Hurts shakes off two interceptions, DeVonta takes over, and Darius Cooper delivers the final blow as the Eagles stagger out of Tennessee 2-0

By Dale Starspitter | EMB Live

NASHVILLE — There are wins that make you think a team is headed for the Super Bowl.

There are wins that make you think a team has some things to clean up.

And then there are wins that make you stare silently at the television for several seconds afterward, check the final score to make sure it actually happened, and wonder whether being 2-0 is supposed to feel quite this exhausting.

The Philadelphia Eagles are 2-0.

Please direct all further questions to the scoreboard.

Philadelphia escaped Nissan Stadium Sunday with a 24-20 victory over the Tennessee Titans when Jalen Hurts found Darius Cooper alone in the back of the end zone for a three-yard touchdown with nine seconds remaining.

Nine seconds.

That was approximately how far the Eagles were from spending the next seven days explaining how they lost to a Titans team that won three games last season.

Instead, Hurts got the football with 1:56 remaining, no timeouts and the Eagles trailing 20-17. Nine plays and 65 yards later, Philadelphia had the lead.

For roughly three hours before that, Eagles fans had been provided ample opportunity to practice their vocabulary.

And the Eagles Message Board had sensed trouble before the ball was even kicked.

LacesOut: “Trap game, I can smell it!!”

EagleJoe8: “This game makes me more nervous than it should.”

Lman: “This doesn't seem as easy as everyone is saying. Saleh has our number.”

That last one turned out to be considerably more prophetic than anyone wanted.

The afternoon begins with a thud

The Eagles' first offensive play was almost an omen.

Saquon Barkley took the handoff, ran into Titans defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons, lost three yards and immediately left the game with a stinger. Barkley eventually returned in the second half, but his afternoon never really got started.

The EMB's instant analysis required considerably fewer words than this article.

EagleJoe8: “Loss of 3. Nice first play!”

Then came the Eagles' opening drive, which somehow managed to be encouraging, impressive and catastrophic all at once.

Philadelphia methodically marched down the field, converting third downs and even breaking out the season's first Tush Push on fourth-and-1. Hurts connected with Dontayvion Wicks, DeVonta Smith and rookie Makai Lemon.

Fifteen plays.

Seventy-four yards.

Zero points.

Hurts tried to force a pass into the end zone and Amani Hooker intercepted it, returning the ball 92 yards before Lemon prevented the pick-six.

Four plays later, Cam Ward sneaked into the end zone.

Titans 7, Eagles 0.

The Eagles had possessed the football for most of the quarter and had essentially driven the length of the field twice.

Unfortunately, one of those drives had been in the wrong direction.

Somewhere on the EMB, blood pressure medication was being located.

Tank keeps the Eagles afloat

With Barkley unavailable, Tank Bigsby became Philadelphia's primary runner, and the Eagles responded with another long drive.

This one actually ended in the correct end zone.

Bigsby punched it in from two yards out early in the second quarter to tie the game at seven. The Eagles then put together another methodical possession, with Hurts repeatedly converting difficult situations through the air.

On second-and-19 from the Tennessee 22, Hurts found DeVonta Smith crossing the field for a touchdown.

Philadelphia led 14-7.

For all the aggravation, the first-half numbers suggested the Eagles should have been comfortably ahead. Philadelphia controlled the football and moved it far more consistently than Tennessee.

They weren't comfortably ahead.

Naturally.

Tennessee drove for a field goal as the half expired.

Eagles 14, Titans 10.

And Philadelphia had another problem. Dallas Goedert had injured his knee and would not return.

The Eagles had entered the afternoon with an offensive line already being shuffled, lost their starting tight end, and had Barkley spending most of the afternoon watching from the sideline.

This was rapidly becoming exactly the kind of game LacesOut had smelled before kickoff.

Then the game got weird

Jake Elliott drilled a 58-yard field goal midway through the third quarter to extend the lead to 17-10.

That should have been the point where Philadelphia started putting away an inferior opponent.

Instead, Tennessee started looking increasingly comfortable.

Ward engineered a 69-yard drive that consumed more than seven minutes, eventually taking the ball himself around the left side for a one-yard touchdown.

Tie game.

The Eagles offense, meanwhile, had gone from methodical to dysfunctional. Protection deteriorated. The running game produced almost nothing. Hurts was pressured repeatedly.

The EMB had reached the traditional phase of every Eagles game in which approximately half the roster, coaching staff and front office were candidates for immediate unemployment.

Then Hurts made his second major mistake.

With the Eagles trying to reclaim control in the fourth quarter, he threw his second interception of the afternoon. Tennessee turned the opportunity into a drive that reached the Philadelphia 9.

The Titans now had a chance to put the Eagles in serious trouble.

Jalen Carter had other ideas.

On first-and-goal, Carter blew through the line and dumped Ward for a nine-yard loss. Tennessee eventually settled for Joey Slye's field goal.

Titans 20, Eagles 17.

There was 1:56 remaining.

Philadelphia had no timeouts.

And somewhere between Nashville and Philadelphia, several thousand televisions were probably in immediate danger.

Two minutes to erase three hours

The final possession was the sort of drive that makes everything preceding it temporarily irrelevant.

Hurts went to work.

On third-and-6, he found Wicks downfield for a contested 20-yard catch that moved Philadelphia into Tennessee territory.

The clock kept moving.

