Roob's Observations after Eagles avenge loss to Giants with unstoppable offense

The Eagles improved to 6-2 on the season with a 38-20 win over the Giants.

By Reuben Frank • Published October 26, 2025

You want identity? How about this: They ran for 278 yards and Jalen Hurts threw four touchdowns.

Are they a running team? Are they a passing team? Who cares? They’re a 6-2 team.

On Sunday, for the first time this year, we truly saw the explosive offense we’ve been waiting for. It was only the third time since 1950 the Eagles have had 250 rushing yards and four passing touchdowns in the same game.

With an unstoppable offense and a sound defensive effort, the Eagles avenged that terrible loss to the Giants two weeks ago with a 38-20 win at the Linc.

It hasn’t been easy and it hasn’t been pretty, but the Eagles are back on track.

1. It wasn’t about matchups, it was about heart. It was about character. It was about toughness. After that embarrassment in East Rutherford 17 days ago, this one was about playing hard and playing physical and not letting the Giants be the aggressor. It was about playing Philadelphia Eagles football. You knew if they did that, nothing else mattered. Didn’t matter who was hurt. Didn’t matter how many backups played. Didn’t matter whether they ran it or threw it. It was about getting back to playing the way this team was built to play, and 17 days after getting bullied to the tune of 34-17, the Eagles showed what they’re really about Sunday at the Linc. Four numbers tell the story: Last game, the Giants out-rushed the Eagles 172-73. On Sunday the Eagles out-rushed the Giants 261-66. That’s a nearly 300-yard reversal. That’s the story, right there.

2. Tank Bigsby’s 29-yard run on a 2nd-and-26 might be my favorite play of the year. The Eagles, up 24-13 early in the fourth quarter, found themselves in an ugly 2nd-and-26 on their own 40-yard-line after Jalen Hurts took a 16-yard sack on first down. How do you convert a 2nd-and-26? I’ve seen a 4th-and-26 on the same field so it is possible. But with Saquon Barkley on the sideline with a groin injury, Bigsby got the call and twisted his way through traffic – and broke a couple tackles along the way – for a 29-yard gain. The Eagles ultimately scored on that drive but that play was the dagger. That was ballgame. The Giants were already reeling and they weren’t coming back from allowing Bigsby – who had one carry as an Eagle before Sunday – to gash them like that. I love that it was Tank Bigsby – who started the year as a Jaguar – who came up huge in that situation. That says a lot about the depth on this team. After Barkley ran 14 times for 150, Bigsby followed with 104 yards on just nine carries. The Tank Bigsby Game.

3. The Eagles went into this game missing some pretty important pieces – A.J. Brown, Cam Jurgens and Adoree Jackson in addition to Nolan Smith, who’s on Injured Reserve. Got to give a lot of credit in particular to Kelee Ringo and Brett Toth, who would not have been playing if the Eagles were at full strength. Ringo, starting in place of Jackson, did not allow a single catch, according to the Pro Football Focus numbers, and Toth, starting in place of Jurgens, really hung in there and played probably his best football ever in an emergency start. Toth had pivotal blocks on both the 79-yard Hurts-to-Smith TD last week and Barkley’s 65-yard TD run this week. Throw Jahan Dotson, with that 40-yard TD, and Bigsby, with over 100 yards, to that equation as well. You have to love seeing the backups come up huge like this.

4. Welcome to the Dallas Goedert Appreciation Observation! Goedert’s two touchdown catches extended his career-high to seven, all in the last six games. In Eagles history, only Terrell Owens and Harold Carmichael have caught more passes in a six-game span. Goedert has never had more than five TDs in a season before and that was back in 2019. Dude has everything you need to be a weapon in the red zone – toughness, hands, size, a feel for space. With A.J. Brown out, the Eagles needed more than just DeVonta Smith to catch passes, and even though Goedert didn’t put up huge numbers Sunday, three catches for 28 yards and two TDs was huge. And he’s still one of the better blocking tight ends in football and always has a big hand in it when the Eagles run the ball like this. A healthy Goedert is a winning player.

5. It’s been an up-and-down first couple months for Kevin Patullo – mainly down – but he was fantastic Sunday. We saw variety in run calls, we saw a nice mix of run and pass, we saw different formations, different lineups, different plays that kept the Giants off balance, something we just haven’t seen this year. First time in 35 years and a 48-20 win over the Patriots at the Vet in 1990 that the Eagles have run for 275 and thrown four TDs in the same game (and only the second time since 1950). That kind of balance is deadly and almost impossible to defend. Play calling is hard and it’s an art that can take a while to master. Patullo hasn’t done it before, but it’s awfully encouraging to see this sort of product on offense after the way the first seven games went. The Eagles piled up 427 yards, which is 140 more than their season average coming into the game. And this was without A.J. Brown and Cam Jurgens. When this offense is at full strength – and if Patullo can continue to grow as a play caller – this group is going to be very tough to stop. This was the first game where I said to myself, "Hey, maybe the Eagles have something with this guy.” Very encouraging performance by the rookie play caller.

