In a sloppy, mistake-filled "Monday Night Football" matchup, the Los Angeles Chargers outlasted the Philadelphia Eagles, 22-19, in overtime.
The game featured eight turnovers, eight sacks, 13 penalties and a missed field goal. The teams combined to average just 4.7 yards per play -- and that number included a 52-yard touchdown run. They completed only 50% of their passes, went a combined 11 of 32 on third down, and turned just 11 of 27 drives into points. Only two of those scoring drives ended in touchdowns.
Despite that chaos, the Chargers prevailed, largely because of their defense. Jesse Minter's unit was responsible for five of the eight takeaways, intercepting Jalen Hurts four times and forcing him to fumble once. (The fumble occurred on the same play as one of the interceptions, making Hurts the first player since at least 1978 to commit two turnovers on a single play, per ESPN.) De'Shawn Hand, Donte Jackson, Cam Hart and Tony Jefferson each recorded a pick, and L.A. intercepted Hurts twice as often as he had been all season entering the night.
Offensively, the Chargers survived an anemic performance, averaging just 3.9 yards per play. Justin Herbert, playing through a broken bone in his hand that required surgery only a week ago, completed 12 of 26 passes for 139 yards, one touchdown and one interception. He led the team in rushing, however, with 66 yards on 10 scrambles, while Omarion Hampton and Kimani Vidal were largely held in check.
Hampton, returning from a fractured ankle suffered in Week 5, scored L.A.'s lone touchdown on a swing pass from Herbert -- a drive jump-started by a 60-yard catch-and-run from Vidal on a checkdown. The rest of L.A.'s scoring came from Cameron Dicker, who drilled field goals of 45, 34, 31, 46 and 54 yards.
The Eagles moved the ball better overall but were undone by mistakes. Hurts' five turnovers were the biggest culprit, but Philadelphia also missed a field goal and had a Jordan Mailata holding penalty wipe a touchdown off the board. Saquon Barkley's 52-yard touchdown run opened the fourth quarter and briefly gave Philly its first lead, but the Eagles twice allowed the Chargers to drive for game-tying field goals to force overtime.
In the extra period, long runs from Herbert and Hampton set up Dicker's fifth field goal. The Eagles crossed midfield on the ensuing drive and converted a fourth down via penalty, but their chance at a game-winner ended when Hurts' pass for Jahan Dotson was tipped by Hart and intercepted by Jefferson to seal the win for L.A.
Wildest play of the year?
Here was the sequence where Hurts turned the ball over twice in one play.
In case you're counting, that's a defensive tackle dropping off the line and into coverage, undercutting the route and coming away with a pick. That defensive lineman then gets stripped of the ball, and it's recovered by the quarterback who threw the pick. And the quarterback fumbles it right back to the intercepting team. Two turnovers on one play. Unreal stuff.
Chargers overcome mistakes
The Eagles weren't the only ones giving the ball away here. Herbert was intercepted once and fumbled the ball away once more. (He also had another fumble that was luckily recovered by the offense.) Da'Shawn Hand, as you can see above, fumbled the ball back to the Eagles after his interception on Hurts, only for the Chargers to get it back from Hurts after he recovered the fumble and was stripped.
L.A. also allowed Herbert to get sacked seven times, the most times he's been sacked in any game in his NFL career. He was under pressure on more than 68% of his dropbacks, per Next Gen Stats, and he was running for his life throughout the evening. That contributed to his averaging just 5.3 yards per attempt while completing fewer than half his passes. Factoring in the sacks, the Chargers averaged just 3.2 net yards per passing play.
Philly's offense is broken
While the Eagles did move the ball more efficiently than did the Chargers, do not mistake that for them having had a good offensive game. They hit on a few big plays -- a 52-yard run by Saquon Barkley, a couple catch-and-runs by A.J. Brown and another by DeVonta Smith -- but they missed copious amounts of opportunities throughout this game, and Hurts made several backbreaking mistakes.
Barkley's 19 carries other than his long touchdown jaunt went for just 70 yards -- an average of just 3.7 per carry. And that actually included two other decently long runs in the first quarter. He was bottled up for almost the entire night, repeatedly being contacted behind the line of scrimmage as the offensive line failed to provide him with any lanes through which to take off.
Hurts missed open receivers not just down the field, but in his line of sight when he refused to make checkdown throws. He missed Brown deep down the field on the first snap of the game. He overthrew Dotson over the middle and was nearly picked early in the second quarter -- and then he was actually picked twice in the second quarter anyway, and twice more through the rest of the game.
When you average a mere 6.0 yards per attempt and throw four interceptions, it is a brutally bad performance, but that line might understate the degree to which the passing game looks off at the moment. And the running game isn't much better.
The offense as a whole was a disaster, with a success rate below the 30th percentile. The Eagles are now 28th in offensive success rate on the season. There is nothing they do offensively that is good, let alone at a playoff or championship level. They need new ideas and/or better execution, and they need it quickly.
Playoff picture
The Chargers are 9-4 after this win and moved into fifth place in the AFC. Had they lost, they actually would have dropped behind both the Colts and the Texans and out of the playoff picture entirely. Alas, they remain two games behind the Broncos in the AFC West and have an inside track to one of the wild card spots. They have a tough schedule down the stretch, with games against the Chiefs, Cowboys, Texans and Broncos to finish out the season.
Philly is now 8-5 and remains in third place in the NFC even after this loss. The Eagles are 1.5 games up on the 6-6-1 Cowboys for the division lead, and winning the division might be their only path to a playoff berth because the seventh-place team in the conference is the 9-4 Bears. The Eagles have a significantly softer stretch-run schedule than do the Chargers, with games against the Raiders, Commanders, Bills and Commanders again, but they're now on a three-game losing streak and look utterly broken, so anything can happen here.
