Eagles make up for awful start with big finish

The contrails from the military-style flyover had barely dissipated in the sky above Lincoln Financial Field on Sunday when the Eagles and their season of high expectations began to leak smoke as well.

One offensive turnover led to a touchdown for the Jacksonville Jaguars and, just to prove it wasn't a fluke, another was followed by the same result. By the end of the first half, the Eagles trailed by 17 points, and the fans who came to celebrate the new beginning sent them into the locker room with an old serenade.

"I was frustrated. I heard a few fans that were frustrated," coach Chip Kelly said later. "They had every right. I was booing myself."

It was easy to make jokes by then, after the offense awoke in the second half and the defense steadied itself and the Eagles recovered to post a deceiving 34-17 win to open the regular season.

"That's not the way you script it. That's not the way any of us wanted to start, but it's the way we did start," defensive coordinator Bill Davis said. "This is the NFL. Adversity's going to hit. How you handle it is the big question."

By that measure, they did very well. Quarterback Nick Foles, who had the highest quarterback rating in the league last season, missed on half of his pass attempts in the opening half, held the ball long enough to be sacked five times, and threw an interception. He didn't throw one until December last year.

"You can't get frustrated, because your teammates are looking to you in those situations," Foles said. "In the first half, there was a ton of adversity, and the big thing you take from this is that we have great teammates, great coaches, and we're going to stick together and play together."

Things turned out well this time, at home against a Jacksonville team that was 4-12 last season and isn't expected to be much better this time around. Digging that kind of hole on a regular basis should eventually catch up with them, but the Eagles might be good enough to pull off a few escapes.

"If you're going to win a lot of games during the year, there is going to be maybe a day or two like this," offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur said, "where if you're not a team developing into a good team, you don't get it done."

Turning around the game began on the first drive of the second half, and the big moment of that drive said a lot about both the players who are chosen and the way they are used.

The Eagles added versatile running back Darren Sproles in the offseason, despite the presence of star runner LeSean McCoy. It was assumed Sproles would be used primarily as a receiver out of the backfield, but there he was on Sunday, taking the handoff from Foles on what would become the biggest play of the game.

"We weren't throwing chairs at halftime," Kelly said. "We just wanted to make a couple of plays and get back in it."

"The message coming out for the second half was, 'Let's put a fish in the box.' Let's get a score and get it going," Shurmur said.

That first drive sputtered when a third-down play came up less than a yard short near midfield, but the Eagles lined up quickly while the Jags were still trying to figure out what would happen next. What happened next, as Jacksonville left the middle of the field untended, was that Sproles took the ball, found a gap in the line, and went 49 yards for a touchdown.

"I don't think they were lined up properly," center Jason Kelce said. "That's what this offense can do - make it difficult to line up."

After that, the momentum never swung back to the Jaguars. Special-teams bombardier Chris Maragos dropped the Jacksonville return man at the 14-yard line on the ensuing kickoff, and by the time the Jags offense crossed midfield again, it was the fourth quarter and the game was tied.

Foles, who was 15 for 21 in the second half, untied it with a 68-yard touchdown pass to Jeremy Maclin with just over seven minutes to play, and the Jaguars were finished.

"I think it was just a matter of time before we did it," Maclin said. "Obviously, we like to start faster, but nobody quit. Nobody for one second doubted that we [would] win this game."

That was also easy to say, after the smoke of the first half had been cleared by the fresh breeze following halftime, after the season of great expectations caught itself in mid-stumble and the Eagles put up 34 unanswered points.

It was a lot easier to say, in fact, than it was to do. The remarkable part is that the Eagles eventually made the doing look easy, too.

"Everybody knew what we had to do," linebacker DeMeco Ryans said.

The trick is not making that sort of thing necessary every week.

@bobfordsports