Results, not quality of opponent important for Eagles

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It’s okay to be skeptical of the Eagles following a 39-17 victory for the same reason it was okay to hold out belief the season wasn’t over when they were 1-3. The sample sizes are too small – even four games, because teams can improve or regress over the course of a season – and too often conclusions are formed based purely on the final outcome.

The Eagles lost by two points against a still-unbeaten opponent and by three to a division rival. That hardly makes them a bad team, even though that often becomes the prevailing belief when the record reflects it.

Defeating the newly 1-4 New Orleans Saints doesn’t make the Eagles a good team, either. One game is not evidence a team has turned its season around, “found its identity” or quit making stupid, avoidable, fundamental mistakes. That can only be proven over time.

But one thing we shouldn’t get too hung up on is the quality of the Saints, not when a team wins the way the Eagles did on Sunday. The game wasn’t even as close as the final score indicates. The Eagles could’ve hung 50 on them were it not for two Sam Bradford red-zone interceptions, and the Saints tacked on a garbage-time touchdown as the clock hit zero. The Eagles offense racked up 34 first downs and 519 yards of total offense. The defense sacked Drew Brees five times and forced four turnovers.

It was total domination. It was four quarters of football.

It was exactly what we needed to see.

There are a lot of average or bad teams coming up on the schedule that the Eagles can use to get well against. Trust me, they won’t apologize for steamrolling any of them, nor should they. Every win counts. Every game is a chance to get better and develop as a team.

Obviously, the Eagles need to beat some respectable opponents eventually, too, if they’re going to be postseason relevant, but we’re getting way ahead of ourselves there. Sunday was about more than making a mark in the W column. It was about what transpired, the actual results on the field.

Bradford needed to continue to progress, and two picks aside, he did that. The sixth-year veteran completed 71.1 percent of his passes for 333 yards and two touchdowns while getting nine different receivers involved. Most importantly, he kept the chains moving and the offense on the field, throwing for 18 first downs.

Bradford’s success was aided in part by a ground attack that finally got heading in the right direction. For the first time all season, DeMarco Murray, Ryan Mathews and Darren Sproles all averaged over 4.0 yards per carry, as the trio combined to rush 33 times for 183 yards.

You can thank the offensive line for big days from Bradford and the backs. Injured and maligned, the Eagles finally seemed to gain some continuity up front. With the missed assignments and total breakdowns cleaned up, that allowed both the running and passing games to flourish.

And the defense made an elite quarterback in Brees look merely ordinary. Yes, he’s no longer surrounded by a great supporting cast, he was behind a patchwork offensive line and he’s 36 and injured. Regardless, the defense did its job, shutting down the run, getting pressure on the quarterback and taking the football away.

The Saints are a bad football team, but the Eagles just handed them their worst loss of the year, and did it with a total team effort. They threw the ball, they ran the ball, they blocked, they tackled, they covered and they forced turnovers. They even made most of their kicks!

It didn’t come down to the last minute. The game wasn’t close in the end. The Eagles simply pounded them into submission.

That doesn’t mean the Eagles would’ve humiliated a quality opponent the same way. That doesn’t mean there weren’t mistakes that need to be cleaned up.

Then again, improvement usually doesn’t happen overnight. It’s gradual. Bradford and his receivers, the running backs, the offensive line, the defense – there are so many new parts, so many things that went wrong over the first quarter of the season, all anybody can expect and hope for are incremental steps forward from one week to the next.

The Eagles accomplished that on Sunday. It doesn’t matter who the opponent was. In an odd sort of way, it doesn’t even matter that they won. What matters is how they won.

That is as long as they continue to build on it.

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