The Eagles Survive to Remain Unbeaten-Eagles at Cardinals Week 5 Recap

It was ugly, but they got it done. For the first time since 2001, the Eagles have won a game in Arizona.

In one of the best weekends in recent Philadelphia sports memory, the Eagles remain undefeated after a tough 20-17 win in the desert. For only the 3rd time in franchise history, the Eagles are 5-0! It was far from their best game, but they are flying home with another one added to the win column.

Kyler Murray’s Mistakes

It’s impossible to deny that the Eagles got some help from the Arizona QB to be able to pull off this win. On second down, and time running down Kyler Murray took off but slid just short of the first down marker. Thinking he had gotten the first down, he chose to rush to the line and spike the ball. The only problem, he didn’t get the first down and now the Cardinals were facing a longer field goal for their new kicker. One of the reasons this happened was because of the Eagles’ long final drive. They were able to chew over 7 minutes off the clock on that final drive causing the Cardinals to have to burn timeouts. If the Cardinals had those timeouts at their disposal there is no need for a spike in that situation.

Murray had a few other key mistakes in this game as well. On the final drive, he had Zach Ertz streaking down the field wide open and he just overthrew him. If he hits Ertz there he would have been able to get out of bounds and saved them a bunch of time. Instead, the pass sails and they had to use a lot more clock to get into field goal range. Earlier in the game on the second drive, Kyler made another key mistake. On the first play of the drive, Murray tried to fit a deep ball into double coverage that was picked off by C.J. Gardner-Johnson. While the Eagles didn’t directly score off that turnover it was a big shift in momentum that they rode to a 14-0 lead.

Offensive Struggles

After the Eagles’ first drive of the game, it looked like this game was going to be a blowout. Like a hot knife through butter, the Eagles sliced and diced down the field to take an early 7-0 lead. Not long after that Jalen added another rushing touchdown to make it a 14-0 game. After taking the two-score lead the offense struggled to get much of anything going for the rest of the game. The Cardinals were bringing the blitz what felt like every two or three plays and Jalen and the coaching staff didn’t have much to combat it. It seemed as if the playcalling had gotten stale where it became screen after screen after screen. There was even one sequence where Hurts checked the play at the line and you could hear the Cardinals’ defensive line yell out “SCREEN, SCREEN, SCREEN”. Hurts has struggled to pass into the blitz this season and it is something he will need to improve on as the season goes on.

If we’re going to talk about the struggles with the offense today we should also talk about some positives. The Eagles’ final drive of the game started with the game clock reading 9 minutes and 43 seconds left to play in the fourth quarter. When they kicked the field goal there was 1 minute and 48 seconds left on the clock and the Cardinals had zero timeouts left. When the team needed it most the offensive put them on their backs and drove down the field for the eventual game-winning field goal. It was the first time this season that we saw if they could count on the offense to win a game late, and they came through.

Bend Don’t Break Defense

The Eagles’ defense is a tough grade after today. On one hand, they only allowed 17 points to a good Quarterback in Kyler Murray. On the other hand, they allowed two 90-plus yard drives for touchdowns and if it wasn’t for Murray’s mental error to end the game, could have blown it at the end. The biggest problem with the defense in week one was missed tackles. That problem crept back up today in a big way. The Eagles were also playing a softer zone defense instead of the man-to-man that they had been running the last few weeks. With Murray being able to get the ball out so fast underneath, the line wasn’t able to get home. But all in all, it was good enough to come home with a win.

Even with this being the worst game the team has played this season, they still found a way to win. This should be a big confidence booster going forward showing them that when the game is on the line they can prevail. And oh yeah by the way, now its Dallas Week.