On Drugs and executive produced by Connor Barwin, the former Eagles linebacker and current executive whose Make The World Better concerts have been headlined by Philly acts like Kurt Vile and Japanese Breakfast. [...] The album, which includes a dramatic recitation of “The Night Before Christmas” by Eagles radio announcer Merrill Reese, accompanied by Zach Miller of Dr. Dog on piano, will be released in its entirety on green vinyl, and all digital services on Dec. 23. Starting in late November the vinyl will be available for preorder at phillyspecialchristmas.com

Eagles’ NFC Player of the Week streak comes to an end due to a snub - BGN
The Eagles had what seemed like an obvious winner for NFC Defensive Player of the Week in Week 6. After logging two picks against the Dallas Cowboys, C.J. Gardner-Johnson felt like a shoo in. Alas, the award instead went to Seattle Seahawks cornerback Tariq Woolen. The rookie logged one interception in their win over the Arizona Cardinals.

The EPA Podcast Debut Episode! - BGN Radio
On the debut episode of The EPA Podcast, Victor Williams (@ThePhillyPod) and Shane Haff (@HAFFnHAFF_TPL) dive into all things XOs and all things Eagles including how much Lane Johnson means to this offense, Jordan Davis’ utilization and Jalen Hurts’ development.

2022 NFL MVP: It’s a three-horse race between Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes and Jalen Hurts - PFF
QB Jalen Hurts, Philadelphia Eagles. Week 6 stats: 74.7 PFF grade | 0.13 EPA per play. Season to date: 81.5 PFF grade | 0.18 EPA per play. Hurts is still playing at a high level, but it is becoming more and more apparent that he can’t hold pace against Allen and Mahomes on an individual level. This means that his MVP candidacy is closer aligned to winning as many games as possible than it is for the other two. But as long as the Eagles keep winning, Hurts will stay in the race.

The Philadelphia Eagles are clearly the best team in the NFC at this point in the season - Blogging The Boys
While I can understand that this is an annoying thing to acknowledge, I do not understand how anybody who has watched all six weeks of the regular season can feel like there is an NFC team that comes close to the Eagles right now. Sure we all believe in the Cowboys to a degree once Dak Prescott is healthy, but that is still an unproven thing right now. So taking Dallas out of this conversation for the moment (also worth doing seeing as how Philly literally just beat them) who are the other teams even kind of contending for the top spot in the conference? Trusting an opinion that I believe in with all of my heart, my own, the next-highest NFC team in my own personal power rankings is the Minnesota Vikings followed by the New York Giants. The Eagles happened to have their way with Minnesota way back in Week 2.

Game Review – PHI 26, DAL 17 - Iggles Blitz
Jalen Hurts played pretty well. His numbers weren’t great (15-25-155 with 2 TDs), but he didn’t turn the ball over and he made key plays. He was excellent on RPOs, especially when throwing the passes to AJ in the flat. Great execution on those. The pressure did affect Hurts. He missed AJ Brown on a third down pass and it looked like he rushed the throw, despite having time to get it off. There was a play later in the game when AJ was wide open on third down and was over the middle. Hurts took off running earlier than he needed to. He almost got picked off in the third quarter. Hurts tried to hit Goedert, but Parsons was there and almost got the ball. It fell incomplete. When pressure got home, Hurts took the sack. That’s fine. Don’t put the ball up for grabs. Better to punt. He did make plays with his legs, most notably going 3 for 3 on QB sneaks.

