Skip to content
Link copied to clipboard

Bowen: Eagles' swarming defense reappears

YOU JUST could not put the Eagles' defense in a situation it couldn't handle Sunday. Carson Wentz knows, because he tried.

The Eagles stop the Vikings on fourth down.
The Eagles stop the Vikings on fourth down.Read more(David Maialetti/Staff Photographer)

YOU JUST could not put the Eagles' defense in a situation it couldn't handle Sunday. Carson Wentz knows, because he tried.

"I've got to be smarter with the football," said Wentz, who threw two interceptions in the first quarter and lost a fumble on an exchange with Darren Sproles. "We gotta clean some things up. I think we had four turnovers today (Ryan Mathews fumbled late); that's never good. You usually don't win too many games when you do that. But our defense, they played unbelievable and kept us in the ballgame."

Coming into this game, we were wondering whether the Eagles' stifling defense in that 3-0 start was a mirage, after a terrible first half set up a close loss at Detroit and a terrible overall game led to a loss that wasn't really all that close at Washington.

Jim Schwartz's aggressive bunch seemed very real to Sam Bradford Sunday, as he was sacked six times and hit a dozen or so times more in the Eagles' 21-10 victory over Bradford and the Minnesota Vikings, who had been the NFL's last unbeaten team, at 5-0.

When Bradford was the Eagles' starter, before the trade to Minnesota eight days before the season opener, defenders never were allowed to hit him in practice. They made up for it Sunday, in stopping a two-game losing streak and pushing the Birds to 4-2 heading into Dallas next Sunday night.

Wentz will have to be much better there, but the Cowboys' defense is not the Vikings' unit, which came into the day yielding an NFL-low average of 12.5 points, and also leading the league in sacks per game. It didn't manage any Sunday; Halapoulivaati Vaitai and company gave up pressure, but they didn't get steamrolled the way they were at Washington.

"Yeah," Bradford said, when asked afterward if having Fletcher Cox in the pocket with him on a regular basis caused extra pressure. (It was more Brandon Graham, with five QB hits, than Cox, but both were a problem for a Vikings offensive line that was missing both its normal starting tackles.)

Bradford threw his first interception as a Viking and lost two fumbles; punt returner Marcus Sherels lost another, for a grand total of eight turnovers between the teams, who had combined for three in their previous games this season.

"It kind of seemed like we got after the quarterback there from the first quarter on. It just seemed like we had a lot of energy and things were going our way,'' said defensive tackle Beau Allen, who made sure usual starter Bennie Logan wasn't missed, as Logan sat out with a groin strain. Allen recovered a Bradford fumble and then was the first of a host of Eagles to pile up Vikings back Matt Asiata on fourth-and-1 from the Eagles' 6 early in the fourth quarter. "It just seemed like our ends were back there every play."

Wentz threw a pick that the Vikings ran back to the Eagles' 2 less than six minutes into the game, the score still 0-0. The Vikings got no points - false start, incomplete pass, Rodney McLeod interception in the back of the end zone as Graham blasted Bradford.

Three plays later, Minnesota had the ball again, as Wentz's handoff seemed to squirt away from Sproles, the Vikings recovering at the Eagles' 17.

This possession lasted one play, Connor Barwin fighting through a facemask hold to slap the ball out of Bradford's hand as he drew back to throw. Malcolm Jenkins recovered.

"Their offensive line, they almost kind of punt protect," Barwin said. "They kind of backpedal, and Sam doesn't move, so it becomes a small pocket . . . If you get in there close, start swinging at Sam, you might be able to hit the ball, because it's going to compress.

"We love to run against guys that are just going to stand there. But at the same time, Sam's a guy that, his answer is that he gets the ball out and he makes some great throws. He made a couple of those today. But again, it's always nice when you've got a guy who's going to stand there."

