Eagles winners and losers from Week 1 win: Death of the Brotherly Shove?

It took one offensive snap for everyone to realize that Week 1 wasn’t going to be a perfect performance from the Philadelphia Eagles. Saquon Barkley slipped and fell in the backfield, and we all thought, ‘Okay, get the bad plays out early,’ and then Jalen Hurts said, ‘Alright,’ as he threw an entirely avoidable interception two plays later.

Then the defense kept a high-powered Green Bay Packers offense out of the endzone on two consecutive drives where they had great field position. We learned a lot about this team on their trip to Brazil, some of it was good, some of it was bad. The cool thing about Week 1, is that it’s just Week 1 and there are 17 more weeks

Some players that we thought would rock, played like actual rocks. Some players that we thought would play like actual rocks, ended up rocking. There were winners and losers on both sides of the ball.

Winner: Saquon Barkley

As soon as HBO announced that they were doing an offseason version of the show centered on the New York Giants, you knew things would look bad for their general manager, Joe Shoen … and then this game happened.

Saquon Barkley had the best Eagles debut since Terrell Owens in 2004. It was simply immaculate — three touchdowns off of 24 carries for 109 yards and 2 catches for 23 yards. It was disgustingly beautiful. Seeing a player who has been a thorn in your side for years come to your team and immediately turn into a chainsaw is something else. 

Loser: The pass rush

A couple of caveats: First, the field was an atrocity to the general idea of horticulture. There was someone, somewhere in an NFL office that said, ‘Yeah, we should definitely have 300-pound football players who play a collision sport that requires immediate and powerful cuts on the same turf that 170-pound soccer players who play a non-collision sport that largely relies on straight-line speed. That’s a good idea,’ and that person should be sent to the moon with a single glass of water and a granola bar. Nothing else.

Everyone was slipping, tripping, and sliding everywhere. It was largely reminiscent of Super Bowl LVII and we know that when a playing surface is that bad, it can neutralize the best pass rush in the NFL … So there’s that aspect.

Second, Jordan Love is a really hard quarterback to sack. Per Next Gen Stats, in 2023 (his first season as a full-time starter) he was only sacked 1.8 times per game. He’s evasive when he’s pressured.

All that being said, The Eagles’ pass rush was a no-show. The only player who got a sack was Zack Baun who had two, and one of them wasn’t on Love. Yes, they got pressures, collapsed the pocket, and mucked things up but there needs to be more than that. 

Edge rushers are the most important players on the defense, and Bryce Huff didn’t exactly instill any confidence in the position. When the Eagles traded Haason Reddick to the Jets, the general understanding was that Huff, a $17 million per year player, would be a replacement. It’s been only one game and he can really only go up from here, but ‘he can only do better’ isn’t something you want to say about a highly-paid player.

Jordan Davis was kind of a non-factor as well. Aside from the very first play of the game where he wrecked a run, he didn’t do much. If you’re just looking at box scores, you won’t see a Jordan D. on there. You will, however, see a Jordan M. on there and that’s because Mailata made a tackle after an interception. Typically you would like to have a defensive tackle who was drafted in the first-round make more tackles than your offensive tackle (for a few reasons) but that’s not the case for the Eagles in Week 1.

Based on what we’ve seen from him in his career, he starts seasons much stronger than he finishes them. A good game in Week 1 would’ve been awesome, but unfortunately, he’s part of a position group that underperformed. 

As for Josh Sweat, he played fine, not good, and not bad. The problem with him is that changing his number from 94 to 19 looks terrible. His stock is down just because of visual vibes. 

Winner: Darius Slay and Quinyon Mitchell

These are two players who are in two entirely different acts of their careers: Slay is 33 years old, in his 12th year in the NFL, winding down his career, and is a mentor to the younger players in the Eagles’ cornerback room. Mitchell is a rookie who just played his first game and is soaking up everything thrown at him.

We saw an immediate and violent decrease in 30-year-old James Bradberry’s performance from the 2022 season to the 2023 season. It was not out of the realm of reality that Slay could have that same decline … and buddy … Slay’s still got it.

There were a handful of plays where Slay was covering Christian Watson, who is the Packers’ big speed guy, and Slay just stuck with him the whole time. It was awesome to see because those were the same situations where Bradberry’s fall-off was the most apparent. 