Undefeated Eagles showing all the signs of a Super Bowl contender - ESPN
Lincoln Financial Field hasn’t shaken like it did on Sunday since the 2018 NFC Championship Game against the Minnesota Vikings. It had the combustible energy of a giant soda can being kicked around for three hours. It was the Philadelphia Eagles coming in 5-0. It was Meek Mill’s performance of “Dreams and Nightmares” before kickoff. It was the hated Dallas Cowboys strutting on the visitors’ sideline. It was the Philadelphia Phillies bat-cracking their way to the National League Championship Series. It was the weekend-long sports party in the city that left fans drunk with excitement — and in some cases, just drunk. It was all of that in a 26-17 win, capped by an on-field scrum where center Jason Kelce was taken to the ground and coach Nick Sirianni lost it with a profanity-filled sideline tirade. “How ‘bout them Eagles!” Sirianni screamed over and over as he made his way through the tunnel and into the locker room, putting his own spin on Jimmy Johnson’s famed line. Defensive standouts Fletcher Cox and Haason Reddick playfully counted to six on their fingers. Linebacker Shaun Bradley belted, “Man, f--- that [Dallas] star. Ain’t nobody worried about that s---.” Inside the locker room Kodak Black’s “Walk” boomed over the speakers as running back Miles Sanders and others joyfully bounced in rhythm. “That was like the best atmosphere I’ve been in and it was a regular-season game,” receiver A.J. Brown said.”Look, Philly is lit. That’s all I’m going to say. Philly is lit and I’m enjoying being here.”

Spadaro: Coordinators hunt for improvement during bye week - PE.com
Jonathan Gannon: ‘Our best ball is in front of us’. “We have some projects that the head coach has us do, and then I would like to talk about with the staff certain things that I want studied and want to improve on and some answers to some different things,” he said. “We kind of collectively get together. We’re on our own and then we collectively get together and look at everything from top to bottom and start to make some decisions. You do it weekly, but the difference is obviously now you’re not getting ready to play a game, so you can kind of take a deep breath and it can be a little more not as matter of fact all the time. You can have some different conversations about it because time is not an issue. “It’s good because a lot of good ideas come up and it’s a good brainstorm session for some of that stuff validated with the tape, numbers, and stuff like that. So, we’ll definitely improve coming out of this week.” Gannon has a defense that leads the NFL with 14 takeaways, a statistic he specifically mentioned prior to the season that he wanted to see improved over 2021. That, and explosive plays – the Eagles rank fourth in the NFL in fewest 16+ yard passing plays allowed and 23rd in 10+ yard rushing plays allowed. So, the Eagles have some work to do there. “We need to get the explosive runs down a little bit,” he told me in his office afterward. “We’ve got a lot of areas to improve with those two statistics, but I like where we’re at and I like where we’re tracking.”

Marcus Smith’s Eagles struggles cut deeper than we knew but he found purpose in helping others - NJ.com
After he gets his life coach certification, Smith said he plans on going back to school to get a therapy license. “I kind of put myself as a bridge in-between” Smith said, for athletes who fear the onus of therapy. “I don’t want anybody else to go through what I did.” Smith lives in Maryland, his wife’s home state, with her, their daughter, 4, and one-year-old son. Whatever he was or was not as a player, it’s impressive that Smith seems to have come out on the other side intact, with a purpose. “With my son, I definitely want him to play football,” Smith said. “I’m definitely going to make sure I’m in his ear a lot about what that entails and what that looks like. I’m going to push him forward to become the very best version of himself. I’m going to tell him, ‘It’s not about you proving anybody wrong. It’s about you proving yourself right.’”

Heinicke is QB1 for now, but should Wentz be re-inserted as the starter when healthy again? - Hogs Haven
If the Commanders record pushes them further away within the division and, indirectly, the wild card race during this four-game stretch, what are the Commanders options then? A more complex conversation will occur if the Commanders are 2-8 or 3-7 after four games with Heinicke. Ron Rivera and Scott Turner could either go the rookie option and give quarterback Sam Howell the last seven games to evaluate his development or go back to Wentz and, despite the 70 percent snap threshold, determine if he is the future of this offense.

