Eagles News: Jalen Hurts makes history once again

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Roob’s Obs: Too close for comfort, but Hurts again shows he’s a winner - NBCSP
1. Jalen Hurts didn’t have any fancy stats this time. Didn’t throw any touchdowns. Struggled early. But he did what the great ones do, shrugged it all off and made a whole bunch of plays to help his team win. I don’t know if he’ll get MVP, but Hurts is a winner and he showed why once again Sunday. He took a beating. He threw two bad interceptions early. He struggled at times. He completed less than 60 percent of his passes. Yet you look up at the scoreboard and it’s Eagles 25, Bears 20 and another win. Hurts overcame mistakes, a bad start and cold and windy conditions and simply willed the Eagles past the Bears. These are the games where you really appreciate Hurts. The last couple wins came easily. This one the Eagles needed every drop of Hurts’ magic. Whether it was his three rushing touchdowns, his 164 passing yards after halftime, his huge 3rd-down conversions late in the game, his two-point conversion or his big throws to A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith, Hurts picked up the team and carried them to their fifth straight victory under some very difficult circumstances. The stats were ugly. The performance was beautiful.

NFC Playoff Picture: Eagles get help from Doug Pederson beating the Cowboys - BGN
The upcoming Eagles-Cowboys game on Christmas Eve previously figured to hold bigger stakes. Had Dallas not lost to the Jacksonville Jaguars in Week 15, the Eagles still could’ve clinched the No. 1 seed with a win over their NFC East rival. A Birds loss at AT&T, however, would’ve necessitated them to win both of their final two games to secure home field advantage. But due to Doug Pederson being able to pull off the upset (Doug!!!!), the Eagles can now afford to lose in Dallas as long as they beat either the Saints OR the Giants.

BGN Instant Reaction Show: Eagles beat Bears, 25-20 - BGN Radio
Shane Haff, Jessica Taylor and Jonny Page dissect the good and bad from the Eagles ugly win against the Bears, 25-20. Eagles pass rush has been insane. Jalen Hurts got hit way too much. Run game was a bit average.

Handing out 10 awards from the Eagles-Bears game - PhillyVoice
The cold seemed to affect Hurts early, as he threw two uncharacteristically bad interceptions. He eventually found a groove and went on to throw for 315 yards on the day, while also scoring three touchdowns on the ground. Hurts said in his postgame press conference that his hands were numb early on, and he had difficulty seeing the field well. Whatever the case, this was probably Hurts’ worst game in a season in which he has not yet had a bad game. And yet, he made his share of big plays and bigtime throws in crucial moments, most notably his deep ball down the field on third down to A.J. Brown to set up a score that put the Eagles up by two touchdowns. Hurts took a lot shots in this game, but he never looked rattled. Asked after the game how he felt physically, Hurts said that he was going to listen to some Anita Baker and have some sweets on the plane ride home. As for those three rushing touchdowns noted above, Hurts now has 13 on the season. He is one shy of the NFL record for quarterbacks, set by Cam Newton (14) in 2011.

Eagles Beat Bears 25-20 - Iggles Blitz
The Eagles didn’t deliver the blowout we expected, but they did find a way to win on a cold day in Chicago. Every time it looked like the Eagles might put the game away, the Bears came up with an answer. The Eagles didn’t play their best football. They turned the ball over three times. They missed a FG. They failed to recover a fumble that was there for the taking. They blew a key coverage that resulted in a TD. The play-calling left a little to be desired. More than a few heroes stepped up and helped the Eagles overcome the sloppiness. We’ll start with Jalen Hurts. He wasn’t his usual self, but still threw for 315 yards and ran for a pair of TDs. That’s pretty good for an off-day. Hurts made some huge throws in the 4th quarter that helped the team to put the game away. As usual, he helped set the right tone for his team.

NFL Week 15 takeaways: Lessons, big questions for every game - ESPN
What’s the concern level over the passing game? Low. Jalen Hurts threw multiple interceptions in a game for the first time this season and was below his normal efficiency as a passer. There was some wind and cold to contend with as well as some trap game vibes to this one, seeing that it was sandwiched between a pair of division games: last week against the Giants and their biggest game of the season coming up Saturday against the Cowboys. The offense was clunky for long stretches. Still, Hurts scored three times on the ground — he now has 13 rushing TDs on the year, one shy of Cam Newton’s record — and made plays through the air when it mattered. This group will be fine.

NFL Week 15 Game Recap: Philadelphia Eagles 25, Chicago Bears 20 - PFF
Defensive spotlight: Haason Reddick was a nightmare for the Chicago offense all game long. He notched two sacks and a pressure rate of 33.3% overall, making a constant nuisance of himself as a pass-rusher.

