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On Friday night at the team hotel, Eagles coach Nick Sirianni flipped on the closing battle scene from . In it, Eminem confronts Papa Doc—and everything Papa Doc knows about him, and everyone else knows about him—and uses all of it to take his rival down.
The moment became Eminem’s as a result.
Sirianni then challenged his Eagles to seize Saturday’s divisional playoff against the Giants in the same sort of way. Before Week 18, the coach had shown those same guys in that same room video of Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan to remind them of who they’d been all year—after an uneven month prior. And the Eminem example was about owning all of that, and doing it against a familiar opponent.
“It was just more about—,” veteran defensive end Brandon Graham says. “So let’s just go out there and be us.”
As a result, the Eagles were unapologetically themselves Saturday night, right down to Sirianni jawing with the ref over running down the sideline to call a timeout (“I know what the f— I’m doing, and I’m allowed to be down here”). And what they were, and are, was more than enough to get Philly to the NFC championship game with a 38–7 win over the Giants.
The final score might not quite do justice to the bludgeoning that Philly’s guests from up the Jersey Turnpike took in prime time. The Eagles doubled up the Giants in first downs, 26–13 (It was 18–3 at the half), and 416–227 in yards from scrimmage (258–64 at the half). And the Eagles held the ball for over 35 minutes (more than 20 in the first half) to control this thing from start to finish.
Just like Eminem came after Papa Doc in that famous scene, the Eagles put the Giants in a locker early and held them there the rest of the night. Jalen Hurts had two touchdown passes before he threw an incompletion. Philly had three touchdowns before the Giants picked up their fourth first down. It was 28–0 at the half, and Philly was content from there to continue delivering body blows that, eventually, would lead to a couple finishing shots.
Graham said to me after the game, “Honestly, I was a little nervous just because you play a team three times, and they were confident …”
And, sometimes, weird things can happen. But this time around? There was nothing weird, again, the Eagles spent the past few weeks leaning so hard into who they are.
They did that through those videos Sirianni showed them. But it also happened during the bye week, with what Graham called a renewed focus on “what we’re good at.”
“We got back to the basics,” Graham says. “And it’s always good to remind yourself of the basics; that’s what we’ve been preaching all week, all year. I feel like a lot of stuff showed up that we practiced this week. And it was little things, man.”
The best example came on the second-to-last play of the first quarter, with Philly leading 14–0. The Eagles had been drilled in practice on a bread-and-butter Giants pass concept Thursday, and James Bradberry had it down to the point where he sniffed out what the scout team was doing at the snap, and got a good enough jump on the ball to undercut the route of the receiver to the left side of the formation and intercept the quarterback.
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The same scenario unfolded Saturday. Bradberry was ready for what his former team was throwing at him. Facing a simulated pressure, Daniel Jones hurriedly unloaded the ball underneath to Darius Slayton—who slipped—and Bradberry dove for the pick.
“Same route. Same thing,” Graham says. “With James, that route right there, he’s been doing it since training camp. And that’s one right there that we’ve seen coming of what we did in practice.”
It also, Graham continued, was a result of the details in routes that Sirianni and his staff demand from their receivers, which had a way of training Bradberry on what to look for.
So that’s the small-picture part. The bigger picture, though, relates to the 2017 title team and how the foundation of this year’s team and that year’s team—another “Who We Are” element—is very similar. Both the ’17 team and this team found strength along the line of scrimmage. And where so much of the roster has turned over since the Eagles won the world title behind Doug Pederson and Nick Foles, ties between the two teams exist up front.
Five players are left from 2017. One is kicker Jake Elliott. The other four are linemen, two on offense (Lane Johnson, Jason Kelce), two on defense (Graham, Fletcher Cox), all of whom have at least a decade of experience in the league.
Which makes how the Eagles finished the Giants off just as telling as the rush of points and stops were in the first half. With 3:56 left, a Graham sack on first-and-10 sparked one final turnover on downs forced by the defense. Then, right after the two-minute warning, the Eagles’ front sprung Kenneth Gainwell free on third-and-9 for one final touchdown, breaking the Giants’ defense for the final 35 of 268 rushing yards.
“If you want to go far in this game, it starts up front,” Graham says. “You have to be able to push, and you gotta have strength on both sides, offense and defense. It always starts up front. Every play starts with who’s coming off the hardest and who can get pushed to disrupt the quarterback or keep the quarterback out of pressure. And we do a great job up front both ways of sharpening each other. I’m just excited because I know that everybody is healthy.
“And everybody is feeling good.”
Mostly, Graham continued, it’s because these Eagles, after that December swoon, and having to go a few weeks without Hurts, have found themselves again.