Week 7 NFL Picks Against the Spread - The Ringer
I did some digging to figure out just how bad this Lions defense has been, and the results are not pretty. In the past 10 years, this is the sixth-worst defensive performance (by EPA per drive) we’ve seen through the first six weeks of the season. On one hand, that’s terrible. On the other, maybe there’s nowhere to go but up? It looks like Dallas quarterback Dak Prescott could return in this matchup (he was a full participant in practice on Wednesday), but it’s unclear what to expect from him—he’s coming off a significant thumb injury on his throwing hand, and didn’t exactly look crisp in Week 1 before the injury. There’s a scenario in which Prescott looks great, the defense dominates, the Cowboys win in a blowout, and they become a trendy pick as a Super Bowl sleeper in the NFC. But the Lions offense has moved the ball well most weeks, and it’s possible that Prescott looks rusty. This number feels a little high to me. The pick: Lions (+7)

NFL picks against the spread: Vic Tafur’s Week 7 predictions - The Athletic
We cashed in against the Cowboys last week, but we must say that we were impressed. They almost covered despite an abysmal performance by quarterback Cooper Rush. The announcers kept showering the Eagles cornerbacks with praise but didn’t mention that every pass was a second or two late and had no mustard on it. The Cowboys have a good offensive line, two very good running backs and a serviceable receiving corps now that Michael Gallup is back and has gotten the rust off. And Dak Prescott can make throws that Rush can’t. And Dallas’ defense is elite — seventh in EPA per drive, fourth in points per drive. The one thing the defense is not great at is stopping the run (17th in run defense DVOA), and we’re assuming that Lions running back D’Andre Swift is back from a shoulder injury. And getting a team off their bye week fired up about new beginnings seems right down Dan Campbell’s ally. The Lions — and their improved pass rush? — keep it close. The pick: Lions (+7)

Week 7 Staff Picks: Jags, Saints, and Other Stragglers - Football Outsiders
Jackson Roberts: New York Giants (+3) at Jacksonville Jaguars. This feels like the ultimate trap, but I’m diving in headfirst. I think we have reached the point of the season where winning teams start to get used to playing winning football and losing teams find ways to soil the bed, as the Jags did against the Colts a week ago. The Florida climate scares me a bit, but I’m trusting Brian Daboll and the good vibes in New York East Rutherford to keep rolling.

The mystery of disappearing points in the NFL - Big Blue View
Over the past decade, the NFL has become perhaps the most exciting and entertaining sports league to watch, with amazingly gifted quarterbacks and receivers and innovative offenses creating so many explosive plays that it’s hard to include them all on the weekly highlight films. The sport’s entertainment value may have reached its apex in the 2021-2022 playoff season. Almost every game was a classic, none more so than the epic battle between Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen in the AFC Divisional Playoffs that saw four touchdowns and a field goal scored in the final two minutes of regulation. And then came 2022. After six weeks of play, NFL once again seems to stand for “No Fun League,” but for a different reason than the one that gave rise to that moniker a decade ago when the league tried to cut down on celebrations. Scoring is down from previous seasons as NFL defenses try to claw back some of the ground they lost in the past decade or two after rules that favor offenses were adopted. But low-scoring defensive struggles can be classics (e.g., the Giants’ NFC Championship Game victory over the San Francisco 49ers in 2012). That’s not 2022. This season, and especially in the prime time games that the league sees as its showcase, so many games have been amazingly boring and outright difficult to watch. Other games have been interesting, even well played, but lacked the fireworks that so many 2021 games had (e.g., the Mahomes-Allen rematch this past Sunday). Giants fans may not notice this as much as fans of other teams because of Big Blue’s improbable success and rise to playoff contention, but the Giants’ formula for winning may contain some clues about what’s going on.

Russell Wilson looks lost, and that means bad things for the Broncos - SB Nation
Yes, these are all Russell Wilson, and yes, these are all from this year. To say that the Broncos experience for both Wilson and Denver has been bad is an understatement; the Broncos are dead last in points per game and Wilson’s composite expected points added (EPA/play) is in the region of Mitchell Trubisky and Cooper Rush—who are both backup QBs. Against the Chargers on Monday night, viewers were subjected to the Russell Wilson project in Denver.

Bob Glauber, and Which NFC Team Sucks the Least - The SB Nation NFL Show
This week on the SB Nation NFL Show, Rob “Stats” Guerrera, Kyle Posey, and Justis Mosqueda do their best to figure out which NFC team sucks the least from the struggling conference. Before that, we sit down with Bob Glauber–formerly of Newsday–to figure out how both New York teams have managed their hot starts.

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