Over the past two weeks, the Philadelphia Eagles’ defense has dominated. It was against a deservingly pathetic Browns offense and the Giants who are the NFC East’s red-headed stepchild.
Now it’s time to see if those confidence builders were all smoke or if there’s something there. In Week 8, the Eagles are going to Cincinnati to shut down Joe Burrow and the Bengals.
The Eagles' defense hasn’t allowed a touchdown in two games, so it’s time to make irresponsible predictions
When a defense is playing this well, everyone is feeling it. Yes, they just beat up Deshaun Watson and Daniel Jones, but good defenses are supposed to beat up bad quarterbacks.
It’s not just that though. The defensive backs are looking a lot better with passing off routes, the defensive line is beating the people across from them consistently, and since Cooper DeJean has taken over at nickel, there’s no specific guy quarterbacks can target for easy completions. Everything looks better on that side of the ball.
If the defense can keep that going against the Bengals, it’s going to be awesome. These aren’t your momma’s predictions. These aren’t, ‘Saquon will have a 50-yard run and Zack Baun will lead the team in tackles’ kinds of predictions. These are bold predictions and if they come true, this defense’s ceiling is going to go to the moon.
Bold Prediction: The Eagles hold the Bengals to under a 25 percent touchdown rate in the red zone
So far, the Eagles have allowed their opponents to turn red zone trips into touchdowns seven of 18 times (38.9 percent). In Weeks 1 through 3, they allowed only 30 percent of those trips to turn into six points, but in Weeks 4 through 7, that number jumped up to 50 percent.
That number is inflated by the Week 4 game in Tampa when the Buccaneers were four of six in the red zone. Since that game, they’ve been perfect. The Browns and the Giants each made it to the red zone once, and neither of them could score.
The bold prediction is set at under 25 percent because Joe Burrow and the Bengals offense are going to try to live off of short throws, much like Baker Mayfield did in Week 4. That worked well because coverage was soft, passive, and terrible. The hope here is that the Eagles can hold the Bengals to one less red zone trip than the Buccaneers had. The bold prediction is that the Eagles only allow one touchdown from those five red zone trips. One touchdown from five trips is 20 percent.
Bold Prediction: Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins have a bottom-two performance of the season
It’d be tough to say that the Eagles are going to hold the Bengals’ wide receivers to their lowest production of the season because they’ve both had some pretty terrible games. In Week 2, Ja’Marr Chase had four catches for 35 yards, and in Week 3 Tee Higgins had three catches for 39 yards.
Both of those are explainable: Chase had to deal with the Chiefs’ defense which is really really good, and Higgins was coming back from an injury.
This is going to fall purely on the shoulders of Quinyon Mitchell and Darius Slay because these two receivers line up outside the VAST majority of the time.
For some reason, there are people out there who haven’t been indoctrinated into the cult of ‘Quinyon Mitchell is going to be a Pro Bowler in his rookie season,’ and they think that Ja’Marr Chase is going to be the player to expose him. Those people are wrong.
According to Next Gen Stats, Q has been targeted 33 times and has only allowed 16 catches for 212 yards. 73 of those yards came in Week 4 and the entire defensive backfield was schemed out of that game. Maybe that happens again against the Bengals, but you have to believe a defensive coordinator like Vic Fangio won’t let it.
He hasn’t allowed a touchdown, he’s had six passes defended, and he’s only allowing a passer rating of 67.3 when he’s targeted. Quarterbacks with passer ratings around 67.3 are guys like Gardner Minshew (73.2), Will Levis (70.7), Spencer Rattler (70.7), and Anthony Richardson (60.5). That’s the ‘Who’s who’ of bad quarterbacks.
Joe Burrow is probably going to test Quinyon early. That means our guy will have to hold up for the full 60 minutes. Once he does, everyone will praise him and he’ll shoot up in the Defensive Rookie of the Year rankings, where he deserves to be.
Bold Prediction: Cooper DeJean gets an interception
Joe Burrow doesn’t throw many interceptions. It’s his fifth year in the NFL, and he’s only thrown 39, and two of them have come from this season. One of them was a deep shot against the Panthers and the other was on a short crossing route against the Ravens.
The most Eagles thing to happen would be for Quiyon Mitchell to have as many almost-interceptions as he’s had this season without actually getting one, only for Cooper DeJean to get one in his third start against one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL.
A not-bold prediction: If DeJean does get his hands on the ball, he’s returning it for six.
Bold Prediction: The Eagles win the turnover battle
The Eagles’ defense has the fewest takeaways in the NFL. It’s only been Reed Blankenship’s two interceptions, and it’s been five weeks since we’ve seen one of those.
With the amount of talent this defense has, that number can only be described as, ‘disgustingly disheartening, yet hilariously flukey.’ Burrow interceptions are improbable, so that means the Eagles are going to have to go ball hunting.
Burrow and his running backs Chase Brown and Zack Moss have all fumbled once this season, but Moss was the only one to actually lose the fumble. There just simply aren’t that many opportunities to get takeaways, that means the Eagles winning the turnover battle will fall on Jalen Hurts and the Eagles offense.
The Eagles have played two straight games without any turnovers, which is huge. Typically you wouldn’t celebrate a streak like that because it’s kind of sad, but it broke a streak of games with extraordinarily bad turnovers, which is even sadder.
If this game becomes the shootout that it has the potential to be, Jalen Hurts can’t have any of those really stupid, dumb, and infuriating red zone fumbles or interceptions. If he keeps it clean for three straight games, the hype train is going to be powered by the fires of hell.
Least Bold Prediction: Jake Elliott's Revenge Game
Jake Elliott was drafted by the Bengals in the fifth round of the 2017 draft. He spent that offseason in a kicking competition but eventually lost to Fat Randy Bullock. The Eagles signed Jake off the Bengals practice squad on Sep. 12, 2017, and the rest is beautiful history.
Jake’s only had one opportunity at a revenge game, and that came back in the hellscape of the 2020 season. Instead of letting Jake try a 60ish-yard kick to win the game in overtime, the Eagles punted to pin the Bengals deep with 18 seconds left to drive the field. That game ended in a tie.
Nick Sirianni lets his guys thrive in their revenge games, and there’s no doubt that Jake is on his mind this week. If this game gets down to the wire, Nick will put him in a position to send his former team into the abyss with a game-ending field goal.
Boldest of the Bold Prediction: The Eagles score in the first quarter
This might be the boldest prediction here. The Eagles haven’t scored a single point in the first quarter of any of their six games this season. That’s a streak that goes back to Week 18 of the 2023 season, so it’s actually been eight straight games of early-game failure.
There’s no reason to think this trend will change because the Eagles offense consistently looks disjointed and hopeless at the beginning of games. That means we have to look at things outside of football to give us hope that the Eagles offense might do something productive in the first quarter.
Some people like astrology, right? Maybe there’s something there. It looks like Asteroid 1036 Ganymed is going to be in opposition on Sunday. No one knows what that means, but maybe that will help.