PHILADELPHIA — Brandon Graham returned to the Eagles’ locker room Wednesday as the team was preparing for a game against the Giants.
Seventeen days ago, he was an unhappy fan as he watched the last-place Giants bully the first-place Eagles at MetLife Stadium on their way to a 34-17 victory. It was a game that left us all wondering if the rookie duo of Jaxson Dart and Cam Skattebo was about to make the Giants relevant again.
“They just got us,” Graham said when asked about his spectating experience that night. “They just got us. I can’t say nothing other than they came to play that day.”
He admitted that it shocked him.
“It did,” he said. “Saquon (Barkley) had two (long) runs early and I was thinking, ‘We’re about to run all over these boys,’ and they stopped that quick. But it was cool. That’s part of the game. You can’t never think that you’ve got it. You’ve got to make sure you stay focused because these teams get paid, too.”
For more than a decade, the Giants have been getting paid despite being consistently destroyed by the Eagles (and the Dallas Cowboys for that matter).
The Giants, for instance, have a chance Sunday at Lincoln Financial Field to pull off a season sweep of the series with the Eagles. They haven’t done that since 2007, which is back when the rivalry between the two teams was at its most intense.
From 2000 through 2006 the Eagles won the NFC East five times and the Giants won it the two other times. Dallas ended that streak in 2007, but the Giants won the Super Bowl with a stunning upset of the unbeaten Patriots. The following year, the Giants started 11-1 and then dropped four of their final five games, starting and ending with losses to the Eagles.
Graham’s rookie season was 2010.
“The rivalry was really cool back then,” Graham said. “Some of the greatest games you’ll ever see. My first year, D. Jack (DeSean Jackson) running (the punt) back. All I used to hear about was Brian Westbrook’s (punt return in 2003) and I’d see that all the time, but D. Jack’s was something.”
Jackson’s 65-yard punt return touchdown was the most miraculous of the Miracles at the Meadowlands because it came on the final play of the game after he initially fumbled the football. It also completed a 21-point comeback.
The Giants, of course, rebounded nicely the next season and won their second Super Bowl under Tom Coughlin with another upset of Tom Brady and the New England Patriots.
A year later Andy Reid left Philadelphia with a 17-14 record against the Giants, including a 13-8 mark against Coughlin, and six NFC East titles in 14 years. But it was Coughlin and the Giants who had added two more Super Bowl titles to the two they had previously won under Bill Parcells while Philadelphia continued to yearn for its first Lombardi Trophy.
Since Reid’s departure, however, what some once considered the best rivalry in football has lost much of its luster with the Eagles winning 20 of the 26 games, including 12 in a row at Lincoln Financial Field. The Giants last won at the Linc in 2013.
But they got the Eagles’ full attention in Week 6 by physically beating them on both sides of the ball. Jalen Hurts was sacked three times and threw his only interception so far this season. Barkley, after running for 31 yards on his first two carries, picked up just 27 yards on his next 10 carries.
“That’s what happens when you’re going against a team that has juice and is playing with swagger and confidence,” Barkley said. “They have a defense that we already knew that they were really good and an offense that put in a young quarterback that is super talented and with Skattebo and (Tyrone) Tracy and Devin (Singletary) they have some great backs. When you go against a team that has that kind of passion and fire, you can get your butt handed to you and that’s the truth. So it’s going to be a tough challenge.”
Dart beat the Eagles with both his arm and legs, throwing for 195 yards and one touchdown while escaping pressure to account for 58 yards on mostly scramble runs. Skattebo played the role of bully, picking up a career-high 98 yards and scoring three touchdowns.
“They were more physical than us at the point of attack,” defensive tackle Jordan Davis admitted. “We just have to make sure we can go out there and combat that. I feel like we’re more confident in the (defensive) scheme that we have and we have a little bit more time to watch more film and have more film on the season, so the combination of all that, I feel like we have a better chance to execute and it’s just more about eliminating the mistakes we made.”
Davis, despite the result, enjoyed going against Skattebo.
“Man, he’s physical,” the defensive tackle said. “I told him that after the game. It’s going to be fun going against him because you don’t see that style in a lot of backs these days. He’s a punishing type of dude and it’s great competition for us and especially a D lineman. That’s the game I expect and the game I want to play. I love his physicality and I love going against him and I told him that. I’m excited to go against him this weekend.”
There’s a sense that the Eagles-Giants rivalry that has been dormant for so long is about to spring back to life. Dart and Skattebo have created an excitement again for Giants’ fans and they’ve also grabbed the attention of the Eagles.
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