The Philadelphia Eagles are 11-2, winners of nine straight, with the Pittsburgh Steelers on tap. They will be hosting their cross-state rivals, who themselves are 7-1 in their last eight games. But one can argue the Steelers are in better shape right now than the Eagles are.
I’m not sure how many would buy it, but the Eagles did just eke out a win over the Carolina Panthers. And after the game, it seemed as though things started bubbling to the surface. WR A.J. Brown offered terse comments about the state of the passing game, with others implying similar issues in slightly less concise fashion. It doesn’t help that they will be without TE Dallas Goedert, either.
While the Eagles are winning, it’s not necessarily always pretty. But nobody is consistently winning pretty this year, not even the Chiefs. The Steelers certainly are not, and many paint that as a virtue, so there’s no shame in winning ugly. But you still want to win together no matter how it looks, and there seems to be some division in Philadelphia.
Commenting on Brown’s postgame remarks, injured DE Brandon Graham weighed in—and quickly regretted it, I might add. While he insinuated that it was Brown’s responsibility to communicate his concerns with QB Jalen Hurts, he ended up reversing course.
“I made a mistake and I assumed that it was something that it wasn’t”, he told ESPN of his comments on the Eagles’ issues. “I just want to win so bad that I don’t just want to use the media when we need to talk about something and we can fix the problem ourselves. I didn’t add to it in a good light, so that’s my bad”. He added that he was going to personally apologize to both Brown and Hurts for doing exactly what he said Brown was doing—bringing dirty laundry out into the public.
But the thing is, there is some smoke here, and that means there’s a fire, even if it’s in a dustbin. The Eagles are clearly still a great and very capable team, and the Steelers will have their hands full. But they are not a team that is firing on all cylinders right now and is fully in sync. They are not the unstoppable juggernaut that their nine-game win streak might suggest.
Brown expressed that the Eagles struggled to develop a rhythm in a low-volume passing game Sunday. Hurts only attempted 21 passes against the Panthers, but he did throw two touchdown passes, running for another score. He is only averaging 25 attempts per game, the lowest of his career as a starter. And that is not because he is tucking and running a lot more, though Saquon Barkeley has contributed to their run-pass ratio.
So what does any of this mean for the Steelers as they prepare for the Eagles? Probably nothing. But the Eagles still managed to create a storm in a teacup, and that certainly doesn’t hurt Pittsburgh. If nothing else, it’s clear that there is at least some frustration in that locker room. And if they lose to the Steelers, that could boil over, Philadelphia still vying for the No. 1 seed in the NFC.
