Eagles’ Jake Elliott was ready for the snow, still inconsistent, but hit clutch FGs: ‘It was like a hurricane situation’

Nick Sirianni often talks about the Eagles being prepared for every scenario possible, and it often sounds like coachspeak because, well, what else is there to say when the topic of preparedness comes up?

But every scenario must really mean every scenario, because the kicking operation spent time this week watching film and learning about how other teams in the past dealt with cleaning snow from the field to spot and kick the ball. “We’ve never done it before,” Jake Elliott said. They studied why using cleats to clear the spot was a bad idea because, punter and holder Braden Mann said, it “roughs up the spot.”

The team practiced all week at Lincoln Financial Field in the cold and wind and got a little lucky when snow fell Thursday afternoon because there is no simulating what they had to do Sunday, deep film study or otherwise.

Elliott said Friday that it was going to take a team effort to clear a spot in the snow for the ball to be spotted and kicked should he be asked to kick a field goal. The linemen, he said, would be at his “service.”

Jake Elliott, up-and-down kicker, snow sage.

Because there they were, with more than six minutes remaining in the game, about half of the 11 players on the field gathering around the 27-yard line. Grounds crew members used leaf blowers at times Sunday to clear yardage and hash marks on the field, but this group used their hands and, in Jordan Mailata’s case, the padding on his forearm, to clear a spot for Mann to hold and place the football as the play clock ticked toward zero. Just before a delay-of-game penalty, Mann took a snap from Rick Lovato, put the ball down, and Elliott’s leg swung through and gave the Eagles a cushion they desperately needed — a seven-point lead in a game that would go down to the wire.

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“It was like a hurricane situation every time we were out there,” Elliott said. “It was crazy. It’s something I’ve never experienced before and something I’ll remember for a long time.”

Mailata called himself a “sacrificial lamb” cleaning the surface. “It was a first for me,” he said. “I don’t know if my technique was great. It worked. You can’t simulate that.”

There were parts of the field, Mann said, where the snow was so deep that you couldn’t see grass, but the linemen “cleared almost everything out.”

The field goal, Elliott’s third of the day, was a bright spot on a day that was a bit of a microcosm of his season. It was a wacky day of kicking for Elliott on a wacky-weather day. His three made field goals were marred by two missed extra points, tallies that would have been critical if the Rams converted late in the Eagles’ 28-22 victory.

Elliott’s foot was all over the box score, good and bad, as it has been all season, but he delivered three times in the clutch, and after the snow started falling harder, when the Eagles needed him most.

His first field goal was from 44 yards out and broke a 13-13 tie late in the third quarter — the Eagles at 13 points and not 14 because of an earlier missed point-after attempt. The snow after halftime went from slick to slop. But Elliott’s kick from that distance looked like a 9-iron cutting through the wind before dropping beyond the crossbar.

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“I always feel good when I’m able to hit a bigger kick,” he said. “Obviously you want to make all of them. That’s kind of the perfectionist side of being a kicker, but that’s not always realistic. Today kind of showed that, how hard it was out there.”

The Eagles called his number again early in the fourth quarter. A safety had cut a three-point lead to one, and the Eagles looked like they were about to go up by at least seven on a Jalen Hurts Tush Push on fourth-and-goal from just outside the goal line. But a Lane Johnson false start backed them up, and Elliott came on to chip in from 23 yards out.

The three makes outweighed the two missed extra points, especially because of the conditions. Elliott’s first miss came long before the worst of the snow fell and marked consecutive playoff games that Elliott missed on a point-after attempt, continuing what has been arguably the worst of his eight NFL seasons.

Elliott missed a career-high eight field goal attempts during the regular season, and his 77.8% conversion rate was the second-worst of his career. There’s some missing context from some of the misses, as six of them came from beyond 50 yards and some of those were in less-than-desirable kicking conditions.

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Elliott has throughout the season maintained what Mann and Lovato called a “next-play mentality,” one Lovato said Elliott showed again Sunday.

“He executes that so well, better than a lot of other kickers I’ve seen in the NFL,” Lovato said. “He just has that mentality that, ‘Yeah, I’m [ticked] off that I missed, but I’m just going to come back out and make the next one.’ And those were massive field goals that we hit in that game to force them to have to score a touchdown. It was big.”

Bigger kicks could still be ahead. The Eagles haven’t wavered in their trust of Elliott, and Sunday showed they will need him as their playoff run continues.

“I know how big points are, especially here in the playoffs,” Elliott said. “All these games are going to be tight.”

In a game that was decided by six points and got tense late, the two points from his misses could’ve been the reason the Eagles lost. They weren’t. They won by six points, and Elliott’s field goals accounted for nine points.

Jake Elliott giveth, and Jake Elliott taketh, and on to the next round he and the Eagles go.