Eagles news: Needless drama, passing game woes, and responding to broken records

After beating the Carolina Panthers, the 2024 Philadelphia Eagles have tied the record for the longest winning streak in franchise history at nine games. They have an 11-2 record and everything seems like it should be good. Unfortunately, this week, the vibes are down. 

It was a lackluster offensive performance through the air, and everyone knows it. An unfortunate and needlessly dramatic story came out from Monday night, and that’s kind of taken over the Eagles-verse… But let’s start with something light, and then move on to that. 

LeSean McCoy responds to his record being broken

LeSean McCoy set the Eagles single-season rushing record at 1,607 yards on December 29, 2013. Saquon Barkley broke that record on December 8, 2024. That means Shady held the record for 3,997 days. That’s 10 years, 11 months, and nine days. That’s a long time.

After Saquon broke that record, LeSean McCoy had a video for him:

Okay, that rocks. Not only is it cool to see one generational talent congratulate another generational talent, but it’s also great that Shady congratulated the offensive line as well. Any time a running back outwardly shows love to the big uglies, it warms your heart… especially when the running back is congratulating an offensive line that he’s never run behind. Plain and simple: this absolutely rocks.

It goes deeper than this, and Olivia Reiner’s piece in the Inquirer covers McCoy’s thoughts on Barkley’s feat. 

Reiner wrote about his experience watching Saquon during the Week 9 game vs. the Jaguars. That was the game where LeSean was inducted into the Eagles’ Hall of Fame.

“McCoy also watched Barkley make his now-famed backward hurdle over a Jaguars defender. As he observed the move in real time with his family, McCoy had a feeling that he was witnessing a piece of franchise history.”

Yeah, that checks out. There’s no better predictor for someone to break your record than to watch that person backward hurdle someone at the game you’re getting the team’s biggest honor.

As of right now, and this stat is undeniable, no Eagles running back has ever run for more than 1,622 yards without jumping backward over a defender at least once in the season. It seems like the player who breaks Saquon’s record in 11 years should be required to do a backward hurdle or something, but that person is probably 12 or 13 years old right now, so there’s time to iron that out.

Jalen Hurts is taking his time and not using it wisely

If it feels like Jalen Hurts is taking a long time to throw the ball lately, that’s because he is. If it feels like he doesn’t throw the ball deep down the field that often, that’s because he doesn’t. If it feels like he throws the ball away a lot, that’s because he does. PHLY’s Fran Duffy dove into those numbers.

That’s not great. You don’t want a quarterback to throw the ball away, get sacked, or scramble on 9 percent (41 percent of 22 percent is 9 percent) of his dropbacks. When it comes to A.J. Brown saying that the offense’s issue is “Passing,” this is definitely part of what he’s talking about. 

In Fran’s article about the passing game, he talks about Jalen’s issues with holding onto the ball for entirely too long and not getting it downfield, he says “Since the start of the 2021 season, only four quarterbacks averaged less than 6.0 air yards/attempt while having an average time to throw of at least 3.40 seconds in a single game.” These are the four players he’s talking about and what their stats were in those games.

Ian Book (who had to start for the Saints because everyone else in the quarterback room had COVID-19) lost to the Dolphins back in 2021. Book was 12-of-20 for 135 yards and two interceptions.

Skylar Thompson came in late in the third quarter for the Dolphins in a 2022 loss to the Patriots. In that game, he went 12-of-21 for 104 yards with one touchdown and one interception.

Then there was Sam Darnold, who was on the Panthers in 2022. He beat the Seahawks by going 14-of-24 for 120 yards and a touchdown.

Patrick Mahomes is the fourth player Fran talks about. On Christmas in 2023, he went 27-of-44 for 235 yards, a touchdown, and an interception during a loss to the Raiders.

Jalen’s performance makes him the fifth member of this bad-performance quarterback club. He went 14-of-21 for 108 yards and two touchdowns. 

Fran goes on to say that while this game clearly wasn’t good, “this is not a referendum on Hurts as a player,” and it doesn't have to be the end-all-be-all with him. The offense can get fixed, and it’ll have to get fixed in order to be competitive in the games that matter.

The offense, and Jalen specifically, need to get out of whatever this funk is. If he’s going to have a long time to throw, then that ball actually needs to go somewhere. Luckily, after the Steelers, the Eagles play three bad defenses (Washington, Dallas, and Giants). There’s time to get right before the playoffs.

Breaking down the Brandon Graham comments

If you woke up on Monday morning and said to yourself, ‘Boy, you know what I could really use today? How about a bad quote from a team leader that starts needless drama… drama that will be relatively reconciled and clarified within the next couple of hours… drama that somehow gets two former Eagles to remind themselves that they hate each other,’ at any point you had a good day.

During Brandon Graham’s show, aptly named Brandon Graham Show on Monday evening, he said something that started a little bit of a fire by creating an A.J. Brown and Jalen Hurts controversy:

Well... That’s not what you want to hear. At face value, saying that two guys “... they were friends, but things have changed” is an unhinged and vague thing to throw out into the ether. What he said implies that they used to be friends and that they’re not friends anymore.

In this case, it’s incredibly unsettling given that Jalen is the godfather to A.J.’s daughter. It makes it sound like something mega-controversial happened. Luckily, BG did his best to clarify what he meant a couple of hours later.

It seems like when he said, “things have changed,” he was talking about how they were friends before, and then the change is that now they’re teammates. It still doesn’t make a lot of sense because they’ve been teammates for almost three years now, but sometimes BG will just say things.

The irony of the entire situation is that BG was doing a talk show on a very predominant sports radio station when he said that A.J. and Jalen should talk to each other face-to-face instead of talking to the media about the problems. First of all, that’s hilarious. Second, they probably do. BG himself even said that he doesn’t know all the details of the situation. 

The biggest part of this is how much of a bummer it is that BG was the one who did this. You might be hurt, but you’re still on and around the team. As a leader of the team, you have to be better than that.

Maybe let’s take a step back and not say potentially inflammatory things that could make everyone think we’re on the precipice of a 2023-esque collapse. One big takeaway is that some fans still think a collapse like that isn’t out of the question. 

Nick Sirianni feels the exact opposite about it. He went on 94.1 WIP and spoke about it, he said, “...We know there’s gonna be noise, and I obviously get it… you guys get to see three hours every week and a little bit after. I get to see seven or eight hours every day… based on what happened the last couple of days [outside people say] ‘Oh man, there’s a little 2023 vibes.’ I see a lot of 2022 vibes…”

All someone had to do was yell ‘FIRE’ and everyone freaked out without actually checking if there was smoke. It was just a really weird evening because, after all of this, Donovan McNabb threw in his thoughts, which prompted a response from Terrell Owens.

Good grief. That T.O. is one hell of a character. He must have just been staring at his phone and salivating while he waited for Donovan to say something. This is meant lovingly: he’s a top-tier lunatic.