Hurts scrambled.

He found Smith.

Then, with 20 seconds remaining, Philadelphia faced another third-and-6 from the Tennessee 22.

This was effectively the game.

Hurts fired left toward Smith.

Smith went up for it, secured the football and somehow kept both feet in bounds.

Nineteen yards.

First-and-goal from the 3.

Fourteen seconds.

No timeouts.

The EMB's assessment of the man wearing No. 6 was becoming increasingly technical.

DoWorx: “Smitty is a dog.”

Hard to improve upon that analysis.

Hurts rolled right.

DeVonta went in motion, dragging Tennessee's attention with him.

Darius Cooper slipped across the back of the end zone.

Nobody went with him.

Hurts floated the ball toward Cooper.

Catch.

Touchdown.

Nine seconds remaining.

Eagles 24, Titans 20.

It was Cooper's first NFL touchdown.

And suddenly a game thread that had spent three hours documenting the stages of grief became a celebration.

M.C.: “YAY!!!!!!!!”

Mike030270: “Smitty saved us. Everyone else can stay in Tennessee.”

EazyEaglez: “Smitty and Jalen killed them on that drive.”

Talonblood spotted something else on the winning touchdown: Smith's motion had helped clear the area where Cooper caught the ball.

Talonblood: “And Mannion — had Smitty go in motion to open up that section of the field where Coop caught the TD. Brilliant, actually.”

EazyEaglez had a slightly less technical interpretation:

“Smitty had them shook.”

Both analyses are accepted.

Tennessee managed one completion before Ward's final desperation throw fell incomplete.

Game over. Exhale.

DeVonta was WR1 when it mattered

There were plenty of things Philadelphia won't want to repeat.

Hurts threw two interceptions. The Eagles couldn't establish their running game. Barkley was effectively unavailable for most of the afternoon. Goedert left injured. The offensive line struggled with Tennessee's pressure.

But DeVonta Smith was magnificent.

Smith finished with 10 catches for 117 yards and a touchdown, and when Philadelphia absolutely had to move the football on its final possession, Hurts repeatedly went looking for No. 6.

The EMB noticed.

psychodog: “DSmith is an absolute BEAST.”

And Mike030270's proposal to leave everyone else behind in Tennessee was probably rejected only because the Eagles had already paid for the charter flight.

Wicks was no less important than his final line might suggest. His contested third-down reception on the winning drive kept Philadelphia alive and flipped the field.

And Hurts?

Oh boy.

That's going to be an entertaining discussion this week.

For much of Sunday, he provided ammunition to everybody who wanted to criticize him. His first interception erased an excellent opening drive and essentially handed Tennessee seven points. His second helped put the Titans in position to take the lead.

Then, when Philadelphia needed its quarterback to win the football game, Hurts did exactly that.

No timeouts.

Down three.

On the road.

Sixty-five yards.

Touchdown.

Game.

KINGnabb summed up the contradiction pretty well:

“Jalen made mistakes but this is the 2nd week he put the team on his back when it was time to win.”

Portyansky was even more direct, pointing to the battered supporting cast before concluding:

“Dude was $$$$ on the final drive.”

And then there was greenskeeper, providing perhaps the purest distillation of an Eagles Message Board quarterback discussion ever written:

“Hurts sucks and bailed his own sh!tty ass out.”

There it is.

Both sides of the Jalen Hurts debate, condensed into eight words by one person.

Dale Starspitter has nothing further to add.

2-0. Somehow.

This wasn't the dominant performance many expected against Tennessee.

It wasn't particularly pretty.

The offensive line remains a concern. The running game never established itself. Goedert's knee now becomes something to watch. Barkley's stinger added another scare. The defense allowed Tennessee back into a game Philadelphia controlled statistically for much of the first half.

The EMB's Columbus Eagle offered the appropriate description:

“We might be a bad 2-0 team, but I'll take it.”

Birdman saw something familiar:

“This team just ‘wins ugly.’ That's just who they are.”

The concern, he added, is whether winning this way is sustainable.

That's a question for another Sunday.

Because the Eagles are 2-0.

Last week they survived Washington, 24-22.

This week they survived Tennessee, 24-20.

Nobody awards style points in January, and the standings don't contain a column for “Yeah, but...”

Maybe they're still figuring out Sean Mannion's offense.

Maybe the rebuilt offensive line needs time.

Maybe the defense needs to rediscover its pass rush.

Maybe this team is going to spend the entire season shortening the life expectancy of everyone watching it.

Those questions can wait. For one Sunday evening, there are only two numbers that matter.

2-0. And 0:09.

Because for all the mistakes, injuries, interceptions, missed blocks, defensive breakdowns and three hours of collective EMB blood-pressure monitoring, nine seconds were all Darius Cooper needed to make everything feel just a little bit better.

Or, as Talonblood admitted while trying to comprehend what had just happened:

“I am trying to process what I just saw.”

So are we.

Final: Eagles 24, Titans 20

Dale Starspitter reporting for EMB Live from Nashville, where the Eagles remain undefeated and cardiologists throughout the Delaware Valley remain fully employed.

It was never going to be easy because that’s just not the way this team plays. They never seem to win comfortably (outside of the NFFCG and SB LIX). They never seem to handle business. And increasingly this team is starting to dominate but not put games away and let the opposition hang around. And when you do that bad things can and do happen.