I knew it was over when Tress Way’s pass was in the air. Jeremiah Trotter Jr. was too far behind whichever Washington player was running free downfield. I didn’t yet know the name of the guy who was going to end the Eagles’ season was, but I learned. A third-string tight end named Ben Sinnott caught that 23-yard pass on a fake punt, and this was absolutely the turning point. The Commanders were down 14-3 at that moment, but I knew what was going to happen next. I was already thinking about how Way and Sinnott were going to become part of D.C. sports lore, famous for the play that turned around a game that seemed to be getting away from them. The Commanders were going to win the NFC Championship.
I like to think I’m a reasonable person, but I am not. There were still two minutes left in the first quarter when my brain decided that the Eagles, up two scores and moving the ball with ease, were going to lose. Anyway, that Commanders drive ended with a field goal and not a touchdown, and I relaxed a little. Some time later, the Eagles won the game by the score of 55-23.
Like anyone with a problem, I like to keep people around me who have bigger problems. Saquon Barkley ran for a 60-yard touchdown on the Eagles’ first offensive play; there are only so many ways to spin this sort of thing as a negative. Someone who had cared about the Eagles for long enough to do so could compare the run to Wilbert Montgomery's in the 1981 NFC title game; he scored on the Eagles’ second offensive play in what wound up being a 20-7 win over Dallas. Or you could be my friend Brian. He turned to me after Barkley’s run and said it reminded him of Duce Staley, who scored on the second offensive play of the 2002 NFC title game—the only Eagles touchdown in a 27-10 loss to the Bucs in the final game at Veterans Stadium. Even I hadn’t made that connection, but now Brian had me a little worried. This is how friends help friends watch the Eagles.
At halftime I texted my parents and told them that the Eagles, then up 27-15, were almost certainly going to win—but that it was pathetic they’d just allowed a field goal drive in the half’s final 40 seconds. “So stupid,” my dad replied. “This game is too important. The defense was awful on that drive.” My mom was absolutely convinced the game was over—Washington had this one.
To reiterate: this game was not close. It was only very briefly even Somewhat Close. The Eagles scored eight touchdowns. They had four takeaways. Third-string running back Will Shipley forced a fumble and rushed for 77 yards. Things got so out of hand that Kenny Pickett took some snaps. Also, the crowd at the bar fell completely silent several times during the game’s few tense moments. The fake punt hushed the room; later in the second quarter, Terry McLaurin’s TD catch made it 14-12 and the vibe curdled further. I was checking that stupid chart on the ESPN box score that gives a percentage chance that each team wins the game. The Eagles were still at something like 88 percent. A Delaware woman had sprinkled holy wooder on the field before the game; because it is Ordinary Time on the Catholic calendar, the priests’ vestments were green. Auspicious signs were everywhere. But, you know.
I want to add: I like this. Football is most interesting to me because of the third down. Every team in the NFL averaged at least 11 third downs a game this season; there were 27 third downs in Sunday’s game. There were seven attempts at a first on fourth down, which is in my opinion an even better version of a third down. A football game can be slow and boring. A series of third- and fourth-down plays can make it interesting. Let’s say I’m on edge for 20 of those in a given game. Certainly the Eagles are going to give up some. Part of me, personally, would like the defense to stop every conversion attempt, but that is not how it goes. In place of that is a constant worry; for me, football is a constant stream of impending doom. The horror movies I watch are Eagles games. The possibility of disappointment increases the joy.
This is football to me. I am convinced multiple times during every Eagles game that they are going to lose. That loss might come on a last-minute drive, or an early lead could become a blowout the other way. Maybe a missed field goal or extra point would doom the team. I spent a portion of the Super Bowl win over the Patriots worrying if fans would spend the next 20 years debating extra-point decisions. When Ronald Darby dropped an interception before that game's final play, I was convinced a successful Hail Mary was coming.
The last 25 years should have diminished this. The Eagles were also-rans with some intermittent moments of competitiveness and exuberance during my childhood; now they are generally good most seasons. This is their fourth Super Bowl appearance this century. I got none in the first 21 years of my life. All of which is to say that, the barroom and Brian and my parents and my own sense of things notwithstanding, the Eagles generally do not choke away these games. Sometimes the Eagles even win a game easily and I have no complaints. I do not root for these moments of panic during sports, but I have become very good at finding them.
Take the first drive of Sunday’s game. The Commanders were moving down the field. They’d converted two third downs and two fourth downs on their first drive. I thought back to the Eagles’ game against the Bengals, when Cincinnati converted all five of their third downs on the game's first drive and took a 7-0 lead; the Eagles ended up winning that one, 37-17. When Washington settled for a field goal to end that 18-play drive, I counted that as a win. Saquon Barkley running 60 yards for a score on the next play from scrimmage both enthused and terrified me, somehow more or less equally. When the Eagles, then up 14-12, completed a deep pass to A.J. Brown on fourth down, I even talked it up to the people around me. “That basically might be the game there,” I said to no one in particular. “Score a touchdown here, one when you get the ball back at halftime, and the game is over.” The joke is that Philly is always either cocky or distraught; that's not totally false, but it misses the extent to which we are often both at the same time, and how much that strange arrangement works.
