Defense was the key to the Eagles’ 16-9 win over the Lions last Sunday night and defensive tackle Jordan Davis had a big hand in their effort.
His big hands had a lot to do with that. Davis batted three of Lions quarterback Jared Goff’s passes away for incompletions over the course of the evening. The Eagles had 10 pass breakups as a team in the victory.
Davis, who also had a tackle, had three passes defensed all season before Monday night.
The NFL named Davis the NFC’s defensive player of the week on Wednesday. The 2022 first-round pick is a first-time recipient of the award.
On Sunday night, the Lions opted to attempt five fourth-down conversions. They failed on all of them and, in so doing, failed to keep the heat on a struggling Eagles offense.
The Eagles had only one fourth-down try. It happened late in the game, on fourth and one from Philly’s 29. The failure allowed the Lions to turn a 16-6 deficit into a one-score game, at 16-9. And it required the Eagles to play keep-away from Detroit, an effort that was fueled by an “absolutely terrible” pass interference penalty on Detroit.
It was the second straight game in which Eagles coach Nick Sirianni made a controversial decision on fourth down. Against the Packers, he opted to go for it from the Green Bay 35 on fourth and six with a three-point lead. The failed deep shot to receiver A.J. Brown gave Green Bay a chance to try to force overtime. (The Packers missed a 64-yard field goal at the buzzer.)
On Monday, Sirianni was asked during a press conference about his process for making fourth-down decisions late in a game that his team is leading.
“I’ve talked to you guys about this,” Sirianni said, possibly implying he didn’t really want to revisit it. (He did anyway.) “Again, there’s a lot of different factors that go into it. It always starts with the players and the play that you’re calling first. Do you have faith in the players that you have? The analytics can say what it wants, but if you don’t have faith in the players to go execute it, that doesn’t give you a lot of confidence. So then, what play do you have, the players that you have and then you do it. Analytics is a piece of the puzzle. All these different things are a piece of the puzzle. Your past successes, the league studies that you do, all these things play into that. I love our process.”
There’s a difference between the process and the results. In both situations, the process didn’t prevail.
“Just because you have a great process doesn’t automatically mean that you’re going to convert every fourth down,” Sirianni said. “I completely understand that. But we’ve got a great process with our coaches, great process figuring out how we go about attacking there, and when we go for it, I have to make those tough calls and be able to have that conviction. When you don’t convert on fourth down, it is always going to be on you as the head coach. You ultimately made that decision, and you’re not going to get a lot of praise when you get it on fourth down like, ‘Coach, great job on that decision.’ That just doesn’t go that way and that’s okay.
“You have to have major conviction within yourself, understanding that there’s going to be major criticisms when you don’t get it, and there’s not a lot of points that are given to you when you do get it. You have to have a major process that you go through to put yourself in a position where you can have major conviction when you make those decisions and fully accept all the criticism that happens when you.”
He also acknowledged that the performance of the defense on Sunday night was a factor.
"[I]t can help you decide on when to kick field goals, help you decide on when to punt, different things like that, knowing when the defense is rolling like that,” Sirianni said. “But, again, that’s what I’m saying. There are all these different pieces of the puzzle to help you make decisions and you’ve got to have the discernment and wisdom as you’re going through the game to understand how the game’s being played.”
He’s right about everything he said. But there’s one key factor that needs to be added.
Before the advent of the analytics age, coaches who did the conventional thing didn’t get criticized when the conventional thing didn’t work. Coaches who did the unconventional thing faced a public backlash if/when it didn’t work.
In 1995, for example, former Cowboys coach Barry Switzer went for it in the same spot against the Eagles with 2:00 minutes left in a 17-17 game. The Cowboys didn’t convert, and the Eagles won the game with a field goal.
Said Eagles coach Ray Rhodes after the game, “I don’t think my gonads are that big.”
Nowadays, the gonads/onions don’t require XL boxer briefs. Analytics has made the unconventional conventional, with more and more models saying “go” when conventional wisdom of past decades would say, “Are you freakin’ nuts?”
When Switzer did it (he explained that the Cowboys would have been punting into the wind, and that he believed his offense could “make a foot”), the external criticism was loud. And that external criticism can have very real internal consequences.
In 2025, ignoring the advice of the math experts who have ownership’s ear can lead to the same result.
Pre-analytics, coaches had a safe harbor in following the generally conventional path. Today, the safe thing to do is what the in-house analytics experts tell them to do. Disregard the numbers people, and the coach has to worry about the things they’ll say to the owner about the coach’s overall competence.
And so the external criticism is far less relevant for modern coaches than it used to be, especially since fans and media are far less inclined to heap criticism on a coach who goes for it on fourth down. ESPN analytics says ‘GO’ has gotten most to accept a rolling of the dice in circumstances that, not long ago, would have prompted cries for the coach’s ouster.
The more relevant consideration for coaches isn’t the shouts from outside, but the whispers from within.
