4. Cooper DeJean, Jihaad Campbell think loss could be good in long run
The Eagles had won 10 straight games (including postseason) dating back to last year and 20 of 21 contests. Sunday's defeat to the Broncos was a rare loss over the last year for the Eagles, but it's something players think could help them in the long run.
"It's probably good for us, that this happened," defensive back Cooper DeJean said. "We understand that we just got to continue to get better as the season goes on. That's what you have to do is get better. We're at the fifth game in, so we got to get going."
For the rookies on the roster, this is their first time experiencing a loss in the NFL, but first-round linebacker Jihaad Campbell sees a lot of learning that can come from Sunday's game.
"It's adversity. There's always a mountain that we got to climb, each and every day," Campbell said. "Every time we wake up, there's a mountain we got to climb. You know, we grateful for this loss. Yeah, it hurts, of course, but I think the biggest thing is just learning from it.
"Having that chip on our shoulder to go back out there on Thursday and the next weeks to come, and to know that 'L,' that was in the past. And moving forward and looking forward to more challenges and more adversity. Because like I said, there's a mountain that we got to climb, Coach [Nick] Sirianni always talks about it, [and] we're going to keep on climbing that mountain."
5. DeVonta Smith: 'Self-inflicted wounds' the difference Sunday
Quarterback Jalen Hurts attempted nine passes of 20+ air yards, according to Next Gen Stats, which was the second-most of his career. He completed two of those passes for 99 yards and a touchdown. One of those passes was a 52-yarder to wide receiver DeVonta Smith on Sunday.
Smith paced the passing attack from a pass-catching standpoint, with eight catches for a season-high 114 yards. Hurts had season highs with 280 passing yards and 7.37 yards per attempt, while completing 60.5 percent of his attempts for a 100.8 passer rating.
"We made improvements in certain areas. It can still get a lot better. We shot ourselves in the foot a lot," Smith said. "We talk about being aggressive all of the time. We know when we do that, we're aggressive, a lot of good things happen."
Head Coach Nick Sirianni said the Eagles made an emphasis on being more explosive on offense Sunday.
"Obviously, as the game goes you see different things that come up. We've talked about being more explosive in the run and the pass game and obviously I'd have to look at what the stats were. We didn't make enough plays and we didn't coach good enough today," Sirianni said.
Smith detailed how everything must come together for the passing game to unlock, balancing what all of the players are seeing and processing in real-time. It's just a matter of erasing the "self-inflicted wounds" – the penalties and miscues that prevented the offense from taking off Sunday.
Added Sirianni: "There's a lot that I'm going to have to watch to be able to process everything, and obviously at the end of the day, had the lead in the fourth quarter and they made more plays and coached better than us and played better than us, and they came back and got a win."