The Big Picture: These Eagles' Super Bowl Hopes Rest on Their Defense

Highmark Stadium (Orchard Park, N.Y.) — There have been way too many moments where the Philadelphia Eagles’ offense has just completely disappeared this season, sometimes at the worst possible times. Way too often they’ve inexplicably shut down, leaving their defense to bail them out.

Maybe that’s a sign of trouble for the defending champs with the start of the playoffs just two weeks away, but that’s not the way veteran linebacker Brandon Graham sees it. He sees it as a sign of a "battle-tested" defense, ready for anything, against anyone.

And he sees a defense that he believes is starting to look like it's capable of carrying the Eagles on yet another Super Bowl run.

"I do. I really do," Graham told me. "I think that we’re building towards that. And today was a great start."

It wasn’t exactly the "start," because the Eagles’ defense has been great for weeks, but what they did against the Buffalo Bills on Sunday was particularly encouraging. Because without their mostly stellar performance, the Eagles wouldn't have come close to beating the Bills 13-12. Without the defense they might not have been in this game at all.

And never mind that they gave up two fourth-quarter touchdown drives, and had to sweat out a failed, two-point conversion attempt by the Bills with five seconds left on the clock. The point is they did survive it after they spent almost the entire game pounding the Bills into submission, shutting them out for the first 54 minutes of the game. 

In fact, the Eagles might have won with ease if their offense hadn’t basically stopped playing after halftime. They had a total of 17 yards on five drives in the entire second half. That’s ridiculous and embarrassing and should be terrifying.

And it would have been, if the defense hadn’t calmly had their backs the entire time.

"In the crunch-time moments, we bend but don’t break," defensive end Jaelen Phillips said. "They had a little bit of a surge towards the end, but we were able to do what we needed to do. Gritty games like that are games you need to have to prepare yourself for the long haul."

If that’s true, then this Eagles team is well-prepared for another run — or at least their defense is. Because they’ve won plenty of games like that this season, when the offense initially did its part but then bowed out, leaving the defense to do the dirty work the rest of the way.

That’s what happened on Sunday. The game may have become "gritty" down the stretch, but for most of the time it was shellacking being delivered by the Philly defenders. Jalen Hurts and the offense staked the Eagles to an early 13-0 lead, and the defense wasn’t letting the Bills up for air. They were, in their own words, "relentless" in their pursuit of Bills quarterback Josh Allen, sacking him five times — his second-worst total of the season. And they held the No. 1 rushing team in the NFL to 120 yards on the ground, nearly 40 below their season average.

And they punished the Bills with a series of bone-rattling hits throughout the game. They nearly went three quarters before they allowed the Bills to penetrate the red zone. And when they did, they hit them with a goal-line stand that included tackling Allen on fourth down at the Philly 3.

This is a Bills team capable of a Super Bowl run, with a strong and powerful offense, and a quarterback who is the defending MVP. And the Eagles' defense knocked them down early and barely let them up.

"I mean, we’re relentless," Eagles cornerback Quinyon Mitchell said. "We’re never going to quit. We’re going to give up.

"I mean, the way we were pursuing," Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said. "We knew Josh Allen could extend plays. The way we pursued to the ball showed how good of shape we’re in, it showed how relentless they are. I tell them, talented teams that play with great attention to details, that play together and play with relentless effort, those teams are hard to beat. 

"So yeah. Relentless."

If only they could’ve had a little help to let them sustain it to the end. If only they hadn’t been forced onto the field for 50 plays in the second half alone, all because the Eagles’ offense finished the game with four straight three-and-outs. They got their last first down of the game on their second play of the second half — so not a single one over the final 27 minutes.

Maybe that’s an excuse, but it’s why the Bills were able to push the Eagles’ overworked defense for two touchdown drives in the final 10 minutes. And the second one, that pushed the game to its frantic finish, wouldn’t have happened if they didn’t pull off a miracle — a hook and lateral play for a first down on 4th and 10.

That play sparked the Bills’ final touchdown drive. And yes, the Eagles defense sure was helped by Bills coach Sean McDermott’s odd choice to go for two points and the win instead of kicking the extra point for overtime.

On that play, though, the Eagles' defense found the energy for one last pass rush, forcing Allen to throw off his back foot and fire wide to his open receiver. It wasn’t pretty, but it was another example of the Eagles’ defense doing what it needed to do.

And that’s what’s been happening all season. They do what needs to be done, especially when the offense can’t — which seems to be most of the time.

But the question looming over the Eagles' season is whether half a team will be enough. The Eagles have struggled all season to run the ball, to get Saquon Barkley going, and to find any kind of rhythm in the passing game with Hurts and DeVonta Smith and A.J. Brown. At this point, they look dysfunctional under the leadership of first-year offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo. And they can’t count on that miraculously turning around in the coming weeks.

So can the defense carry the Eagles all the way? They certainly are peaking at the right time. They’ve given up an average of 225.25 yards per game over the past month and held seven of their past nine opponents to 331 yards or less. But Graham knows the relentless battle that they just won in Buffalo is about to become their new normal.

"This was a great battle test for us," he said, "because it’s about to get real hard every week."

The Eagles saw that and felt it one year ago when they had the No. 1 defense in the NFL and were able to ride that to a Super Bowl championship. This defense might need to be even better than that.

So, is it?

"I can’t really say if it’s the best one yet," Graham told me, "because we’ve got to finish the deal."

If they are going to finish the deal with another championship, the fact is this defense will have to shoulder a bigger load than last year because the offense is not nearly as potent. Maybe Hurts and Co. will wake up before it’s too late and start scoring more against top competition.

But the Eagles can’t rely on that at this point because it hasn’t happened all season. They are going to have to embody the old adage that defense wins championships.

Because for them, there may be no other way.

Ralph Vacchiano is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. He spent six years covering the Giants and Jets for SNY TV in New York, and before that, 16 years covering the Giants and the NFL for the New York Daily News. Follow him on Twitter at @RalphVacchiano.

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