6. The Giants got that meaningless late touchdown against the Eagles’ backups with 2:44 left, but with the game in the balance the Giants had eight drives that resulted in four punts, two field goals, one end of half and one touchdown. While the Eagles’ starters were out there, the Giants scored 13 points. The Eagles did a lot of very good things defensively. They pressured consistently and made life difficult throughout for Jaxson Dart. Their five sacks are their most in their last 14 regular-season games and it was everybody contributing. Zack Baun, Jalyx Hunt, Moro Ojomo, Jalen Carter and Jordan Davis all had sacks – Ojomo’s fourth, Baun’s third, Davis’s third and Hunt and Carter’s first. Hunt in particular was all over the place and piled up nine pressures. Dart is going to be good if the Giants ever figure out how to protect him, but the Eagles really got after him, they covered well and most importantly for the first time this year the Eagles really shut down a team’s running attack. The Giants lost Cam Skattebo to a horrible ankle injury in the middle of the second quarter, and that’s a shame, but the Eagles held them to just 68 rushing yards and 3.2 per carry – both the lowest the Eagles have allowed this year … by far. I’ll keep saying this, but this is going to be a top-5 defense by the time the season is over. This is the youngest defense in the NFL, they have a mastermind coach and they’re just going to keep getting better and better. We saw a big step Sunday.

7. Time to talk about Jalen. Wow. He’s on the best stretch of his life, one of the best stretches we’ve ever seen by any Eagles quarterback. He’s just in complete command of the offense right now and it’s been amazing to see. He’s been brilliant the last two weeks and most of this season. On the heels of his 83 percent, three-TD, no-INT performance in Minneapolis, he completes 75 percent of his passes for four TDs and no INTs against the Giants. He's now got 15 touchdowns and one interception this year while completing 70 percent of his passes. His passer ratings the last two weeks are the max 158.3 last week and 141.5 this week, and he’s only the third QB in Eagles history to be over 140 in back-to-back weeks. Randall Cunningham did it against the Cards and Broncos in 1992 and Nick Foles in 2013 with the seven-TD game 158.3 game in Oakland followed by a 149.3 a week later in Green Bay. Hurts is only the second QB in history to get through eight games with 15 or more TD passes, one or fewer INT and 70 percent completion percentage. Drew Brees did it in 2018. Remember all those people who used to say Jalen Hurts can’t throw the football? Where are they now? Dude is playing as well as anybody in the league right now.

8. With A.J. Brown out, the Eagles needed big stuff from DeVonta Smith and once again he came up huge with six catches for 84 yards, and did you know he still hasn’t dropped a pass this year? Smith is in the midst of the best stretch of his career, with 27 catches for 430 yards the last four weeks, and he’s just so clutch. Do you remember a time since he was drafted in 2021 where the ball came his way in a critical moment and he didn’t catch it? The Eagles went into this game 1-4 in games that Brown has either missed or left in the first quarter, and they needed Smith more than ever Sunday. He and Hurts are so connected right now. I still don’t think he gets the credit nationally that he deserves, probably because a perennial Pro Bowler is his teammate. But he shows week after week just how valuable he really is.

9. We’ve spoken a lot about how the Eagles haven’t gotten many sacks from their edge rushers, and going into this game they only had 3 ½ all year – 1 ½ from the retired Za’Darius Smith and one each from Patrick Johnson and Josh Uche. The edges only had one of the five sacks Sunday – that was Hunt’s first this year – but I still think these guys are playing awfully well. Hunt has been getting consistent pressure, Josh Uche has strung together a bunch of good performances in a row and Jihad Campbell has been around the quaarterback in his new hybrid role and causing trouble when he’s lined up on the edge. Nolan Smith should be back after the bye week, and B.G. will be playing after the bye as well. With Smith, Hunt, Uche, B.G. and Campbell, that’s a group that’s going to cause a lot of problems for quarterbacks. They’re already pressuring well, but I would expect once everybody is healthy the sacks will start coming in a big way.

10. As the Eagles head into the bye, it’s important to just step back and appreciate what this team has done this year. None of this has come easy, but, dang, despite everything they’re 6-2 and that’s not easy to do coming off a Super Bowl championship and dealing with losing so many good players to free agency – Josh Sweat, Milton Williams, Darius Slay, among others – not to mention all the injuries they’ve had along the way. Nick Sirianni deserves so much credit for navigating a championship offseason and getting the team somehow through two months with just two losses. Do they have flaws? They do. But so does everybody. Sitting here through eight weeks, it’s fair to say the Eagles are as good as anybody in the NFC and they do have a realistic shot at getting back to the Super Bowl. If they can go 6-2 while still trying to find themselves and dealing with so much inconsistency on both sides of the ball, just imagine what they’ll look like down the stretch if they keep improving.

https://www.nbcsportsphiladelphia.com/nfl/philadelphia-eagles/roobs-observations-giants-jalen-hurts-saquon-barkley/692273/

Oh Roob… The Eagles were missing some key players… Yes they were! But Adoree Jackson? No no no! That’s not a key player, he’s a bad starter on a team that’s back ups are even worse. Let’s not call him a key player here. He’s a starter yes, he’s not a key player.

8 hours ago, UK_EaglesFan89 said:

Oh Roob… The Eagles were missing some key players… Yes they were! But Adoree Jackson? No no no! That’s not a key player, he’s a bad starter on a team that’s back ups are even worse. Let’s not call him a key player here. He’s a starter yes, he’s not a key player.

That was the very first thing that came to mind when reading this ... a major stretch to call Jackson a "pretty important piece".

17 hours ago, time2rock said:

That was the very first thing that came to mind when reading this ... a major stretch to call Jackson a "pretty important piece".

I mean let’s just be honest he’s not! He’s been bad for the most part and he’s a starter because the depth and options we have isn’t good. He’s going to cause us problems in the big games this year and I think Howie needs to address this.