
The Eagles have punched their ticket to Super Bowl LIX in the most unlikely way—by passing the football. After they scuffled through most of the season offensively, everything finally came together for Philadelphia and quarterback Jalen Hurts, who connected on 20 of his 28 passes for 246 yards and kept his team ahead of the chains on the way to a 55-23 win over the Commanders.
By expected points added, this was the most effective game Philadelphia’s passing offense has recorded since its Week 15 win over the Steelers. In that game, Hurts’s receivers did most of the heavy lifting by generating yards after the catch; they frequently took quick, underneath passes and turned them into chunk gains. Today was about Hurts in the pocket, getting back to what he does best: anticipating the one-on-one matchups for receiver A.J. Brown and attacking zone coverage by peppering the ball to DeVonta Smith and Dallas Goedert. As soon as Washington started playing single coverage on the perimeter, the chances would be there—it was just a matter of whether Hurts could make the throws. Connecting on a 31-yard fade in the first half helped this offense relieve pressure on the scheme and its players.
Philadelphia’s passing offense looked Super Bowl ready for the first time all season. What we saw on Sunday was standard practice in 2022—the last time Hurts and this offense made a run to the Super Bowl. Brown bullied Washington’s corners for 96 yards on his eight targets, as the Eagles hunted for big gains against man coverage. Smith and Goedert combined for 130 receiving yards on 11 targets, working into open spaces in the underneath and intermediate areas against soft, high zone coverages.
When defenses have to honor the passing game at every level of the field, it opens up space in the run game, and Philadelphia was intentional about setting up its runs to apply stress to Washington’s smaller personnel. The Commanders didn’t look as overmatched between the tackles as they did in the first half of their divisional win over the Lions, but Philly running back Saquon Barkley’s 60-yard touchdown on his first touch speaks to the impossible nature of defending this team. All of Washington’s interior defenders were too slow to win the race to the perimeter, and its defensive backs were far too undersized to make one-on-one tackles.
Offensive coordinator Kellen Moore put together his best game plan of the year, trimming the fat from his play calls and making sure all of his players were working in the roles they are best in. The best reflection of this was the Eagles’ use of Goedert on screens and dump-offs, as they let him create offense against coverage defenders too small to tackle him in space. Brown had a few snaps in the slot, but that had more to do with forcing the defenses to show whether they were playing man or zone coverage than asking Hurts to find his best receiver on throws he’s not comfortable making. Hurts has been up and down with his pre-snap processing this season, and Philadelphia’s offensive approach helped him find where he needed to go with the ball and know which plays wouldn’t work.
Philadelphia’s skill-position talent was operating at peak capacity. In short: Good luck to any defense in search of an answer against this much star power. Washington tried to blitz Hurts in the hope that he’d panic in the pocket, and there were a few snaps where Hurts either bailed early or moved around frantically, but he never made a bad play worse by putting the ball in harm’s way or taking a backbreaking sack—in spite of a knee injury he suffered last week in the divisional round. Selling out to stop the run wasn’t effective for Washington either; it opened the door for quick passes on RPOs and for Hurts to use his legs as a designed runner.
Offense is the story whenever you see a 50 burger in a playoff game, but Philadelphia’s defense deserves nearly equal credit for the team’s run to New Orleans. Defensive coordinator Vic Fangio has claimed victory over three totally different styles of offense this postseason, stymieing Green Bay’s passing, Los Angeles’s balanced offensive attack, and Washington’s ruthlessly efficient spread system. General manager Howie Roseman did a great job of identifying young talent in the last two drafts, but Fangio and his defensive staff are responsible for deploying defensive tackle Jalen Carter in a way that makes him the most productive and for developing players like Nolan Smith, Nakobe Dean, Zack Baun, and rookie defensive backs Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean.
Philadelphia learned from its mistakes in its Week 16 loss to the Commanders and blitzed more sparingly, forcing quarterback Jayden Daniels to win as a pocket passer—and it felt like the only big pass he had was a catch-and-run touchdown to receiver Terry McLaurin. Philadelphia’s front seven crushed the Commanders’ run game as well, and without the help of his running backs or deep downfield passing, Daniels was tasked with beating the NFL’s best defense single-handedly.
Not only have the Eagles taken away their opponents’ biggest strengths, but they’ve also been forcing more turnovers of late—and won the turnover battle 4-0 on Sunday. Special teams player Will Shipley forced one on a kickoff (their second turnover on special teams this postseason), linebackers Baun and Oren Burks forced a pair of punch-outs, and Mitchell skied for what felt like the game-ending interception.
Fangio’s unit has been on the receiving end of some lucky bounces on fumbles this postseason, but it has maintained control of games without the help of takeaways. Two of the Eagles’ top six games in defensive rushing success rate have come in the playoffs, and forcing teams to win from the pocket is the biggest reason this defense still looks like the league’s best through the postseason.
Now, Super Bowl LIX lies ahead for a team that appears to be playing its best football at the most important time. Sunday’s win answered so many questions for this team, proving that Hurts still has the ability to control the game as a passer and that his connection with Brown is just as unguardable now as it was in years prior. This defense will be a challenge to score on in New Orleans, even for Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs. And, most importantly, this offensive line gets a couple of weeks to heal and prepare for the big game, and that unit can make even a perfect Steve Spagnuolo defensive game plan obsolete by controlling the line of scrimmage. Even if the Eagles have a talent disadvantage at quarterback, the roster that Roseman built and head coach Nick Sirianni developed is deep with All-Pro-level talent, and their margin for error is wide. This is the NFL’s best team, and now they’re playing like it in every phase.