Roob's Observations: Late magic from Saquon caps off statement win in Baltimore

The fourth quarter once again was magic for Saquon Barkley and the Eagles, and if the Ravens and their No. 1 run defense can’t stop him, who can?

Nobody can.

Nobody had rushed for more than 63 yards against the Ravens this year and Barkley did it in the last 12 minutes.

The Eagles keep winning and after this statement in Baltimore against a very good Ravens team, I’m not sure when they’ll lose again.

Or if they’ll lose again.

The Eagles are now 10-2 with an eight-game winning streak and watch out. They keep getting better.

Eagles 24, Ravens 19, thanks to a late Ravens touchdown that made the score deceptively close. But really this was a 24-12 game until the final three seconds and it was a spectacular performance in all phases for the Eagles.

1. Just a tremendous performance by the Eagles’ defense against a super-charged Ravens offense averaging 427 yards and 30 points per game and 7.0 yards per play. Against the Eagles until the final minute, they managed 302 yards, 12 points and 4.7 yards per play, stats that the Ravens padded with a meaningless last-minute drive. The Eagles didn’t get any takeaways against a team that rarely turns the ball over, but they pressured Jackson and hit him early and often and contained him when he wanted to run. They kept Derrick Henry in check, and they got big stops in huge moments. They gave up nine points in the first quarter and three on the Ravens' next nine drives. And they did it without their defensive captains and leaders Brandon Graham and Darius Slay, they did much of it without Reed Blankenship, who suffered a concussion in the third quarter, and they did some of it without Nakobe Dean and Quinyon Mitchell, who missed plays in the second half. But this was a monumental defensive effort and you look out there and Tristin McCollum is covering Mark Andrews and Avonte Maddox is running down the field covering Nelson Agholor, and that’s not ideal, but the subs played fine, the starters were spectacular and if there were any question before just how good this defense is – and there shouldn’t have been – they’ve all been answered. A defensive masterpiece.

2. And the defense kept the Eagles in it until it was Saquon time and his 4th-quarter heroics continued against the best run defense in the NFL because why wouldn’t they? He’s Saquon. You can stop him for 30 minutes, 40 minutes, 45 minutes, but you can’t stop him for an entire game. Early in the fourth quarter, he had 13 carries for 51 yards. Ravens had him bottled up. Nowhere to run. Eagles get the ball back four minutes into the fourth quarter and there goes Barkley for 14 yards and then 25 yards for the clinching touchdown with eight minutes left. Nobody had rushed for more than 63 yards against the Ravens this year and Barkley had 107 – 61 of them in the fourth quarter. It’s insane how good he is and insane how well this offensive line blocks for him. They just get stronger and stronger as the game goes on and if the Ravens can’t stop 4th-quarter Saquon nobody can. Nobody. He's the best player in the NFL and that was obvious to anybody watching this game. What he did Sunday in Baltimore – what he’s done all year – is no less than magnificent. He’s the best player I’ve ever seen.

3. How about a shout-out to Tristin McCollum, forced into action in the second half with Reed Blankenship out with a concussion. McCollum had played all of 93 career snaps coming into the game, in his third year undrafted out of Sam Houston State, and on the Ravens’ critical fourth down – 4th and 8 from the Ravens’ 42 with 6:18 left and the Eagles up nine – it was McCollum who batted down a Lamar Jackson pass intended for Zay Flowers to end the suspense. You’ve got to give this kid so much credit. This was his 12th career game and he was ready for the moment. You’ve got to love it. Nick Sirianni has a developmental period at the end of practice where the guys who aren’t getting a lot of reps at practice or in games get some extra work with the coaches and there’s no doubt that’s one of the reasons guys like McCollum are mentally and physically ready when they do get that opportunity.

4. Jalen Carter is giving the Eagles some of the best interior line play they’ve ever gotten. And by ever I mean including Fletcher Cox, including Jerome Brown, including – heck I’ll go back to Bucko Kilroy and Floyd Peters. Not that I saw them play, but Carter is playing at a simply astronomical level right now and his ability to impact the game snap after snap is mind-blowing. His disruptiveness doesn’t always show up in the box score, but it sure did Sunday with a sack, two quarterback hits and three tackles for loss. He’s now got 4 ½ sacks, 12 tackles for loss and 12 QB hits in 12 games. All-pro numbers for an interior lineman. Fletch put up those numbers twice in a full season and he’s a borderline Hall of Famer. What Carter is doing for this defense is preposterous.

5. A sign of a great team, a Super Bowl contender, is winning on the road, and the Eagles are now 5-1 on the road and 6-1 if you include the opener in São Paulo, and that’s just remarkable stuff. Those six wins have come by an average score of 30-13, which is insane. They’re now 24-11 under Nick Sirianni on the road and 22-9 since the middle of 2021. That’s the sign of a team that’s prepared, that’s focused, that doesn’t get distracted by the crowd or travel, that’s learned how to win under any circumstances. This is only the second time in franchise history the Eagles have had a winning road record in four consecutive seasons, the first time they’ve done it in a coach’s first four seasons. And they’re not just winning, they’re crushing people. For a team to consistently go into opposing stadiums and leave with commanding wins is rare. And they’re doing it week after week.

