PHILADELPHIA − It wasn’t hard to know when the Eagles had completely taken the Cowboys’ will away.
There was about a minute left in the game, and Eagles center Jason Kelce had tumbled over Cowboys offensive lineman Osa Odighizuwa at the end of a running play.
Odighizuwa then got up, charged at Kelce and grabbed his legs and tackled him. That drew a 15-yard penalty, giving the Eagles a first down. All Jalen Hurts had to do was take a knee twice, and the Eagles had finished off a hard-fought 26-17 win Sunday night.
But really, it was the end of a frustrating night for the Cowboys, who came up short. Those emotions are what you would expect from two bitter rivals fighting for first place in the NFC East. The Eagles improved to 6-0 while the Cowboys fell into third place at 4-2.
HANGING ONJalen Hurts, Eagles’ defense were burying Cowboys, then things got interesting
Dallas had charged back from a 20-0 deficit in the first half by scoring 17 straight points, the last seven points coming on a pulverizing 93-yard drive that took up 7 minutes, 7 seconds. The fourth quarter had just started and the Eagles were gasping for air, literally and figuratively.
At that point, Dallas had gained 172 yards in the second half, the Eagles had just 6.
Here’s what happened next: Miles Sanders ran for 13 yards. He ran for 5 more, then 1 more. Then Hurts ran for 5 yards. Slowly, effectively, the Eagles marched down the field. They held the ball for 7:37. They finished the drive with two passes − Hurts’ 22-yard pass to A.J. Brown down to the Cowboys’ 7, then his strike to DeVonta Smith in the end zone.
In all, the Eagles ran the ball 10 times and threw just three times.
Eagles left tackle Jordan Mailata said the motto was simple: “Who’s toughest the longest? It’s hard to stay in a positive mindset when teams are kicking your ass in the run game. I get it why things were getting chippy (at the end). You want to stop 4-minute. You want to get a 3-and-out, and get your offense back in it to make plays. I totally get it where they’re coming from. But at the same time, don’t do that to Kelce, man.”
There was still plenty of time for the Cowboys.
But then Chauncey Gardner-Johnson intercepted his second pass of the game as Cowboys quarterback Cooper Rush tried throwing deep to CeeDee Lamb. Defensive end Brandon Graham, charging up the middle, hit Rush just as he threw, preventing him from following through.
Rush was starting his fifth straight game in place of starter Dak Prescott, recovering from a torn thumb ligament. In the previous four games, Rush hadn’t thrown a single interception.
The Eagles picked him off three times.
“Shoot, not letting him be comfortable back there,” said cornerback Darius Slay, who had an interception as well. “Just being aggressive. In the first half, we were stopping the run like we needed to, making him throw the ball. Second half, they got it going, and they still trusted him to throw.
“But we lined up and just said, ‘Make him beat us.’”
He couldn’t.
The Eagles had imposed their will, both on offense and defense. It’s why Hurts was invoking a Michael Jordan quote after the game when describing that last scoring drive.
“I think about Michael Jordan when he said (to himself), ‘Put them away, MJ,'” Hurts said. “You want to put them away. You don’t want to give them an opportunity to make it a close game or get an opportunity to have the ball in their hands. And that’s the mentality we have.
“There are different ways to do that. You can be aggressive, throw the ball. You can run the ball, whatever it is. But you have to be able to do it efficiently.”
Hurts did that. He was 15 of 25 passing for 155 yards. There was nothing flashy about that. But unlike Rush, he didn’t turn the ball over. And unlike Rush, Hurts made the plays when he needed to.
That was true of Brown as well. He led the Eagles with 5 catches for 67 yards. That included his 15-yard touchdown reception in the second quarter, on a 3rd-and-3 play.
Brown had to get past Cowboys star linebacker Micah Parsons to get open to catch the ball. Then he had to outrun everyone else to the end zone. And, of course, he often had to contend with Cowboys cornerback Trevon Diggs, who had 11 interceptions last season.
That got chippy too.
“(Diggs) was trying to apply his dominance, but I wasn’t going for it,” Brown said. “I think that’s what it was. Two dogs just bumping heads.”
It was like that all game.
Gardner-Johnson embodied that, too. The Eagles traded for him just 10 days before the season started, then converted him to safety from nickel corner, a position he had never played in the NFL. It was a process learning the defense. Then Gardner-Johnson left in the third quarter with a hand injury, only to return late in the quarter before making the game-clinching interception in the fourth.
After the game, Gardner-Johnson had a large cut on his hand. He didn’t want to talk about the hand, or the pain he was feeling.
“I’m good. I play football,” he said. “Soldier mentality … I caught a pick. That’s all that matters.”
So it wasn’t surprising that the Cowboys lost their temper at the end, when Odighizuwa tackled Kelce. The Eagles had taken the Cowboys’ will away.
“Their defense is damn good,” Kelce said. “We were playing hard at the end of the game. We wanted to get a first down, and at that time of the game, things tend to get chippy … This is the game of football, and sometimes things like that happen.”
Then Kelce smiled. The Eagles had gotten the best of the Cowboys, and everyone knew it.
Contact Martin Frank at mfrank@delawareonline.com. Follow on Twitter @Mfranknfl.
