Saquon Barkley, Jalen Carter and the biggest winners and losers from the Eagles win

It doesn’t matter what it looked like and it doesn’t matter what the final score was. All that matters is winning, and that’s exactly what the Philadelphia Eagles did on Sunday. Now they are headed to Detr…

… Wait … the Lions lost? Well. That’s a shame. Looks like the road to the Super Bowl goes through Philly. We’ll get to that later. Now we get to focus on the winners and losers from a wild game where the Eagles season didn’t die and the Rams’ did. It ended 28-22 and took entire decades off everyone’s lives.

As far as winners and losers go, this isn’t going to include Jalen Hurts or the weather. Jalen maybe got hurt really bad, and the snow/sleet/winter mix/frozen hell was bad and nowhere near as fun as the 2013 Snow Bowl like everyone thought it might be. 

In a ‘Win or die’ game, the Eagles won

It’s tough to decide who was a more dominant player for the Eagles on Sunday: Saquon Barkley or Jalen Carter. One of them closed the game, but the other one actually closed the game. Do you see how this could be difficult?

Winner: Closing the game

If the Eagles win the Super Bowl, this season alone might put Saquon Barkley into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. What he’s doing game in and game out is like nothing we’ve ever seen.

In Week 12, Saquon Barkley rushed for 255 yards and two touchdowns against the Rams. Going into Sunday, you knew he probably wasn't going to hit that number again, and he didn’t… Instead, he ran for 205 yards and two touchdowns. Unbelievably absurd.

Doing so was substantial for two reasons: he broke the Eagles’ single-game rushing record in the postseason set by Steve Van Buren in 1949, and he made Jared Verse look like a total buffoon on his 62-yard touchdown. 

He needs 148 more rushing yards to break the NFL’s single-season rushing record including the postseason set by Terrell Davis in 1998 (2,476 yards). 

He’s just so good. You watched the game. You see what he’s doing. He’s simply the best. There’s nothing else to it.

As far as Saquon being a closer, it’s, unfortunately, a “should’ve been the closer” type of thing: his 72-yard touchdown run with 4:36 left in the fourth quarter SHOULD have put the game away, but after Jake Elliott missed the extra point, the score was just 28-13. It stinks that terrible play calling on the Eagles' next drive stopped Saquon from being the actual closer.

That’s just pure excitement by him. Slapping his helmet when he runs. Flailing his arms like a three-year-old who just nailed hopscotch for the first time ever. The dude just wants to win and now he finally has an opportunity to. It’s the most wholesome thing.

Winner: Actually closing the game

After the game, Josh Sweat said, “It was only a matter of time until he killed that right guard,” and he was right. It was, indeed, only a matter of time until Jalen Carter killed that right guard, and he did it at the perfect time.

The Rams had a third-and-two on the Eagles’ 13-yard line with 1:14 remaining in the game. If the score, the win and the Eagles season ends. 

Jalen Carter knew the stakes. He blasted past the center (the guard actually turned his back and never touched Jalen) and had the clutchest of sacks to bring it to fourth down. Then, he followed that up with the EXACT SAME MOVE on the center to pressure Matthew Stafford and force a bad throw. 

Jalen Carter saved the season on that drive. What makes it even more spectacular is that those two plays were the 67th and 68th snaps that Jalen played in the game. For reference, there were 70 plays.

When the Eagles lost Haason Reddick in the offseason, they lost their clutch sack-getter. It hasn’t necessarily been too big of an issue this season because of the Eagles' fourth-quarter leads, but it has been missing. It was great to see Jalen step up and get the sack that was needed at the exact time that it was needed. He closed.

On top of that, he also forced a fumble on the Rams' drive after the Eagles’ safety. It might not have been the best game that he’s ever had, but he was the best player on the defense in the most important game of his career.

Winner: Nick Sirianni

One of the more frustrating things about Nick Sirianni is when the offense has a fourth-and-three to fourth-and-five, he has a penchant for trying to get defenses to jump offsides, only to call a timeout when they don’t. It started working a tiny little bit near the end of the season, but it’s still hitting at approximately .0001% of the time purely because he does it so often.

The problem is that Nick never goes for it. If you want a team to jump offsides, you need to give them a reason to think that you might run a play… or at least that’s the common thought behind the strategy.

Nick might be a genius (the word ‘might’ is doing some heavy lifting there). Maybe, his primary goal wasn’t to get teams to jump offsides… maybe he was trying to lull them to sleep in order to hit a big play in the playoffs.

In the middle of the fourth quarter, the Eagles found themselves in a fourth-and-four from the Rams’ 32-yard line. Instead of trying to get the Rams to jump, Jalen Hurts ended up hitting A.J. Brown on a slant for nine yards and the first down. 

Did Nick set this whole thing up via months of frustration and wasted time? Maybe… Maybe not. If you asked him, he’d probably say yes, but we’ll never know the answer. 

That ended up getting the Eagles into field goal range for Jake Elliott. He actually made that kick and gave the Eagles a 22-15 lead.

Loser: Also Nick Sirianni

Sirianni, or Kellen Moore, or whoever it is that’s making decisions and calling plays, almost lost the Eagles the game with whatever they did on their last offensive drive.

The Eagles were in ‘Kill the Clock’ mode. They had the ball with 2:48 left in the game, a running back who was averaging 7.9 yards per carry, and a quarterback whose knee was obliterated less than an hour before. Run the ball, right? Just get a first down or two and you can get out of the snow and have a cup of hot chocolate. Bada bing, bada boom.

On first down, Saquon ran the ball for three yards. Then, on second down, it was a play-action pass where Jalen rolled out to his left and was almost immediately sacked for 12 yards. Like… why? Why did we call that play? What a terrible decision. 

The Eagles ran the ball for six yards on third down and punted the ball back to the Rams to set them up for the would-be game-winning drive. 

Two weeks ago, I wrote about ways Sirianni could cost the Eagles their postseason run, and the literal first bullet point was about killing the clock.

It’s just so easy to not be a doofus, but Nick is doing incredibly costly doofus things. 

Loser: Bad day for a bad day

The Eagles’ offensive line is the most dominant offensive line in the NFL and they’ve done a great job at protecting Jalen in the backfield the vast majority of the time. Unfortunately, they didn’t play anywhere close to their best against the Rams on Sunday.

That was a particularly huge problem because the only good players on the Ram’s defense were their defensive line, and they played really well. They totaled seven sacks, 10 tackles for a loss, and six QB hits. It was a bad showing for the offensive line in pass protection. 

The offensive line also had a couple of very bad penalties: Mekhi Becton was illegally downfield on a huge Dallas Goedert catch and Lane Johnson had a false start on a Brotherly Shove, which turned seven points into three points. Not great.

And then there was A.J. Brown who had not dropped a pass all season, and he dropped two passes in this game. The weather definitely played a part in it, but it’s still a bummer when it happens… especially when one would’ve been a first down and the other would’ve been down at the one-yard line.

The defensive backs didn’t have a good day with a handful of missed interceptions. Slay missed one early that could’ve changed the entire vibe of the game, Isaiah Rodgers had one yanked out of his hands and it turned into a huge gain for the Rams, and Cooper DeJean missed one late in the game. 

The good news is that all of these guys rarely have two bad performances in a row, so they should be able to play lights out in the NFC Championship game, which again, is in Philadelphia because the 15-win Lions lost to the Commanders. Who needs the No. 1 seed?