7 winners and losers from Eagles NFC Championship game: Super Bound

The Philadelphia Eagles are going to the Super Bowl for the second time in three years after dropping a cool 55 points right on the Washington Commanders’ head in the NFC Championship game. Almost everyone and everything was firing on all cylinders for a full 60 minutes. It was awesome.

A dominating performance makes it hard to find losers

This isn’t just a great team — the 2024 Eagles are juggernauts. The entire team just showed that they are world-beaters by slamming the weight of the world on an up-and-coming divisional rival. The running game was predictably dominant, the pass catchers came back to life, and Jalen Hurts played one of his best games of the season at the perfect time. In doing so, he and Sirianni became the first head coach and quarterback combination to make it to multiple Super Bowls in Eagles’ franchise history.

Loser: Curse of Jim Kelly

It’s been 31 years since Jim Kelly’s Buffalo Bills lost to the Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl XXVIII. That was the Bills' fourth consecutive Super Bowl loss and since then, no quarterback who has lost in their first Super Bowl appearance has ever had another Super Bowl appearance. It has since been dubbed the ‘Curse of Jim Kelly.’

Jalen Hurts broke that curse. He lost in Super Bowl LVII which meant otherworldly forces stacked the deck against him for the rest of his career, but it only took him two more seasons to get back and break the blood bond that seemingly sealed his fate.

The real winners here are the other quarterbacks on the list. Jalen has opened the door for players like Joe Burrow, Jared Goff, Brock Purdy, and Jimmy Garrapolo (if you’re a real sicko).

Winner: Zack Baun

Zack Baun’s had one of the best and most surprising seasons of any athlete in recent history. He was a special teams player for four seasons with the Saints until March 13, 2024, when he was one of the Eagles’ first three free-agent signings. 

Initially, it was kind of an ‘Oh. Um. Okay. Cool, I guess…’ type of thing. That changed quick.

Here we are, 10 months later and Zack Baun is an All-Pro linebacker, a Defensive Player of the Year finalist, a bonafide playmaker, and the chess piece on a Super Bowl defense. It’s been wild and he isn’t slowing down. 

In the first quarter alone, Zack Baun had eight tackles. One of which was when he and Cooper DeJean forced the first fumble of the game. Later on, he recovered a fumble that was forced by Oren Burks (who also had a phenomenal game). 

Baun is everywhere, every play, every game. It’s so nice having good linebackers and it’s even nicer to have the best linebacker in the NFL.

Winner: Stoutland University

If there is a certification for being a human-monster hybrid, Cam Jurgens and Landon Dickerson should get it. Going into the game Jurgens had some kind of back tightness thing going on, and Landon Dickerson got the start at center. 

Then at some point in the first half, he jacked up his knee. He could hardly walk but kept playing. The only word to describe what he was doing is ‘Heroic.’ Unfortunately, it ended up getting so bad that he left at halftime and Cam Jurgens had to play for the rest of the game… again with a hurt back.

Through all of that flipping and flopping, there were only two or three plays where the interior of the offensive line and/or the snaps looked a little disjointed. On top of that, Tyler Steen was playing in Dickerson’s spot at left guard, and he did really well too. 

Jeff Stoutland is the best offensive line coach in the NFL and he proves it week in and week out, and season in and season out. It’s incredible how he has every single one of his guys ready to play.

Winner(?): Special Teams

The special teams in this game were weird. On one hand, Jake Elliott missed a field goal. On the other hand, Kenny Gainwell and Will Shipley forced and recovered a fumble on a kickoff. On the other other hand, the Commanders converted on the most predictable fake punt in the history of fake punts. It’s tough to parse all that out. 

The missed field goal was the first postseason field goal that Jake has ever missed. It was a 54-yarder, which is long but makeable. He’s now made only one of nine 50+ yard field goals this season.

The forced fumble was unbelievable. The Eagles scored with 1:44 left before halftime (after a beautiful fourth-down conversion), forced a fumble, and then scored again. That’s exactly how you want to end a half… except for the part where the Commanders kicked a field goal right after that second touchdown. After the game, Nick Sirianni was talking about Will Shipley forcing the fumble: “I’m not sure he’s tackled anybody before this year.” He’s probably right.

Then the fake punt… come on. Seriously? Everyone on the planet knew that was going to be fake. It took the Commanders approximately five minutes to snap the ball. It just felt like they were waiting for the Eagles’ punt return team to shuffle around just enough for Ben Sinnott to have a wide-open route downfield. 

Winner: Zach Ertz

You have to give credit where it’s due, and Zach Ertz deserves credit for having a monster game. Of the Commanders’ 278 receiving yards, Ertz had 104 of them on 11 catches. Four of those catches were third or fourth-down conversions. 

He’s 34 years old and only had a one-year contract with the Commanders, but he also just had his best season (66 catches, 654 yards, and seven touchdowns) since 2019. It’s more than likely that he’ll end up retiring as an Eagle, but who knows when that will be?

After the game, Fletcher Cox caught him in the tunnel. For either a ‘you had a great career’ hug or a ‘you had a great game’ hug. Only those two will know, but you can be the judge. 

He’s one of the best Eagles of all time and it’s been awful seeing him play for other teams over the past four years… but you can’t help but be proud of him and the way that he played this season and in this game specifically. 

Loser: “We’re going to hit him like a running back”

Going into the game, the Commanders’ defensive coordinator Joe Whitt Jr. had one of the best quotes of the football season when he talked about Jalen Hurts being used in the Eagles’ running game. He said, “...If he’s going to run the ball or if the coordinator makes the decision for him to run the ball, we’re going to treat him like a running back. And we’re going to hit him that way…”

Whitt must have thought he discovered something new here: You can tackle quarterbacks when they run the ball. Congratulations to him for figuring that out… except his team didn’t actually tackle Jalen when he ran. 

There must’ve been some kind of mental lapse because Jalen was able to get a nine-yard touchdown run without being touched by anyone.

After that, the Commanders bought all the way into the bit when they had their hilarious goalline sequence. The Eagles lined up for the Brotherly Shove five times because Frankie Luvu launched himself over the offensive line twice in a row for two encroachment penalties and then Jonathan Allen jumped early too.

So… that’s a way to be physical I guess? It was a truly spectacular display of unnecessary athleticism. 

Bonus Winner: All of us

We all learned a new football rule. When Luvu and Allen kept trying to stop the Brotherly shove before it started, head referee Shawn Hochuli informed us that there’s something called a ‘palpably unfair act.’ 

Hochuli gave the Commanders a warning that if they kept encroaching, then he was going to just give the Eagles a touchdown. Apparently, that’s a thing; if a ref gets tired of a defense committing penalties, they’ll just straight-up give the offense a touchdown. That’s a crazy amount of power.

It does solve the hypothetical, ‘If a team is on the goalline, why not just put 12 guys on the field over and over again until they stop throwing flags’ It turns out the refs wouldn’t have to stop throwing flags because they would just give the offense points.

Look at us getting smarter.