Quinyon had a good game too. The Packers clearly had a plan to attack Quinyon right off the bat, and they did. On their first drive, Jordan Love took a shot to the end zone, but Mitchell had Christian Watson covered so that he couldn’t make a play on the ball. Sure, he had a few tough reps, but as a rookie that’s to be expected. 

He played well downhill too. We know Cooper DeJean craves contact, but seeing that Quinyon is willing to throw his face into people too is pretty cool to see. He played a whole lot of snaps, and he looked like a veteran almost the whole time. 

Loser: Jalen Hurts

Jalen’s game was incredibly hit-or-miss and luckily, the hits were clutch. The misses though? Woof. They were a different type of bad.

The reason Jalen gets a ‘loser point’ here is because of what his mistakes did to our confidence in his decision-making. We know that Jalen is a great ball player. We know that he’s a freak athlete and he makes good decisions for what feels like the majority of the time. He just made some really terrible decisions in Week 1 and he paid for them.

Both of his interceptions were terrible. The first one came off a late throw to a covered receiver and the second one came from a late throw, across his body, and into the middle of the field. Those are mistakes that he absolutely shouldn’t be making. When he throws the ball to a receiver who’s not on the screen, our thought should always be, ‘Oh baby, how open is A.J.?” Not, ‘Uh oh, where’s the closest DB?’ 

Even the play before his second interception, it was a terrible decision that he should’ve been punished for. He had a late throw to the flat, where cornerback Keisean Nixon was all over Jahan Dotson. If Nixon had any sort of hand-eye coordination, that should have been a pick-six. Fortunately, he’s got mud for hands.

Overall, Jalen’s game was more good than it was bad, it’s just the bad things were really bad and relatively easy to avoid.

Winner: Zack Baun

In Zack Baun’s press conference after he signed with the Eagles in free agency, he said something along the lines of being excited to line up with his hand in the dirt and get after the quarterback. He essentially thought he was going to be an edge rusher. 

Vic Fangio had other plans that were entirely different and a whole lot better. In Week 1, Baun played every single snap of the game at linebacker. He was dominant throughout the game. He was flying around, making plays, and getting in the backfield; he looked like a real linebacker and that’s a sight for sore eyes.

Now, you can argue about what makes a linebacker a good linebacker. You argue that it’s easy for linebackers to play downhill and that playing in coverage is more difficult and more important. You’d probably be right, but given the hell that we went through recently, seeing Baun play the way he did was great. He logged 15 tackles and 2 sacks.

Hopefully Baun keeps this level of tenacity because it could solidify a weak spot on the Eagles defense. A good linebacker is a lot of fun to watch, and Baun was a good linebacker against the Packers.

Loser: The Brotherly Shove

This one hurts. The Eagles lined up for the Brotherly Shove four times and relative to what we’re used to, it was bad.

The first time, it was unsuccessful. The second time, Jalen’s hard count caused the Packers to jump so it’s up to you on whether or not that’s a successful shove. The third time, it was successful. The fourth time, the snap was fumbled and Saquon recovered it. 

The Brotherly Shove worked 37 out of 40 times in 2023 (92.5 percent success). Week 1 was either a 50 percent or 25 percent success rate, depending on how you count the penalty. Politely, that’s disheartening. Frankly, that sucks big time. 

That failure could be due to a few things. This clearest reason is that maybe Jason Kelce was the key. If that’s the case, then there is no hope and it’s going to feel like the offense is bashing their head on a wall all season.

It could also be due to the offense not having the practice reps they needed. You could look to the fumbled snap for proof of this one. Snaps get better with practice and if there was a bad snap, maybe it’s because they didn’t get enough reps.

It could also be that teams learned how to stop it, but that would require inside information. Jason Kelce was the literal spearhead of the B.S. and there’s no way he’s galavanting around sharing Jeff Stoutland’s secrets. The man is too honorable to do that.

Jonathan Gannon on the other hand? He stopped it last year and that rat’s probably more than willing to bring down the team he used to coach for.

Overall, the gravity of the winners from Week 1 outweighs the losers’. On top of that, the losers are all fixable … except for Josh Sweat’s number. It seems like he’ll probably stick with that for the whole season.