Eagles Survive Washington 24-22: Two Missed Points Bailed Us Out

How it happened

Home opener. Season opener. After a preseason that ended 0-3 and included a 24-7 pantsing in Baltimore, plenty of us were watching Sunday’s first drive with narrowed eyes. Washington opened with a Drew Stevens 55-yard field goal at 11:23 of the first. Fine. Then Jalen Hurts and Dallas Goedert decided to answer.

Hurts hit Goedert on a 17-yard scoring strike to open the second quarter, then found Dontayvion Wicks from 9 yards out at 6:27. 14-3, and it looked like we might be off to the races. Except Jacory Croskey-Merritt punched one in from a yard out at 1:50 — and the Eagles blocked the extra point. 14-9. Not 14-10. That single point matters in about ten minutes.

Jake Elliott added a 35-yard field goal at the buzzer of the third to make it 17-9. Then Jayden Daniels found Stefon Diggs from 10 yards out at 9:59 of the fourth, and suddenly it was a one-point game at 17-16. Hurts and Goedert bailed us out on the very next series: a 43-yard touchdown at 6:02 to make it 24-16. Antonio Williams caught his own 1-yard scoring pass with 1:01 left, Washington went for two, and it failed. Ballgame.

What the numbers say

Look at the box and it’s uncomfortable. Ten first downs. Washington had twenty. Time of possession: they held it 33:20 to our 26:40. We ran 53 plays. They ran 67. On third down we were 6-of-14; they were 5-of-15. We won total yards 318 to 295, which sounds like a win until you notice we needed 14 fewer plays to get there and only converted three of them into scoring drives.

What actually kept us in it: the pass rush (three sacks for 21 yards, one from Jihaad Campbell), Zack Baun stacking 12 tackles behind it, and Washington leaving four points on the ground between the blocked PAT and the failed two-pointer. Do the math. Give Washington the blocked extra point back and it’s 14-10 at halftime, 15-10 after Elliott’s field goal, 15-16 after Diggs, 22-16 after Goedert’s 43-yarder, then 22-22 with a converted two-point try at the end. Overtime. We are not in overtime because Washington couldn’t convert extra points.

Our take

Hot take, and we are not sugar-coating it:

This win is fool’s gold. We got outplayed in a game we won.

You take the W — every one of them counts and the wild card always comes down to tiebreakers — but you don’t walk out of the Linc convinced. Ten first downs to Washington’s twenty is not a fluke, it’s a pattern; the offense couldn’t sustain drives in the preseason blowup at Foxborough either. The passing game had two long touchdowns to Goedert, which papered over an offense that spent long stretches on the bench.

Second take: Hurts-to-Goedert is a real weapon this year. Four targets, four catches, 77 yards, two touchdowns, including the 43-yarder that turned out to be the actual difference in the game. If defenses are going to load up the box for Barkley — 15 carries for 83 says they will — Goedert is the release valve, and he was money.

Third take, and the one that will decide the season: this defense showed up when it had to, but it cannot allow 20 first downs a week. The preseason gave up 78 points across three games. This one gave up 22 — plus a blocked PAT and a failed two-point try, call it 26 we probably should have surrendered. That is not good enough over 16 more games, and Tennessee is not going to gift-wrap missed conversions.

Next up

The Eagles are on the road at Tennessee next Sunday, September 20, to face the Titans. If the offense can’t stay on the field better than it did against Washington, this becomes an actual problem quickly.

Falsifiable marker for next week: if the Eagles allow Tennessee more than 18 first downs, the Washington game was not an outlier and this offense is playing with fire. Not “might.” Will. Grade us on it.

Season starts 1-0. That’s the number that counts in January. Everything else is stuff to fix — and if you’d rather back your reads than yell at the screen, well, that’s literally the game.