Three Eagles plays later, Wentz dodged a rusher, stepped up and threw into triple coverage. Xavier Rhodes intercepted at the Vikings' 39. But the Eagles' defense yielded just 16 yards before forcing a punt.

Schwartz chooses not to speak after games. Had he done so Sunday he would have been asked about all the blitzing - one of Schwartz's bedrock values is pressuring with the front four, but he seemed to be channeling the late Jim Johnson in this game, linebackers and safeties flying in from unlikely angles.

"I don't think we planned on pressuring as much as we did,'' Jenkins said. "It was just one of those things where it was working. Even though guys weren't necessarily coming scot-free and hitting the quarterback (every time), he was still feeling that pressure.''

"They were blitzing a lot. I would, too," Vikings coach Mike Zimmer said. "We didn't pick up anybody, so you might as well."

Jenkins said the Eagles anticipated a game like Sunday's, given the strength of the Vikes' defense.

"We knew, with them having the defense that they do, we'd have to show up," Jenkins said.

The Vikings did take a 3-0, second-quarter lead, and were punished for it right away. Blair Walsh's kickoff into a swirling, 20-mph wind only got to the 2, and Josh Huff found clear sailing down the Eagles' sideline. The only move he had to make was to cut inside Walsh near midfield; the 98-yard TD gave the Birds an 8-3 lead, with an ensuing two-point conversion made easier by a Vikings unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. Wendell Smallwood ran a second-quarter kickoff back for a touchdown the week before at Washington. This was the first time in franchise history the Eagles have scored kickoff return TDs in back-to-back weeks.

When Allen recovered the next Bradford fumble, the Eagles only had to drive 35 yards for a Caleb Sturgis 35-yard field goal that gave them an 11-3 halftime lead. Given the struggles of both offenses, it seemed formidable.

The Birds' first offensive touchdown since the third quarter of the Detroit game capped the best drive of the game by either team, 77 yards on nine plays and a Minnesota pass-interference penalty. Wentz hit Dorial Green-Beckham from the 5 for Green-Beckham's first Eagles touchdown.

The Vikings finally started putting some plays together as well, but the fourth-and-1 stop at the Eagles' 6 settled that. The Eagles drove for another Sturgis field goal, and at 21-3, it really was over.

Zimmer's opening statement postgame featured a "disappointing," a "disappointed" and an "embarrassing." He said he felt Bradford (24-for-41, 224 yards, a touchdown, a pick and a 71.6 passer rating) missed some throws he normally makes, but "we dropped balls . . . He got hit a lot, so it's hard to evaluate his performance, when we looked like a sieve in there."

Middle linebacker Jordan Hicks was among several Eagles who played their best game of the season; a week earlier, Hicks struggled to get off blocks as the Birds gave up 230 rushing yards and 493 net yards to a Washington team that Sunday lost to Detroit.

"We were coming off two rough weeks. It doesn't matter who's coming in our house; we've got a standard that we have to live up to, that we have for ourselves," Hicks said, after notching eight solo tackles, a sack, and three tackles for a loss. "We knew his tendencies, what Sam likes to do and what he doesn't like to do. He knew a lot of what we were trying to do as well. I believe from what I saw out there he was remembering some of our terminology and knowing some of the stuff we were in . . . You've still got to go out there and execute."

Graham, who so far is putting together a Pro Bowl-level season, said, "Our whole message today was, 'Let's be the better defense.' . . . Every time they made a play, nobody was talking about anything but 'let's stop 'em.' It wasn't like people pointing fingers."

The two-game losing streak was an early-tenure crisis for coach Doug Pederson. Afterward his voice was raspy from yelling into the wind, and maybe a bit from emotion, as well.

"This is a team that for two weeks in a row has kind of got their lip bloodied a little bit . . . These guys are professionals . . . They really took it upon themselves this week to really make the corrections,'' Pederson said. "The veterans, the leadership, stood up today, took command of the game.''

@LesBowen

Blog: philly.com/Eaglesblog