The Eagles can still get to the Super Bowl, but only if their defense drags them there

For an Eagles team desperate to stop a losing streak, a coach turned to scripture the other day to inspire a few members of the one unit that has been pretty much beyond reproach. Jeremiah Washburn, who’s in charge of the Eagles’ defensive line, shared a message with the team’s tackles and ends from Isaiah 6:8: Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

“The perspective of the D-line — it’s like, ‘Send me,’” tackle Moro Ojomo said. “That was kind of our mentality heading into this game.”

So on Sunday against the two-win Las Vegas Raiders, the Eagles sent Ojomo, who had a sack and two quarterback hits. And they sent Brandon Graham, who had two sacks while lining up at tackle. And they sent Zack Baun, who had four tackles and an interception. And they sent the Raiders back to the Strip wearing the scarlet letter of having produced the worst offensive performance of any Eagles opponent ever. It wasn’t just that the Eagles won 31-0 — their first shutout in nearly seven years. It was that they allowed the Raiders to gain just 75 yards of total offense.

» READ MORE: Eagles dominate Raiders in all phases, end losing streak with first shutout since 2018

Combine those two figures, the 0 and the 75, and you get what was, statistically speaking, the best game any Eagles defense has ever played. You get a game in which the Raiders’ longest gain on any play was 15 yards … on an unnecessary roughness penalty by Cooper DeJean. And as pitiful as Las Vegas was Sunday and has been offensively all season — the Raiders entered the game last in the NFL in points and next-to-last in yardage — you still got a glimpse of what might yet be the Eagles’ saving grace in their quest to win a second straight Super Bowl. As ragged and inconsistent as their offense has been, their defense is good enough to get them there.

“Our mindset, regardless, is, ‘If they don’t score, they don’t win,’” Ojomo said. “You saw that today. That’s the mindset we’ve got to have. The offense has to have the mindset of not necessarily depending on us, and what you get is that perfect marriage. They do their thing. We do our thing. We’re always going to raise the standard.”

They have to. Maybe Jalen Hurts, Saquon Barkley, and the rest of the offense will raise their level of play over the next three weeks and beyond. Maybe this dominant performance against a terrible team can allow the Eagles to get their groove from last season back. But to be in their locker room after Sunday’s game was to observe a different collective disposition from one side of the ball to the other.

Hurts delivered one curt, clipped answer after another in his postgame news conference, as if he were offended that the people in the room had pointed out that he’d committed five turnovers six days earlier against the Los Angeles Chargers. Nick Sirianni, Landon Dickerson, and other members of the offense kept up that same standoffish pose. Meanwhile, the team’s defensive players were ebullient and enthusiastic and generally have been all season. With the exception of the 281 rushing yards they gave up to the Chicago Bears two weeks ago, they have done their part to keep the Eagles in contention in the NFC.

» READ MORE: ‘Ridiculous’ indeed: Jalen Hurts is nearly perfect in an Eagles bounce-back blowout

They let the Eagles get away with victories against the Green Bay Packers and the Detroit Lions. They surrendered a touchdown on the Chargers’ first possession last Monday night, and they haven’t given up another in the 20 possessions since. They have a high standard, and they keep meeting it, and it was telling to hear, for instance, linebacker Nakobe Dean describe a lesson he learned from the unit’s perfect performance Sunday.

“There are plays we’re going to look back at and be like, ‘Oh, man, we could have [done] this better,’” he said. “I had a blitz. I was too high. I didn’t have great pad level. I got blocked by [running back] Raheem [Mostert], and the last couple of weeks I’ve been running through guys. So it’s like, yes, I have something to build on. I got blocked trying to bull [rush]. Now it’s time to stick/swat. Now it’s time to spin, do something like that. At first, I was thinking I was going to do it from the beginning. It was ‘Do this until they block it.’ Now it’s blocked. Now you can add a little something.”

The striking aspect of this dynamic — the inconsistency of the offense, the consistent excellence of the defense — is the lack of dissension within the locker room. Dean and Ojomo and their defensive teammates would be well within their rights to resent how much they’ve had to carry the Eagles. But there’s no indication that such a fissure exists. That’s a credit to coordinator Vic Fangio, sure, and it’s a credit to a unit full of young, homegrown players who aren’t surly, cynical veterans, who aren’t mercenaries, who don’t know any better but to ball out.

“We’re hungry, and we run around, and we want to be great,” Ojomo said. “We want to go and get it. It’s like this perfect thing, but the reality is, we’ve got to do it again.”

And again. And again. And again into January, if the Eagles are to have any hope of playing into February. A Super Bowl is still possible for them. Their defense will have to drag them there.