Eagles vs. Washington: 14 winners, 4 losers, 2 IDKs

The Philadelphia Eagles beat the Washington Football Team on Tuesday night. In honor of this unnecessarily postponed game, I’m here to provide an unnecessarily postponed postgame column. Even though we’re just a couple days away from the Eagles playing in Week 16. OK, enough preamble. Time to hand out some winners, losers, and IDKs.

WILD CARD FEVER

We already wrote about the Eagles’ playoff outlook in more detail. The short of it is in they’re in a decent spot. It’ll be tough for them to miss it if they win out. Going 2-1 could be good enough unless the Minnesota Vikings and/or New Orleans Saints win out. The feeling here is things will shake out where the Birds make the postseason.

NICK SIRIANNI

Hard not to give the head coach credit when you look at these numbers:

Such a wild turnaround. It once looked like Sirianni was in over his head and the Eagles had no offensive identity. Now they’re one of the best offenses in the entire NFL.

We can always wonder what took so long for Sirianni to change the approach but, ultimately, he deserves credit for adjusting.

Sirianni’s play-calling was especially on-point against Washington. As highlighted by BGN’s Jonny Page, the Eagles showed some interesting looks. I really liked the 3rd-and-2 design where both Jordan Howard and Miles Sanders were lined up in the backfield with Quez Watkins running in orbit motion. Sanders ended up being uncovered and Hurts hit him for a 16-yard catch-and-run. The inclusion of Darius Slay on offense was also fun and seemed to be effective considering Sanders had a lot of space for a 7-yard carry on that play.

I wouldn’t say it was an A+ game for Sirianni since he did have some questionable game management decisions. Punting on 4th-and-4 from WFT’s 41-yard line was a bad look, especially after Arryn Siposs’s punt went for a touchback to result in a net difference of just 21 yards. Kicking a field goal with the ball at the 2-yard line was too conservative. I would’ve opted to accept the offside penalty on Jake Elliott’s last field goal to set up 4th-and-1 instead of settling for the points.

Bringing up these moments might seem nitpicking. And, to some extent, it is. The Eagles won and Sirianni had a good game. That’s the bottom line. But the reality is the margin for error was bigger with the Birds playing a team with a depleted roster and starting a fourth-string quarterback. Sirianni’s decision-making is going to need to be more aggressive and sharp against higher quality opponents.

On the whole, Sirianni is clearly trending in the right direction.

JALEN HURTS

By the numbers: 20/26, 296 yards (11.4 average), 1 TD, 1 INT, 110.4 passer rating. Eight rushes for 38 yards and two touchdowns.

Not too shabby.

Hurts’ completion percentage could’ve been even higher if he didn’t have to deal with three drops,…