Eagles news: Peyton Manning's A.J. Brown suggestion; another Tush Push controversy; injury updates

Maybe the bye week is coming at a bad time. Who wouldn’t want to keep it rolling after the offense put together arguably its best four-quarter performance under new coordinator Kevin Patullo?

The Eagles posted a complete effort Sunday and finally found success running the football and passing it during the same game. They schemed up the pin-and-pull block game and showed their under-center versatility.

It has been a bumpy first eight games for Patullo after taking the reins from Kellen Moore. But Sunday — which followed a strong showing with the aerial attack last week — showed the Eagles might be on a better path.

The Eagles improved to 6-2 after a dominant 38-20 win over the New York Giants Sunday. Jalen Hurts had another efficient performance in which he threw for 179 passing yards and four touchdowns — and just five incompletions. Meanwhile, the Birds' running game took a big step forward, recording 276 yards on the ground.

As the Birds head into the bye week, they are still the favorites to win the NFC East and remain one of the top five favorites to win the Super Bowl, according to FanDuel.

But at DraftKings, the Birds remain outside of the top five, behind the Los Angeles Rams and the Indianapolis Colts.

The Eagles hit the bye this week with a 6-2 record.

For players, it's a time to relax and heal up and get some time away from the facility. For coaches, it's a time to rest but also get ready for the rest of the season.

What's Nick Sirianni's message to both parties?

A.J. Brown sat out of Sunday’s game due to a hamstring injury. Despite Brown’s absence, the Eagles offense dominated, finishing the game with a season-high 427 total yards. DeVonta Smith remained the centerpiece of the Birds’ passing game, recording six receptions (on nine targets) for 84 yards.

Everything came together for the Eagles, including the team’s previously spotty running game. The Birds recorded 276 yards on the ground, with Saquon Barkley eclipsing 100 rushing yards for the first time this season.

With all the drama surrounding Brown’s latest social media posts, and the team’s success without him on the field, there’s already even more discussion centered around whether the team should trade the receiver.

The NFL continues to allow the Eagles to run the Tush Push, but that play earned another strike against it when the owners meet next spring.

Assuming a team introduces another proposal to ban the controversial short-yardage play — which has been assailed as an injury risk, which is ridiculous, and has been assailed as a penalty magnet, which is legitimate — Sunday’s debacle will add fuel to whatever fire remains from last spring’s 22-10 vote, which was two ballots shy of a ban.

Facing fourth-and-1 at the Giants’ 11 early in the second quarter, Jalen Hurts and his line surged forward and Hurts peeled off slightly to the left. Floating on a sea of humanity, Hurts clearly never stopped moving toward the line to gain, and as he reached the ball forward, Giants linebacker Kayvon Thibodeaux stripped him of the ball and recovered it.

Teams don’t often test Quinyon Mitchell, but the Giants on Sunday took to staying away from the second-year corner in a way no other team has.

Jaxson Dart threw to Mitchell’s primary responsibility just once on Sunday. According to Next Gen Stats, Mitchell had never allowed fewer than two targets in a game and no receptions in his career prior to Sunday, and he became one of 10 cornerbacks to allow one or fewer targets for no receptions in a game this season.

Mitchell played 27 coverage snaps Sunday, and 13 of those were in man coverage. His lone target came in man coverage. Mitchell broke up a third-and-16 throw from Dart to Darius Slayton with the Giants near midfield and trailing just 14-7 near the midway point of the second quarter.

Jalyx Hunt finally got home and sacked the quarterback, and it was a fitting day for the second-year edge defender to at long last get into the sack column.

Hunt had arguably his best day as an NFL player. According to Next Gen Stats, Hunt totaled a career-high nine pressures on 22 pass rushes, four more than his previous best of five. His 40.9% pressure rate was also the best of his young NFL career. Hunt, according to Next Gen, created pressures against four different Giants offensive linemen, including six pressures against right tackle Jermaine Eluemunor on 17 matchups.

The sentiment in the locker room last week in Minnesota, after the Eagles’ rush finally got to Carson Wentz in key moments, was that more sacks were coming. The Eagles got to Dart for five sacks Sunday, with five different players getting on the board.

