Iggles Blitz

by Tommy Lawlor

2025 Game Review – PHI 33, LAR 26

Posted September 26th, 2025 | No Comments »

The Eagles pulled off one of the greatest comebacks in team history last Sunday. They fell behind the Rams 26-7 and then took control of the game. The Eagles went up 27-26 and then blocked a last second FG. Jordan Davis scooped it up and galloped into Eagles history by taking it 61 yards for a TD to make the final score 33-26.  Wow. What a game.

Comebacks are incredibly compelling. You go from rock bottom to higher than Mt Everest. Along the way you go from doubting to believing. “So you’re saying there’s a chance…”. As the score gets closer you start to get nervous. Suddenly winnng is a possibility. When it actually happens, that is a magical feeling. The only problem is the part of the game where your team is at rock bottom.

After 31 minutes of game time, the Eagles had allowed 26 points and gained 28 yards. Not good. Not even bad. Ridiculously awful. The score would have been worse than that if not for good red zone defense and Sean McVay being too scared to go for it. So what happened to cause this? The first half was a comedy of errors for the whole offense. Saquon missed a blitz pickup. AJ dropped a pass. Dickerson gave up a sack. And on and on. The OL really struggled. Lane Johnson got hurt and Matt Pryor replaced him. The offense did nothing with Pryor at RT.

Nick Sirianni loves to talk about complementary football. The offense, defense and special teams affect each other. Field position was a huge problem. The Eagles had four straight drives start at their own 20 or worse. They went 3 & out, which gave the Rams great field position. The Rams would score and then pin the Eagles deep. How? They have these knuckleball kickoffs that give returners fits. The Eagles had five KORs. The longest went for 16 yards. Ugh.

The Eagles were down 19-7 at the half. Pryor gave up a strip-sack to open the second half. LA scored a short TD to make the game 26-7. The Eagles put Fred Johnson in at RT and opened up the offense. They mixed in more 3 x 1 sets and focused on getting the ball to AJ Brown. Jalen Hurts hit Brown for a gain of 38 and it was like someone flipped a light switch. The offense came alive. Kickoffs kept the Rams in reasonable field position and the Eagles defense was able to get stops. The Eagles offense didn’t punt after halftime.

This really was like two different games. The comeback is even more impressive when you realize that the Rams defense is built to rush the passer and they had the whole second half to get after Hurts. The Eagles OL suddenly got better. Skill players made plays. The play-calling suddenly worked better.

The special teams which looked like such a mess in the first half came up huge. They blocked two FGs in the fourth quarter. Two! That’s nuts. Great job by Jalen Carter, Jordan Davis and the rest of the DL on those blocks.

Drew Brees blasted the Eagles offense this week, calling it boring. He’s right in the sense that there isn’t nearly as much creativity as some other teams. Sean McVay is definitely more of an offensive genius than anyone on the Eagles staff. Matthew Stafford will be a HOF QB. We don’t know about Hurts. But the boring guys scored 27 points and McVay’s team only put up 26.

At least on Sunday, boring was better.

COACHING

The Eagles jumped out to a 7-0 lead after an early INT and things seemed great. Maybe the fast start cause the team to relax. Whatever it was, the team was not locked in during the awful first half. The offense had no juice at all. Some defenders were too amped up. There were some dumb penalties on defenders. Nick Sirianni needs to study what they did before the Rams game and make sure they never do that again.

Kevin Patullo had no answers after the first drive. The offense was dreadful. He did a better job in the second half. Eagles players talked about being more aggressive and not just playing to avoid turnovers. Patullo mixed in some QB runs effectively. He ran the offense through AJ Brown in the second half. Patullo once again had some good plays dialed up in the red zone. The Eagles don’t win if they don’t go 3 for 3 in the red zone.

Vic Fangio’s defense was also up and down. They held the Rams to 1 for 4 in the red zone and that was a huge part of the team’s win. The defense struggled against the run, allowing 160 yards. The Eagles struggled to set the edge several times and the Rams took advantage of that. Stafford didn’t have his best game. The Eagles affected him with a mixture of good pressure and coverage.

Michael Clay tried to get his returners ready for the knuckleballs. Did not work. That will be a point of emphasis this week. Clay did a brilliant job with getting the FG block team ready. The Eagles moved Carter and Davis around, almost probing for the weakest spot to attack. They sure found it.

OFFENSE

Jalen Hurts was terrific in the second half after the whole offense struggled initially. He finished the game 21-32-226 with 3 TDs and no picks. Hurts was 9-40-1 on the ground. He made some terrific throws. The deep ball to AJ was a thing of beauty. He hit Goedert in stride for a 33-yard TD. The go-ahead TD was a short throw to DeVonta, but it was right on the money. Hurts put one ball into traffic and it easily could have been picked off. He got lucky on that. There were a few drops mixed in to those incompletions. Hurts was very good on the Tush Push. The Rams defended it well, but never really stopped him. Great effort on his part.

Saquon Barkley dominated LA last year. They got their revenge on Sunday. Barkley was 18-46 on the ground. He had no room to run in the first half, going just 7-13. Things were better after halftime. He was 4-9 as a receiver, with one drop. He had some room to run on that play. Barkley was mostly good in pass pro, but had one bad play where he let a rusher get in untouched.

