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Having surrendered 34 points in a Monday night loss to the Dallas Cowboys the week before, the Eagles' defense found itself facing the Pittsburgh Steelers, a run-oriented team that arrived at Lincoln Financial Field unbeaten and with a staunch defense of its own.
That day, the Eagles had by far the better defense. They sacked Ben Roethlisberger nine times, forced two fumbles, picked off a pass, and knocked running back Willie Parker out of the game in a 15-6 victory.
"Dallas went up and down the field on them," former Eagles linebacker and current WIP talk-show host Ike Reese said during a visit to the NovaCare Complex yesterday. "You had Jason Witten catching passes all over the field, 70-yard bombs to T.O. . . . For a young defense, that could have crushed them and sent them into a tailspin . . . but the way they came back and played against Pittsburgh, that really gave me a prism into the future. I thought, 'OK, these guys could be pretty good this year when they're clicking on all cylinders.' "
Eagles defensive coordinator Jim Johnson was excited by that game against the Steelers, too.
"I think there were a couple of turning points, and then they kind of went south and came back," Johnson said about his defense. "I thought after Pittsburgh that we turned the corner. Then I thought we were average [in the first game] against the Giants."
Average is polite.
The Eagles lost, 36-31, to New York on Nov. 9 at Lincoln Financial Field, and the fingers were pointed directly at the defense. The Eagles allowed 401 yards, including 219 on the ground.
"That was like a slap in the face," linebacker Chris Gocong said. "It was like a bucket of cold water over the head. In the long run, we kind of needed it. I think it made us play a lot better gap-disciplined defense."
That slap in the face by the Giants' punishing running attack and quarterback Eli Manning was followed by solid defensive performances for the remainder of the regular season and in the Eagles' playoff victory Sunday at Minnesota.
The Eagles have allowed just 15.4 points per game since then, and if you remove the disastrous game in Baltimore from the equation, they allowed 12.4 points in the seven other games since their home loss to the Giants.
After yielding 401 yards to the Giants, the Eagles held their final seven opponents of the regular season under 300 yards. In their rematch with the Giants, the Eagles held New York to a season-low 211 yards and became the only team to beat the Giants in Giants Stadium this season.
"After the first Giants game . . . we went back to square one . . . and started putting the pieces back together and built up to where we were before," safety Quintin Mikell said.
So what needed to change after the first Giants game?
"The whole attitude," Mikell said. "We didn't have the right attitude, and we were getting out of our gaps. Maybe it's the focus. Maybe it's the fact when you're down here [holding his hand low], you try hard to get back up there [holding his hand high]. We got to the point where we got up there, and we kept getting better and better and better. Right now, we've got that mentality that we're not going to let up. We have that confidence. We're playing together, and we're confident in each other."
Mikell and fellow safety Brian Dawkins played a huge part in the defense's rise from pretty good to No. 1 in the NFC.
Earlier in the season, opposing tight ends torched the Eagles weekly. Witten and Washington's Chris Cooley had 100-yard receiving games against the Eagles in the first half of the season, and Giants tight end Kevin Boss had six catches for 69 yards in the first meeting between the teams. The three NFC East tight ends had a combined 12 catches for 103 yards in their second games against the Eagles. None of them was a huge factor.
Dawkins said he was unsure when the Eagles' defense starting rising to a higher level, but he was sure of the reason.
"Whichever game we stopped making the most mistakes in, it was that game," the seven-time Pro Bowl safety said. "Earlier, we were making a lot of mistakes. We were assisting teams and giving them opportunities to make plays against us. We stopped doing that."
The debates about how much Dawkins had left in his 35-year-old tank also stopped about that time, too. That's what happens when you have two sacks, an interception, and four forced fumbles in eight games.
Now, Dawkins talks about this Eagles' defense as one of the best he has been a part of during his 13 seasons in Philadelphia, and he has played on some outstanding ones.
"This is the best run-stopping defense that I've played on since I've been here, by far," Dawkins said. "That allows the other parts of the defense to flow when we stop the run."
It also does a lot for the offense.
Offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg admitted that the offense had been able to play a little more conservatively because the Eagles have so much faith in their defense these days.
"You can play toward your defense just a little bit when they are playing like they've played pretty much the whole year with very few exceptions," Mornhinweg said.
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