On a day where Dallas Goedert had the most receiving yards for an Eagles’ tight end in nearly 60 years, and Saquon Barkley piled up 147 rushing yards and two touchdowns, including a 65-yard home run, it was second-year defensive tackle Jalen Carter who was the biggest star of them all in a hard-fought 15-12 Philadelphia win.
“Sometimes I share with you ‘player of the game,’ sometimes I don't. He was our player of the game yesterday,” Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni said of Carter at his Monday videoconference. “So he got a game ball for yesterday because of his performance.”
It’s been a difficult start for uber-talented Carter in his sophomore season, self-described “trash” from Carter himself over the first two weeks. He was also benched for the first defensive series against Atlanta after being late in a team meeting due to oversleeping.
“So Jalen Carter, he didn’t play his best game, obviously, against Atlanta. But he came out and he was completely dominant in the game yesterday,” said Sirianni.
Carter essentially wrecked the game against the high-powered New Orleans offense averaging 45.5 points per game coming in. The numbers were four tackles – two for loss – three hurries, two bat-downs of Derek Carr, and one QB hit but hardly told the whole story of Carter's dominance.
Pro Football Focus had Carter as the highest-graded Eagles player of the game and as the top-ranked interior player in the NFL entering Monday’s action.
While Carter didn’t spend as much time in the Saints’ backfield as Carr and Alvin Kamara, the Eagles' star defender might have been No. 3 on the afternoon.
“He’d strike, he was violent yesterday with his hands. He was athletic to get off blocks. He beat blocks every way you could possibly imagine,” Sirianni said. “He played on their side of the line of scrimmage an awful lot.”
That in turn helped others make plays including Jordan Davis and Brandon Graham up front as well as Zack Baun at LB.
It was Graham and Carter hurrying Carr that resulted in the game-sealing interception by Reed Blankenship.
“Not only did he make plays, but he helped other people make plays,” said Sirianni. “There were multiple plays where I felt like our linebackers were running free because they were hanging on the double team of his block for a little bit longer.”
The next step for Carter, 23, is consistency because he’s the most gifted player defensive coordinator Vic Fangio has.
When Carter is clicking the Eagles’ defense becomes very difficult to deal with.
“At the end of the day you can have a negative mindset, or you can have a purpose mindset,” Sirianni explained. “The purpose mindset says ‘What did I screw up the game before? This, this, and this. And how am I going to fix it? This, this, and this.’ And then going out and executing it. And [Carter] did that.”