AJ Brown got the ball in the second half and the most shocking thing happened. The offense quit sucking. Brown went 6-109. There were some good throws, but a lot of that was on him being a grown ass man.

There are times when you have to force the ball to Brown. He’s just that good. His third down catches were huge. LA knew they were coming and simply couldn’t stop them.

DeVonta Smith was 8-60-1. He didn’t have the big plays, but kept the chains moving with some key grabs and had the winning TD. Jahan Dotson broke up an early pass headed for Smith. Someone ran the wrong route on that.

The TEs were quiet. Dallas Goedert had the only catch, going 1-33-1. The TEs didn’t particularly block well. Surprisingly quiet game.

The OL has not been up to its usual standard this year. Landon Dickerson isn’t close to 100 percent. Cobie Turner got the best of him. Dickerson gave up a sack to Ford. There was a play where a 235-lb rusher ran into Dickerson and knocked him out of the way. Tyler Steen is the team’s best OG right now.

Johnson left after the first series. Matt Pryor played better than I thought, but the coaches didn’t seem to trust him. Pryor gave up a bad strip-sack on the opening series of the second half. Fred Johnson replaced him after that. Johnson played well and the offense was able to open up. He’s a more natural pass blocker so he fit what the offense needed at that point.

Johnson came up big when the Eagles needed him the most. This game could be important if the Rams and Eagles are in the hunt for the top seed in the NFC in December. The difference could be the play of Fred Johnson. Football is a great sport. Crazy, but great.

DEFENSE

Fangio will be happy with the result, but not the way his defense played. There were way too many missed tackles. Some were DBs in space. Zack Baun missed the tackle of a RB on a play up the middle. The defense struggled to set the edge vs the run. That wasn’t one player. Give the Rams credit for being creative with formations and finding ways to seal the edge. If you’re a Rams fan, you should leave this game highly frustrated. The Rams scheme worked great for much of the game and they still lost. The Eagles will be better prepared for any rematch.

Nolan Smith had 3 tackles and got a big hit on Stafford. He was good in coverage on one pass play. Jalyx Hunt had 2 tackles and a pair of QB hits. Hunt dropped into coverage multiple times. Looked good. He got good pressure on a bootleg. Josh Uche had 1 tackle. He got badly burned on a cutback run, leaving the backside wide open for a long gain. Za’Darius Smith played 24 snaps. He didn’t make any plays. I was hoping for more production from the edge rushers. I thought they had an advantage on the Rams OTs.

The DTs were more disruptive. Jordan Davis played his best game as a pro. He was in on 5 tackles, a sack and a TFL. The sack came when he chased Stafford out wide and got him out of bounds on a third down play. The TFL came on fourth down. Davis got by the RG and hit the RB in the backfield. He really made his presence felt.

Jalen Carter was up and down. He had 3 tackles and a couple of QB hits. He got upfield and almost had a sack on the first pass play. Carter got penetration a handful of times. There were other plays when he was too much of a non-factor. Moro Ojomo had a couple of tackles. Byron Young had a tackle and a QB hit.

Zack Baun had a good game. He had 7 tackles, an INT and 2 PDs. He stuffed a run for no gain. He picked off Stafford on the opening drive. Read the play and jumped the route. Nice pick. Strong game in coverage over the middle. Made things hard on Puka Nacua on crossing routes. Baun admitted that Stafford burned him with a no-look pass late in the game.

Jihad Campbell was in on 8 tackles. Had some struggles vs the run. Like so many young players going against McVay, Campbell had trouble finding the ball at times.

Reed Blankenship was in on 4 tackles. He gave up a long TD to Adams. There was a push-off, but no OPI call on the play. Blankenship did break up a pass in the end zone later. He never saw the ball, but was in good position. Drew Mukuba had a quiet game. He had 3 tackles.

Quinyon Mitchell had 5 tackles and did a solid job in coverage. They had him follow Adams for much of the game. Mitchell did have a PI call in the first half. Adoree Jackson had 5 tackles. He was okay. The Eagles covered Pakua Nacua with a combination of players. Part of that is due to the Rams having him release into routes through the OL. That makes things tricky. Nacua finished 11-112.

Cooper DeJean led the team in tackles with 9. He also had a TFL. Jakorian Bennett took over for Jackson late. He had 3 tackles and broke up one pass. Bennett got away with a hold late in the game. He did a good job of breaking on the ball after short catches.

ST

The focus isn’t on the kicker, punter or returners. It feels strange to say that. Jalen Carter blocked one FG and then Jordan Davis blocked the last second FG. Unbelievable. Sometimes it feels like blocked kicks are lucky. These were not.

Carter and Davis were great on those blocks. Byron Young also got great push on the final one. The Eagles collapsed the left side of the Rams blocking unit. You don’t see that very often.

Tank Grigsby had a nightmare game as the KOR. He could not field the knuckleball kickoffs cleanly. That threw off the timing of the returns and caused all kinds of problems. Josh Karty from the Rams is amazing with his kickoffs. Other teams will try to copy him, but he’s masterful at that.

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