In their previous two games, the Philadelphia Eagles offense had produced two touchdowns. The first three times that Philadelphia had the football against the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday, the Eagles scored touchdowns. Then the Cowboys scored the game’s remaining 24 points to post a 24-21 victory in the NFC East contest.
The comeback matched the largest in Cowboys’ history. Dallas had won three other games in which it trailed by 21 points. Philadelphia had blown only one larger lead in franchise history, when the Minnesota Vikings came from 23 points down for a 28-23 victory on Dec. 1, 1985.
“I think overarching we got to find a way to finish the game,” Philadelphia quarterback Jalen Hurts said, “and we got to find some consistency in what we do. You know, definitely a tale of two halves, but in the end, we didn’t play a complete game as a team, and today got us. Give a lot of respect to Dallas and their team, how they competed.”
On Philadelphia’s first three possessions against Dallas, Hurts completed 12-of-17 passes for 155 yards with one touchdown and no interceptions. The former Alabama QB was 4-of-4 for 84 yards with one touchdown on his third-down throws.
As the Eagles built their 21-0 lead, Hurts threw a 16-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver AJ Brown and ran 7 yards and 1 yard for touchdowns in the game’s first 18:28.
After that, Hurts completed 15-of-22 passes for 134 yards with no touchdowns and no interceptions. On third down the rest of the way, Hurts completed 2-of-5 passes for 19 yards with one first down.
“We just weren’t very efficient as an offense there in that second half,” Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said. “I didn’t really feel that we took our foot off the gas.”
Philadelphia was penalized 14 times, and Hurts lost three completions that gained 54 yards in the second half because of infractions called against the Eagles.
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“You look inward first,” Hurts said. “And so looking at the things that we can control from a penalty standpoint, execution standpoint. Those are all things that we can control. And so I don’t point towards how we adjusted or what we did or what we didn’t do. In the end, we had an opportunity to win the game, and we didn’t. And so we got to own this one. Let it light a fire in us as a team and stay together and move forward.”
In the second quarter, Dallas lost a fumble at the Eagles 31-yard line and reached the Philadelphia 1-yard line before being turned back by former West Limestone High School standout Reed Blankenship’s interception in the end zone.
Dallas scored its first touchdown – a 1-yard pass from quarterback Dak Prescott to former Hoover High School standout George Pickens – with only 21 seconds left in the first half.
After the Cowboys tied the score with 11:40 to play, Hurts moved the Eagles 41 yards on four completions and two scrambles. But with Philadelphia on the Dallas 28-yard line, a 16-yard completion to wide receiver DeVonta Smith was nullified by an illegal-use-of-hands penalty against left tackle Fred Johnson. On the next play, running back Saquon Barkley fumbled the football away after catching a pass.
After Prescott had two incompletions with the Cowboys at the Philadelphia 1-yard line to lose the ball on downs with 3:38 to play, the Eagles offense got another chance to break the tie. But a 13-yard loss on a sack on third-and-2 at the Philadelphia 37 ruined that opportunity, and when Dallas got the ball back, a 24-yard Prescott-to-Pickens pass put the Cowboys in position to win on Brandon Aubrey’s 42-yard field goal on the game’s final snap.
“There’s no more you can ask for than to have the ball in your hands to go out there and drive and finish the game on your terms,” Hurts said, “and we had an opportunity to do that, and I didn’t do enough. So something I learned from and to move forward on.”
Hurts ran for 33 yards and two touchdowns on seven carries to lead the Eagles in rushing. Philadelphia had 63 yards on 18 rushing attempts in the game, while Dallas ran for 125 yards on carries and got 354 passing yards from Prescott.
Despite the offense’s struggles in the previous two games, Philadelphia defeated the Green Bay Packers 10-7 on Nov. 10 and Detroit Lions 16-9 on Nov. 16.
Sunday’s outcome dropped the Eagles to 8-3 and lifted the Cowboys to 5-5-1, leaving Philadelphia with a 2.5-game lead in the NFC East.
Philadelphia plays the Chicago Bears in the NFL’s Black Friday game next. The Eagles and Bears square off at 2 p.m. CST Friday at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia. Prime Video will televise the game.
“My message is as simple as you take pride in everything because you know these moments we have right now last a lifetime,” Hurts said. “So how do you want to respond? How we respond is very important, and I’ve said it before, you know, after moments like this, I have a lot of confidence in how we respond. So we’ll be back to work and got another opportunity coming forward.”
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