Spadaro: Eagles find a way against gritty Bears team - PE.com
Brown was a monster in this one, catching 9 passes for 181 yards on 16 targets. “It was cold, it was tough to breathe, but we got the win and that’s a great thing,” Brown said. “Tough game.” The Eagles struggled, turning the ball over three times and working hard to keep Bears quarterback Justin Fields under wraps on a day when the temperature in Chicago was in the teens and the lake-effect wind was swirling. But the Eagles never wavered. Never panicked. They just stuck with the game plan and won behind the production of Hurts (376 total yards of offense that included 61 rushing yards and 3 touchdowns on the ground). Brown and DeVonta Smith (5 catches, 126 yards) combined for 14 receptions and 307 yards as Hurts repeatedly threw to the outside against single coverage. “When you see that,” Smith said, “your job is to win and that’s what we did today.”

Eagles narrowly avoid Bear trap as Chicago stacks another L - Windy City Gridiron
Future Bear Javon Hargraves with a sack. Eagles DT Javon Hargraves is having a tremendous season and is an impending free agent for a time who will have to make some hard cap choices. I hope Javon was nice to his future quarterback after knocking him over for a third down stop. Update: the future bear managed to sack Fields twice.

The Jaguars’ pick-6 to beat Cowboys is one of the most improbable NFL wins this year - SB Nation
The Jacksonville Jaguars and Dallas Cowboys played one of the best NFL games of the season on Sunday, a 40-34 victory for the Jaguars that saw Jacksonville come back from down 21-7 and 27-10 to win the game in overtime. Jaguars safety Rayshawn Jenkins ended the game for the Jaguars on a pick-six from Dak Prescott. On third down, Prescott threw the ball over the middle to WR Noah Brown, who dropped the pass that hit him in the chest. Jenkins caught it off the ricochet, and the rest is history.

Patriots Lose it All in Las Vegas - Football Outsiders
What It Means: Those of us who strive to be analytical and semi-objective keep noting that these Cowboys appear to be more reliable and less self-destructive than other models which have rolled off their assembly line over the last 25 years or so. And the Cowboys keep jumping up and down and squealing “Not true! We can’t wait to go belly-up in a playoff game! We tried to do it against the Texans! Imagine what we’ll pull off if we face the 49ers!”

Dallas Cowboys Playoff Picture: Dallas needs to start paying very close attention to NFC South race - Blogging The Boys
Living off of that for a moment, if the Cowboys defeat the Eagles on Saturday and the Giants lose to the Minnesota Vikings, then the NFC East remains un-clinched. While that would be true, all Philadelphia would have to do would be to win either of their final two games (both at home) against the New Orleans Saints or the Giants to do it. Additionally, any Cowboys loss would lock the division up for the birds. But if those things do happen then the non-division winner between the Cowboys and Eagles would be locked into the five seed within the NFC playoff picture and that team is guaranteed to visit the winner of the NFC South as of Week 15’s results (Tampa Bay leads the division with six wins and trails the next-closest division leader by four with three games to go).

NFC playoff picture: Giants put themselves in great position to reach playoffs - Big Blue View
The New York Giants took a massive step toward reaching the NFL playoffs with Sunday night’s 20-12 victory over the Washington Commanders. Per FiveThirtyEight, the 8-5-1 Giants’ odds of reaching the playoffs increased from 52 percent to 87 percent with their thrilling victory. ESPN Analytics put the Giants’ chance of reaching the playoffs for the first time since 2016 at 90 percent.

Ron Rivera post-game Presser: “We missed opportunities, and we can’t do that” - Hogs Haven
Ron Rivera was clearly upset after the game. He was indirectly critical of the officials, complaining that Terry McLaurin had checked with the official on the play where he was penalized. He stopped short of blaming the officials for the loss, however, saying, “We had our opportunities; we put ourselves down there. We missed opportunities, and we can’t do that. We talked about that when we were off last week – that the red zone was something we’ve got to be better at, and we didn’t do that. If we had done it, that last series doesn’t matter.”

Saints pull off close 21-18 win against Atlanta Falcons and stay alive in the NFC South - Canal Street Chronicles
The New Orleans Saints entered this week at 4-9, going up against their division rival Atlanta Falcons who sat a 5-8. If the Saints lost and either the Tampa Bay Buccaneers or Carolina Panthers won, the Saints were out of the playoffs, and on the other side, the Falcons were looking to push further toward the top of the division. At the end of the day, it came out to be a close game, but the Saints pulled it off by the finest of margins in a 21-18 win that came all the way down to the last play. This leaves the Saints at 5-9, tied with Atlanta and Carolina for 2nd, and somewhat in control of their own destiny now.

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