How a Quez Watkins fumble in 2022 led to a huge Eagles play in NFC title game

How a Quez Watkins fumble in 2022 led to a huge Eagles play in NFC title game originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

One of the tricks Nick Sirianni teaches his players is that the perfect time to try to force a fumble is when an offensive player with the football is on the ground but not down by contact and then tries to get up to pick up more yards.

It’s a fascinating detail for a team that over the last four months has forced more turnovers than anybody.

And it’s a detail Sirianni learned by watching his own players victimized by that exact technique.

“That’s been a particular focus,” he said Tuesday. “Shoot, you go back to 2020, and Zach Pascal (then with the Colts) had one in our Buffalo game in the playoffs. Zach was getting up with the football. I think Micah Hyde ripped at it as he was getting up. …

“It also happened in our 2022 game against Washington with Quez Watkins. He caught a post from Jalen, he was getting up off the ground and the ball was at risk, and I think (Benjamin St-Juste) knocked the ball out.

“There are moments when the ball is at risk (and) one of the moments is (when) you get up off the ground. … Because naturally your body, as you get up, tends to loosen up on (the ball). When you’re going down, the same thing, you tend to brace. So those are things that we drill.

“(Running Backs coach) Jemal Singleton has done an unbelievable job of finding creative ways to drill those two things. We drill the heck out of them. And just like the other ball security stuff, if the guy misses a strip opportunity in a moment in practice, where he’s getting up and we don’t take advantage of that, we talk about it.”

Why is this relevant now?

For a couple reasons.

One of the reasons the Eagles have been virtually impossible to beat since the bye week is their outrageous success protecting the football and forcing turnovers.

They’re an absurd plus-27 in their last 16 games, the 4^th-highest turnover margin in NFL history over a 16-game span. In their last five games, they’ve forced 15 turnovers without a turnover of their own. In the playoffs, they have 10 takeaways and no turnovers. They’re the first team in history to reach a Super Bowl without committing a turnover in the postseason.

When the Eagles are plus-one or better in turnover margin under Nick Sirianni, they’re 33-2.

Their current streak of five straight games without a turnover is tied for 4^th-longest in NFL history. And they’re the first team since the 2004 Patriots that’s been plus-10 during any three-game span in the postseason.

But this is also relevant because that exact scenario presented itself in the third quarter of the NFC Championship Game.

With the Eagles up 34-23, the Commanders had a 1^st-and-10 near midfield when Jayden Daniels completed a short pass to Austin Ekeler. He went down untouched and as he was rising, Oren Burks raced over and stripped him.

A few plays later, Jalen Hurts scored and the Eagles were up 41-23.

Burks was making only his fourth start of the year after replacing injured Nakobe Dean, but he’s played at a very high level and that play showed his combination of athleticism and football IQ. That was his fourth forced fumble this year, his second in the last five games.

“To be able to mentally think about that in the game the way Oren did is pretty incredible,” Sirianni said. “He’s got coverage responsibilities. He reacts. He sees Ekeler going to the ground. He’s going there. Ekeler gets up, and he’s like, ‘oh, shoot I’m going to punch here.’

“Those are things you can’t do in the spur of the moment unless those are your habits. That’s why the habits are so, so critical. It’s like, we can talk about it all we want. But unless you’re practicing that, unless you’re emphasizing it after you practice it – it’s got to be part of who you are. They’re split-second situations where these things happen

“I guess sometimes our best coaching points and our best things we think about or happen to you because of something negative that happened to you. Those are both situations. In the Buffalo-Indy game, they called Zach down. I think we might have gotten away with one there. Quez definitely was a fumble, and it turned that (game) a little bit.

“So sometimes your scars of the things you went through help you become better. I think that’s just another way of our team embracing adversity and trying to get better from each individual thing that we go through.”

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