Let’s allow Jordan Mailata to explain the season Dallas Goedert is having in the way Mailata does best, with a touch of swearing and some humorous perspective.

“That [expletive] guy,” Mailata said Sunday after Goedert caught two touchdowns in the Eagles’ 38-20 win over the New York Giants. “We almost didn’t bring him back. Can you believe that [stuff]? How funny is that? How funny is that?”

Yes, there was a time during the offseason when it appeared as if the Eagles would part ways with Goedert after seven seasons. Goedert himself even confronted that possibility before the Eagles reworked his contract to bring him back on a one-year deal worth more than $10 million but less than the original $14.25 million that would’ve been owed to him on his previous deal.

It was just 17 days ago that the Eagles lost for the second straight time, lost to the New York Giants by 17 points at MetLife Stadium, lost in so humiliating a fashion that their All-Pro right tackle called out the play-calling as predictable and their star wide receiver admitted that with more than 11 minutes left in the game he had already resigned himself to defeat. It was bad.

Two seasons before, it had been worse. The Eagles had lost back-to-back games to the San Francisco 49ers and the Dallas Cowboys, and those pathetic performances triggered the kind of midseason change that reveals a franchise’s leadership has started to panic. The defensive coordinator was demoted. A Bill Belichick acolyte was promoted. And what began as a pebble rolling down a hill turned into an avalanche: six losses in seven games, a head coach whose job was in jeopardy, a collapse whose psychological residue remained on this team for a long time.

Maybe, after their 38-20 victory Sunday in their rematch against the Giants, the Eagles can assure everyone that they’ve scraped away the last of that sticky stuff from 2023. Their Super Bowl win in February took care of most of it, but burping up that late lead against the Denver Broncos on Oct. 5 and getting manhandled by Jaxson Dart and Cam Skattebo four days later brought up all those bad memories again. The Eagles were 4-2 but reeling, still formidable but vulnerable, and it was fair to wonder whether they could straighten themselves out over their two games before their bye week.

During Sunday's Eagles-Giants broadcast, Tom Brady made a mistake we all make in the living room with our family watching the game — the only problem was that he was live on air for Fox.

After an early scramble by Jalen Hurts to escape a Brian Burns tackle in the first quarter, Brady took a moment to compliment the Eagles starter.

While describing Hurts’ ability to escape the pocket, Brady dropped an obscenity before quickly finishing his sentence in hopes no one noticed … but we noticed.

Eagles receiver A.J. Brown sat out Sunday's game with a hamstring injury, but that didn't prevent him from being the center of attention leading up to the game.

ESPN NFL insider Adam Schefter reported Brown wasn't expected to be traded by the Birds ahead of the Nov. 4 trade deadline. The news comes after Brown posted a photo of himself on Instagram last week captioned, "Using me but not using me."

At the NFL’s fall league meetings in Manhattan last week, The Athletic's Dianna Russini asked Eagles owner Jeff Lurie what he'd do if Brown asked for a trade.

The Eagles (6-2) padded their lead in the NFC East Sunday, defeating the Giants (2-6) at the Linc and watching the Dallas Cowboys (3-4-1) get blown out by the Denver Broncos.

The Birds head into their bye week two and a half games up on the Cowboys. The Washington Commanders (3-4) play Monday night against the Kansas City Chiefs (4-3).

NFC East standings

Next week is the Eagles’ bye, and when the Birds come back they’ll play five straight national games — three in prime time, one in the late afternoon window on Fox, and one on Black Friday.

They won’t have another 1 p.m. kickoff until Week 15, when they host the Las Vegas Raiders at the Linc on Dec. 14. That could also be their last, with two games against the Washington Commanders yet to be scheduled.

In Week 16, the Birds will play the Commanders on Saturday, Dec. 20, which will be either a 4:30 p.m. or an 8 p.m. kickoff. They’ll also face the Commanders in Week 18, a game that could be elevated to late afternoon or even prime time, depending on what’s at stake.