Eagles defense delivers against Marquee QB

The beginning was not great.

The Eagles won the toss attended by the day’s identical twin captains, Sidney and Chase Brown, and did what has become almost an organizing act. They postponed.

Joe Burrow and the Bengals quickly went on a methodical 17-play, 70-yard drive with five third-down conversions that took up more than two-thirds of the first quarter, 10:04 minutes to be exact, the longest opening drive in the series. NFL this season.

It was going to be a long day for Philadelphia’s defense, right?

Instead, the Eagles made an impressive course correction, allowing just 10 points the rest of the way to an easy 37-17 victory, the organization’s first in Cincinnati.

“Do you think they’re going to beat us that much?” middle linebacker Nakobe Dean asked rhetorically. “…It was a good game. We knew who we were playing. We knew (Burrow) can make a lot of throws, and their playmakers can catch and make a lot of plays. For us, limiting them to 17 points, which, according to our standards, it is the basis. But there are many things we can clean up.

“On that first drive, they held on for 10 minutes. We couldn’t get off the field on third down. So there were a lot of things we could clean up: offense and defense.”

Vic Fangio’s unit rallied to hold the Bengals under 300 yards of total offense (280) and also generated two turnovers as the Eagles showed off their growing chemistry on defense.

On a route to superstar Ja’Marr Chase, Isaiah Rodgers, filling in for an injured Darius Slay, tipped the ball from Burrow directly into the hands of CJ Gardner-Johnson. Later, with Cincinnati in desperate mode, a completion from Burrow to Mike Gesicki was knocked out by a short left-handed “Peanut Punch” from Zack Baun that Dean jumped on.

“That was big, just because we’ve been insisting on takeout.” Dean said. “I mean, dwell on the takeaways: turnover drills, hitting the ball, getting interceptions. It was definitely big when Zack forced the fumble on me. It’s something we worked like crazy on in the linebacker room. It was something that “We were trying to see who would get it first. So for him to hit the ball, I was excited. I picked up the ball and went to celebrate. Then I ran to the sideline) to no one but him because we worked on it.”

The Eagles defense now hopes for success after two straight games without allowing a touchdown and then limiting a Burrow-led offense.

“Win, dominate, execute,” Dean said. “I really don’t know how to feel… For us, it’s the same every week. We’re going to come, we’re going to dominate. We know we’re playing against a really good quarterback, with a really good offense, probably one of the best.” that we will face. “We had a plan, we stuck to the plan, like we do every week.”

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