November 29, 2022
Jalen Hurts and the Eagles ran all over the Packers to a near record-breaking pace, Reed Blankenship stepped in and stepped up at safety, and the Eagles improved to a still NFL-best 10-1 on the season after putting down Green Bay 40-33.
The Eagles still have some concerns going forward – they're a bit banged up now and their run defense has been suspect – but they keep finding ways to win and ways to stay a step ahead of the rest of the NFC.
Sunday night and the day after brought some major talking points, so let's jump right in. Here's what they're saying about the Eagles...
Jalen Hurts ran all over the place, took care of the football, and led the Eagles offense on a 40-point performance Sunday night against the Packers.
He's good, an MVP candidate at this rate even, so if you haven't given him his due yet, you kind of have to now.
That goes for one of Hurts' biggest critics in NBC's Chris Simms too.
Said Simms on his Unbuttoned podcast about Sunday night's Eagles-Packers game:
"The second run, I looked up at everybody and I go 'Did they not understand who the f*** they were playing today?' Like...What? It was three of the most easy runs you'll ever see. It was like 'Wait...What's going on here? Is anybody in the screen?' But that's again, hey, Jalen's a phenomenal football player and clearly has stated here that he is one of the better quarterbacks in football. You're not gonna hear me say he's like a top-five quarterback in football, that ain't gonna happen. But either way, maybe he's ongoing in that direction.
"Again, just all the issues you have to worry about with that football team, it's hard to cover all your bases and that was one last night where it looked like Green Bay went 'we're gonna stop everything except we're not gonna have anybody that can spy him or really worry about him, containing him in scrambles, and of course, that became a big issue.
...
It's pick your poison with Philadelphia a little bit unless you're a special defense and I really think there is only a handful of defenses in football that can really give them problems." [NFL on NBC]
Probably move him up that offseason QB list this summer.
C.J. Gardner-Johnson went down, Reed Blankenship's number was called, and the undrafted rookie stepped up with a huge interception and a handful of solid tackles at safety.
Will Sunday night be remembered as "The Reed Blankenship Game"? Probably not.
Do the Eagles want their starting safety, who's out indefinitely with a lacerated kidney, back healthy and as soon as possible? Of course.
But as Bo Wulf wrote for The Athletic, any team with championship aspirations, no matter how much star power it has, doesn't get through the season without a few unheralded names stepping up.
The honor was Blankenship's Sunday night.
At 10-1, the Eagles do not lack star power. Their leader, quarterback Jalen Hurts, is an MVP front-runner, more so after Philadelphia’s record-setting performance Sunday night. In any given game, A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, Miles Sanders or Dallas Goedert can hog the spotlight. Darius Slay and James Bradberry burn bright in the secondary, while any one of a deep cast of defensive linemen is capable of stealing a scene. But any team with the highest aspirations knows it will need unheralded players to step in and step up along the way.
Enter Blankenship, who grew up in a small Alabama town of just over 100 people. A five-year starter in college who holds the program’s all-time tackles record, Blankenship nevertheless went undrafted in the spring and signed with the Eagles for $55,000 guaranteed and a $5,000 signing bonus, ranking him 11th on the team’s 12-player class of undrafted rookies. General manager Howie Roseman later said Blankenship was the “last man in (the safety) group” when he joined the team. But Nick Sirianni heard good things from some coaching friends who were around Blankenship at Middle Tennessee. Early in training camp, Blankenship’s instincts earned him some attention. When the pads came on, he began to stand out. [The Athletic]
The nickname is no joke and has data-driven evidence to prove it thanks to the folks at FiveThirtyEight.
Using player-tracking data from NFL Next Gen Stats to evaluate every route, A.J. Brown is the most open receiver in the NFL this season, and it's by a wide margin.
You can check out the full chart and ratings board HERE, but for a quick glance, here are the top three receivers in the open rating alongside some other stats for a bit more context:
| Rank | Receiver | Open | Catch | YAC | OVR |
| 1 | A.J. Brown, PHI | 97 | 54 | 66 | 89 |
| 2 | Tyreek Hill, MIA | 89 | 79 | 44 | 86 |
| 3 | Tyler Lockett, SEA | 89 | 88 | 32 | 85 |
Brown's 89 overall rating is also tied for first with Buffalo's Stefon Diggs.
Speaking of Brown, he was pretty sick going into Sunday night's game against the Packers.
Via the NFL Network's James Palmer:
It took a lot for A.J. Brown to play tonight. He has a busted blood vessel in his eye from from throwing up. He lost roughly 7 pounds from being sick. He actually wasn’t feeling well until the second quarter.
— James Palmer (@JamesPalmerTV) November 28, 2022
AJ Brown was so sick he lost 7 pounds and popped a blood vessel in his eye from puking so much pic.twitter.com/zxgsJgG57A
— Crossing Broad (@CrossingBroad) November 28, 2022
But he did also haul in a touchdown pass against the Packers and continues to be a force in the Eagles' receiving corps that defenses have to always worry about.
And that he was still able to have the kind of game he did while being sick is extremely impressive.
His former team, the Tennessee Titans, are on deck this Sunday.
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