**Eagles defense stifles high-powered Lions offense**
After the Eagles improved to 8-2 with a 16-9 win over the Lions, Jordan Davis stood in his locker stall holding a game ball from the Sunday Night Football crew. Davis more than deserved his own, but NBC could have easily gifted one to everybody on Philadelphia's defense.
The Eagles dominated a Detroit team that entered Sunday averaging 31.4 points per game, the second most in the NFL. Philadelphia held the Lions to their lowest scoring output of the season and stopped them on all five of their fourth-down attempts.
It was a true masterclass by Vic Fangio's unit in prime time.
"\[We\] just wanted \[it\] more," Jaelan Phillips said on what the difference was on fourth down. "I thought we just played super fundamentally sound, and they just didn't have an answer for anything we were doing."
Lions quarterback Jared Goff was off to a red-hot start, coming into Sunday night completing 74 percent of his passes, on pace for the third-highest completion percentage in NFL history. Goff completed just 37.8 percent of his passes against the Eagles, the lowest of his career and lowest by any quarterback in a game this season (min. 20 pass attempts).
"The defense was playing lights out, it was one of the best performances I've ever seen," Jalen Hurts said. "A really, really big-time game on that side of the ball and to be able to do what they did on fourth down against a really good offense or a potent offense that's capable of doing really, really special things and I have a lot of respect for that."
It was the second week in a row the Eagles' defense has been unstoppable after surrendering just seven points to the Packers on Monday Night Football. With the additions of players like Jaelan Phillips and Brandon Graham and Nolan Smith, Philadelphia's defense has been on another level after the Bye Week, and Sunday night's performance was the best of the season so far.
"I think guys are just getting more comfortable in the defense, getting more comfortable playing with each other, I think that's the biggest difference," defensive back Cooper DeJean said. "We just continue to improve. That's the name of the game, is improvement. I feel like we've done that each and every week."