The message? Accept the input from the analytics department, and you’re safe. Ignore that advice at your own career peril.
For every coach who sifts through the various factors while trying to make a good decision in the moment, that dynamic cannot be overlooked.
Lions cornerback Rock Ya-Sin was the victim of a brutal call by the officials at the end of Sunday night’s game, as a third-down stop that would have given the Lions the ball back in the fourth quarter was turned into a pass interference penalty that effectively handed the Eagles the game.
Afterward, Ya-Sin wasn’t complaining, but he did say that Eagles wide receiver A.J. Brown is the kind of player who gets the calls from NFL officials.
“A.J. Brown, really good player, All-Pro player, sometimes those kinds of players get those kinds of calls. It is what it is. I’ve got to do a better job,” Ya-Sin said.
Asked if the officials gave him an explanation of why he was penalized, Ya-Sin answered, “I didn’t ask for one. I let them do their job, I try to do my job. It is what it is.”
It was a bad call and a call that cost the Lions a chance at a comeback in Philadelphia on Sunday night, but it’s a call Ya-Sin knows he can’t do anything about. And a call Ya-Sin knows comes with the territory of covering a star receiver.
Eagles right tackle Lane Johnson left Sunday night’s win over the Lions with a foot injury and it looks like the team is going to continue to be without him for a while.
According to multiple reports, Johnson suffered a Lisfranc sprain. The injury is not expected to end his season, but he is considered to be likely to land on injured reserve.
If Johnson does go on injured reserve, he will miss at least four games. The Eagles’ next four opponents are the Cowboys, Bears, Chargers, and Raiders.
Fred Johnson took over at right tackle against Detroit and he is now in line to start any or all of those games.
During Detroit’s Week 3 win at Baltimore, ESPN’s Troy Aikman praised Lions coach Dan Campbell for his “big onions.” On Sunday night, those onions came up empty.
The Lions went for it five times on fourth down against the Eagles. They failed to convert a single one of them.
Last night, a predictable habit of aggressiveness wasn’t necessary. In a low-scoring game, engaging in a field-position battle makes more sense. Taking three in lieu of rolling the dice on seven becomes more prudent.
It’s the water’s edge of analytics. For some games, it makes sense to throw caution to the wind. In some games, it makes more sense to play it safe.
In some games, the bigger picture must be considered.
The Philadelphia offense had been the top NFL story of the week. From A.J. Brown’s comments on a Tuesday night Twitch stream to coach Nick Sirianni’s shortening fuse on the topic to Brown’s remarks to the media on Wednesday that highlighted a fundamental disagreement with quarterback Jalen Hurts on the question of whether winning a given game excuses offensive struggles to the news that Brown and owner Jeffrey Lurie met on Thursday to hash out Brown’s frustrations, the Eagles’ offense was on the ropes. The Lions’ strategy for Sunday night should have been to set the stage for them to fall through.
Punt the ball to them. Pin them deep. Force them to get the sputtering lawnmower started, while under the scrutiny of a fan base that would have made their displeasure with ongoing sluggishness known, loudly.
And blanket A.J. Brown. Everyone knew they’d be targeting him. Bait Hurts into thinking he was single covered. Get a safety in position to maybe get a pick, like the Bears did when it was obvious the Vikings would be trying to over-target Justin Jefferson.
The analytics aficionados will respond to any and every point made about the limitations of basing fourth-down decisions on the statistical success rate generated by hundreds if not thousands of iterations by claiming that the formula takes all relevant factors into account. But there’s no way that the mathematical equation considers whether and to what extent a conservative offensive approach by the Lions could have sparked a potential implosion of the Philly attack.
Instead, the Eagles have regained their swagger. They’re 8-2, with a defense that is on the verge of becoming dominant. That will be the story this week, as the Eagles prepare to face the Cowboys in Dallas, to host the Bears on Black Friday, and to visit the Chargers the following Monday night.
Offensively, the Eagles were on the brink. Instead of standing back and letting them potentially fall off the cliff, the Lions gave them a lifeline
Here’s the deeper question. Did the time Campbell spent preparing for the micro task of calling plays against the Eagles dilute his ability to focus on the macro strategy against the Eagles? Did he spend less time working with defensive coordinator Kelvin Sheppard to fine tune tactics for countering the expected effort to feed the frustrated Brown?
Regardless, the Lions have become too predictable in their commitment to “big onions.” Opposing defenses now expect to be on the field for four downs, not three. And the Eagles stifled them, five out of five times.
It’s far better to be unpredictable. And it’s far better to consider factors beyond conversion percentages and other numbers tied to down, distance, and field position.
Last night, the commitment to being aggressive for the sake of being aggressive didn’t work. Sometimes, it makes more sense to be passive aggressive. Given the status of the Eagles’ offense entering the Sunday night contest, it would have made far more effective to force the Eagles to get out of their own quicksand.
