Eagles-Commanders will be U-G-L-Y. At least they have an alibi.
The players themselves know better than anyone: You take the early victories if you can get them, and the crisp, clean performances probably will have to wait.
You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. You don’t have to be a longtime travel agent to have looked at the Los Angeles Rams’ Australia itinerary and thought, Hey guys, might be a tough turnaround there. And you don’t have to be a football savant to suspect that the Eagles’ season opener Sunday against the Washington Commanders is going to be a hard watch.
If the first two games of this NFL season weren’t enough to tell you just how rocky these opening weeks will be, Eagles-Commanders ought to drive home the point. Matthew Stafford and Drake Maye were so terrible, so far from the MVP (Stafford) and MVP runner-up (Maye) they were last season, that it would have been fair to check whether either of them had signed an endorsement deal with a prediction market earlier in the week.
The Patriots took a double-digit lead and couldn’t hold it. The Rams might as well have been on walkabout with Mick Dundee. Sam Darnold and A.J. Brown suffered serious injuries. Of the four teams that made up the NFL’s marquee matchups, only the 49ers were ready for prime time. Jeez, it’s almost like, even after a full offseason, having teams play on Wednesday and Thursday nights — or having two California teams start their seasons on a continent roughly 7,300 miles from their home state — leads to lousy football.
No one should expect the quality of Sunday’s game at Lincoln Financial Field to be much higher. The Commanders have a new offensive coordinator and a new defensive coordinator, neither of whom has ever coordinated anything in the NFL until now, and aside from Jayden Daniels, their roster resembles a piece of abstract art: You have to stare at it for a long time for it to make any sense (Odafe Oweh for as much as $96 million?), and in the end, it really doesn’t.
The Eagles ought to win, and win handily, because their defense is so strong and, relative to these teams’ other units, so stable. Their offense is a mystery and will remain one until their new coordinator, Sean Mannion, starts calling plays and reveals whether he’s a rookie who’s out of his depth or a nascent genius who’s been sandbagging everybody since training camp began. And whether Jalen Hurts can thrive in this latest new system. And whether any wide receiver other than DeVonta Smith can make a big play.
“Part of our goals for this week are to understand that … there are things that happen in Week 1 that you have to be ready for,” coach Nick Sirianni said Friday, “whether that’s live fundamentals, whether that’s errors in the kicking game, or whatever it may be. The standard doesn’t change [for] what we accept and what we require and what our guys do on the field. We practice like that every day. Anytime there’s something loose with the ball, or we miss a tackle, or whatever it may be, or miss our approach on a tackle, if we’re not tackling to the ground, it’s discussed. It’s watched. It’s critiqued. Our standard — your goal — is to be playing your best football by the end of the year. Our standard does not change.”
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No, but the circumstances will. Starters who spent most if not all of the preseason sitting out eventually will kick off all the rust. It’s just that eventually likely will take more than one game. That’s the NFL now, with its three-game preseason and its 17-but-soon-to-be-18-game regular season and its insistence that its teams journey across oceans and, quite literally, suit up on every night of the week except Tuesdays.
The players themselves know better than anyone: You take the early victories if you can get them, and the crisp, clean performances probably will have to wait.
“You’re always striving for that,” said wide receiver Hollywood Brown, who is in his first season with the Eagles but his eighth in the league. “But I’ve played a lot of football, so I know that they’ve got a new defensive coordinator, and we’ve got a new offensive coordinator. You can try to study each other as much as you want, but there’s not much out there to go off of. You can go out there with everything we’ve studied and they’ve studied, and it could be something completely different.
“So it’s about knowing our principles, knowing what we’re trying to do, and knowing that’s just the stepping stone. Win or loss, it’s a stepping stone. You learn off it, and as we get into the year, you’re really trying to perfect your craft and identity.”
» READ MORE: Is Sean Mannion ready for his big moment with the Eagles?
At what point in the season do players and teams find that identity?
“Usually, around Thanksgiving,” Brown said. “Around Thanksgiving, a lot of players are like, ‘That’s when the real football starts.’ That’s when we know what we are. We know what each team [is]. And it’s about executing the game plan and being at your best once December and January come around.”
Until then, everyone will just have to suffer through some sloppy football. It’s the price of this multi-billion-dollar business now. So if the Eagles win ugly Sunday, even if they somehow lose, don’t panic. Yet.
The regular season is almost here! All the preseason talk has been about Jalen Hurts and new offensive coordinator Sean Mannion. But there’s somebody else who will have a big say in how high the Eagles fly. The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Jeff McLane explains why this year, in the absence of traded star A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith has to take the next step, while also taking charge of the Eagles’ wide receivers group. Plus, Jeff dips into the mailbag for listener questions about Jalen Hurts and some key roster spots. Listen here.
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