6. A huge moment in this game was the Eagles’ brilliant defensive stand early in the second quarter. With the Ravens up 9-0, Sydney Brown downed a Braden Mann punt at the 1-yard-line three minutes into the quarter, and three plays netted the Ravens just five yards. Reed Blankenship stopped Mark Andrews after a five-yard gain on first down, Nakobe Dean and Zach Baun stuffed Derrick Henry for no gain on second down – Jordan Davis blew the play up – and then Jackson threw incomplete on third down. Just fantastic team defense. If the Ravens go down and score there, things could get out of hand quickly. But instead the Eagles got the ball back at midfield and they needed just six plays to get in the end zone on Jalen Hurts’ 17-yard TD pass to Dallas Goedert. Before that stand, the Ravens outscored the Eagles 9-0. After it? The Eagles outscored the Ravens 24-3 until that meaningless late drive. Big stops at big moments. That was one of them.

7. Really surprised the Eagles were never able to get the passing game going against this 31st-ranked Ravens pass defense. Even without DeVonta Smith there’s no excuse for the passing game to look this ragged against a secondary that hasn’t stopped anybody this year. Jalen Hurts was 11-for-19 for just 118 yards with a touchdown to Dallas Goedert but without a completion longer than 17 yards. This is a Ravens defense that had allowed 278 passing yards per game coming in and 22 passing TDs – 3rd-most in the NFL entering the weekend. Part of the problem might have been that the Eagles just didn’t run many plays. They never had the ball. Tough for a quarterback to get into any sort of rhythm when he’s sitting on the bench for two-thirds of the game. This was a matchup I thought the Eagles could really exploit. Hurts wasn’t awful. Didn’t turn the ball over and had a couple nice 1st-down runs. But he just never got into any sort of rhythm. A.J. Brown had 66 yards – all in the second quarter – and the only other wide receiver to catch a pass was Jahan Dotson, who caught one seven-yarder. At some point they’re going to need to get the passing game going. DeVonta Smith can't get back soon enough.

8. I can’t say the Eagles shut down Derrick Henry. He was 19-for-82 rushing. But considering the season he’s having? Henry is one of only three running backs in NFL history with 1,300 rushing yards, a 6.0 average and 10 touchdowns through 12 games (the other two are Jim Brown in 1963 and Saquon Barkley this year). Henry can kill you. He’s got three runs of at least 50 yards, 14 runs of at least 20 yards, and he didn’t have a single run of 20 yards Sunday. He’s a Hall of Famer. But after getting off to a promising start – 6-for-38 in the first quarter – he averaged just 3.4 yards per carry the rest of the game on 13-for-44 with a long gainer of 10 yards over the final 45 minutes. The Eagles tackled so well Sunday. You have to go low on Henry because if you try to tackle him high he keeps those legs moving and breaks tackles and gets out into the open field and that’s where he’s so dangerous. The Eagles made sure that didn’t happen. Just outstanding form tackling. Cooper DeJean, Zack Baun, Nakobe Dean and Reed Blankenship in particular were so solid making sure Henry never really got going. If Henry and Saquon Barkley were both MVP candidates coming in, it’s pretty clear who the better player is.

9. We talk all the time about Lane Johnson and Jordan Mailata, who are two of the best offensive tackles in the league, but those three interior guys have been playing at such a high level too. Mekhi Becton is still new at guard and he’s playing better and better every week. What a find he’s turned out to be. His run blocking has just been next-level. Gotta get him re-signed. Landon Dickerson remains one of the NFL’s best guards and is playing consistently tough, physical football. Cam Jurgen over the last month or so has really raised his level of play in his first year as an NFL center. And it’s incredible that this offensive line lost a Hall of Famer center and they might be playing better as a group this year. And the whole group plays so well together. And they keep getting better. Scary.

10. Interesting to note that this week last year the Eagles lost 42-19 to the 49ers at the Linc to fall to 10-2 and today they won in Baltimore to get to 10-2. I don’t want to harp too much on last year’s collapse, but to really appreciate where the Eagles are now, winning eight straight games and just dominating teams week after week, it’s important to look at how far they’ve come in the last year. That was a big narrative coming into the season, can Nick Sirianni rebuild this team’s psyche after that historic collapse? And look where they are now. The key to the turnaround was figuring out why it happened because you can’t fix it if you don’t understand it, and Howie Roseman and Nick Sirianni spent a lot of time early in the offseason working on that and ultimately realizing that last year’s team – especially on defense - was too old, too slow and worst of all too disinterested. They offboarded all the dead weight and started over rebuilding the defense around young, fast kids, they put a new focus on conditioning, they upgraded both coordinators, they lengthened training camp practices and it’s all paid off in the 4th-longest winning streak in Eagles history.  One more win ties the longest (from 1960, 2003 and 2017). And that horrific collapse seems like ancient history.

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