Jalen Carter and a talented roster save the Eagles against the Rams, give them a shot at the Super Bowl

Within the dry and cozy comfort of the Eagles’ locker room Sunday, Jalen Carter was describing how he saved their season. A little stunt in the team’s defensive playbook, Carter faking an inside move then swinging his right arm over Los Angeles Rams center Beaux Limmer, had sent him surging straight at quarterback Matthew Stafford for a sack.

One play later, one more Carter hit on Stafford for good measure, the Eagles were celebrating a 28-22 divisional-round victory and a trip to the NFC championship game, and now Carter made that whole closing sequence sound like the most natural thing in the world.

“That’s all it was,” he said. “I ran the stunt, and they messed up their communication on the O-line.”

To Carter’s right, his teammate Moro Ojomo returned to his locker after taking a shower.

“This,” he said, nodding at Carter, “is the best defensive tackle in the country.”

Back in early September, when the only snow to be found came in a paper cone courtesy of Mister Softee, Carter spent several minutes one afternoon talking about the “rookie wall” that he insisted he hadn’t hit in 2023. He had been a rookie-of-the-year candidate for the first half of last season, so dominant at defensive tackle that it was obvious that the Eagles’ dare to take him with the ninth pick in the draft had paid off for them. Then the Eagles, in every aspect, fell apart over the season’s final seven weeks, and Carter’s production slowed and the quality of his play declined, and months later, it was fair to ask why and whether he was past it.

“No, I don’t feel like I hit a wall,” he said then. “There’s a lot of excuses people are saying about what happened last year. I ain’t got no excuses. What happened, happened. We’re on to this year.”

» READ MORE: Eagles survive, storming past the Rams to reach the NFC championship game with a 28-22 win in the snow

This year for the Eagles already is better, already has surpassed the low standard of that horrid late-season slump of ‘23, and Carter is both a reason and a symbol for the team’s resurgence. The Eagles are one victory away from their third Super Bowl appearance in eight years, and from Carter to Saquon Barkley, from Zack Baun to Dallas Goedert, they have accumulated so much talent that they’re not only strong enough to beat a formidable opponent — and the Rams were one — but also capable of overcoming their own weaknesses and errors.

The roster that Howie Roseman and his staff have put together sometimes allows the Eagles to win in spite of themselves.

Which is exactly what they did Sunday. They showed their few weaknesses and made plenty of mistakes, and the everlasting irony of this season is that, as great as the Eagles have been at times, the area that they considered for years to be essential to their success — to the success of any team that sought to be among the NFL’s elite — has been their softest target. Their passing game was a problem against the Rams, Jalen Hurts holding the ball too long too often, managing just 128 yards through the air, taking a safety that pulled Los Angeles within a point late in the third quarter that made every frozen fan at The Linc nervous as hell.

But on the Rams’ next possession, Carter kicked off a stretch of play that demonstrated why Ojomo might be right, why Carter should be considered not just the best player on the Eagles’ defense but one of the best defensive players in the entire league. He punched the football out of the hands of Rams running back Kyren Williams, forcing a fumble that cornerback Isaiah Rodgers recovered and returned 40 yards to set up a Jake Elliott field goal.

“We work on that every week,” Carter said. “Punch it out. Got one last time we played them in L.A. I knew it was a possibility we could get it again. It was on my mind. The opportunity came.”

That fumble, in and of itself, was a game-turner, but it was only a prelude to the two most important defensive plays any Eagle has made all season. Stafford had the Rams moving, and somehow back in the game after a 78-yard Barkley TD run had seemingly buried them.

And on third-and-2 from the Eagles’ 13-yard line, with less than 80 seconds standing between the Eagles and one of the most stunning and excruciating losses in the city’s sports history, Carter burst through the line like a bull and sacked Stafford. A 9-yard loss. Fourth down now, and this time Carter charged through again, forcing Stafford into a quick throw that sailed out of bounds, driving him to the ground. Watch a replay of those two moments. No 6-foot-3, 314-pound man should be able to move that fast.

“He was born to play football: prototypical size, frame, strength, athleticism, speed,” Eagles defensive tackle Milton Williams said. “He’s everything you want in a D-lineman.”

Two sacks, two tackles for losses, three quarterback hits — Carter provided every ounce of validation that the Eagles could have asked for when they took the chance on drafting him last year. He’d been a marvelous player but an immature kid at the University of Georgia, had been involved in a tragic road-racing accident that led to the deaths of two people, and there was plenty of risk in the Eagles’ decision to bet on him.

By all indications, though, he has caused no trouble here, at least nothing major. The one hiccup happened in November ‘23, a rumor on social media that Carter had stolen items from a Target store, an incident that police investigated and determined was no crime.

“We’re always going off what he say-she say,” Carter said after Sunday’s game. “You ask anybody in this locker room. I feel like everybody loves me. I’ve got a good connection with everybody in this locker room. We’re all having fun, and we’ve all got one goal. In college, it was getting a natty. In the pros, it’s getting a Super Bowl.

“I’m matured, of course. You see what’s going on in the locker room, everything. You see what’s on the field. But I’m still me. I’m still chill. In college, I stayed home, played games all day. I’m doing the same thing. Obviously, when I get a family, I’ll move around, do this, do that, but right now, I’m chilling, just young, 23 years old, playing football, trying to get a Super Bowl for the guys.”

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Two wins away after Sunday, after Carter showed everyone that he was becoming — if he hasn’t already become — the player the Eagles thought and hoped he would be.

“It’s still a team sport,” he said. “Just like when I play and need them, when they play, they need me.”

Never more than in those final seconds against Stafford and the Rams, with a shot at the Super Bowl on the line. Never more than in a snowy setting that no one will forget. Nope, no wall for Jalen Carter. No limits. No excuses. Just a great game when the Eagles had to have one.