The Washington Commanders are new to this big-game thing, which is why they acted on their first drive like their only way to beat the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFC championship game was to never relinquish the ball. They must have known that they would spend the rest of Sunday relinquishing everything.
Such is the price of being a newbie—errors happen and then compound themselves. The plucky underdog with the pretty new quarterback (Jayden Daniels) started out treating fourth down like it was second down with a bad attitude. They drove for 18 plays, converted two fourth-and-punt-the-ball downs, and ground out seven minutes of clock to give the game the chaotic feel that they needed it to have. It worked out for the opening score, though weirdly they kicked a field goal rather than press their luck. It was the omen that nobody saw coming.
Four turnovers and Saquon Barkley later, the Eagles showed Washington that being agents of chaos only works so long and so often when the forces of orthodoxy are too strong. In this case, it worked for just those seven minutes before Philly unleashed its ode to the 1970s and stomped out a fully comprehensive 55-23 victory for a trip to New Orleans for the Super Bowl.
Washington's high-water mark was its first drive, and after that their game was a slowly draining bathtub. For the next 52 minutes and five seconds, they learned that fourth-down conversions aren't as cool as Barkley with room to run, and the tone of the day was snatched away by the Eagles and held the rest of the night. In a departure from cliché, the game was exactly as close as the final score indicated. The right team won with the right ratio of statistical superiority.
Philly crushed the neophyte 'Ders with seven rushing touchdowns, the most in any playoff game since the Chicago Bears had seven in their 73-0 NFL championship win over Washington in 1940. It was a performance so demonstrative that Nick Sirianni's job is now safe from the WIP drive-time radio brickheads for at least a week.
Barkley (from 60, four, and four yards) and quarterback Jalen Hurts (from one, nine, and one yards) had three touchdowns each, and when given the rest of the day off, backup backup Will Shipley punched in a radio score (the kind you only hear when you're in your car for the drive home) to get them over half-a-hundred. It tied the 49ers in Super Bowl 24 for the seventh-highest scoring game in playoff history, and the Eagles were unlucky it wasn't more. To put the extraneous thumb in the eye, the Eagles converted each of Washington's three fumbles and their late-game WTF interception into touchdowns to turn a difficult afternoon for the noobs into a full-on franchise catastrophe.
Catastrophe, that is, if you think this is the kind of game that breaks a team's psyche before it gets a chance to build up valuable calluses. Not many folks saw Washington winning, but nobody saw this. Maybe they saw Barkley's final numbers (15 for 118), and maybe they saw the Eagles winning the turnover battle, but not by a net of four, let alone scoring enough points off those turnovers to win the game outright. Indeed, the only way this could have gone better for the Iggs or worse for the 'Ders is if the seventh score had been awarded due to excessive encroachment, which Washington nearly achieved by repeatedly trying to anticipate a tush push snap and having Frankie Luvu hurdle both lines. True to the day, they failed all three times and got a schoolmarm's lecture from referee Shawn (Son Of Biceps) Hochuli to not to do it again or have the touchdown awarded by fiat. Suddenly, nothing to lose turned to it's already lost, and Washington's will to compete became a will to go home. That much, they did achieve, though Luvu should have done it again just for snicks and giggles. If you're losing a pie fight, you might as well dive on the dessert table to surrender.
In the end, Philadelphia rushed for nearly as many yards (229) as they threw for (230); the worries about Hurts's issues with consistency morphed into awe over Barkley's indomitability and the still-underrated Eagle defense. Even Eagles fans must enter the Super Bowl thinking this is their game to hold by the throat, though their Pavlovian instinct to expect the worst and then lower their expectations by 20 percent is not to be discounted. When their favorite team makes them like their least favorite coach, something seismic has happened.
