‘Somebody had to go make a play’: DeVonta Smith helps rescue a sleepy Eagles offense in 10-7 win
GREEN BAY, Wis. — Jalen Hurts was well within earshot of DeVonta Smith inside the Eagles’ locker room at Lambeau Field late Monday night.
“Tell it like it is,” Hurts said to Smith from the next stall over.
Smith, the lone Eagles touchdown scorer in the team’s 10-7 win over the Green Bay Packers, had just finished with his assessment of the two-play sequence that sparked a sleepy Eagles offense.
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“Somebody had to go make a play,” Smith said. “Saquon [Barkley] made a big play, and then I made the next one. That was really the main thing on offense tonight. We struggled, but at the end of the day somebody had to go make a play. Somebody had to get us out of that funk.”
The Eagles followed a breakout offensive performance in a Week 8 win over the New York Giants by coming out of their bye week with a confounding and conservative offensive game plan that yielded just three points in 49-plus minutes. But the two-play sequence that decided the game showed once again that it doesn’t take much, that the Eagles have the players to turn woes into wins.
First, Barkley took a dump down pass on a third-and-7 from the Eagles’ 23-yard line and turned what would have been a fifth three-and-out into a 41-yard gain with a spin move in space. On the next play, Smith jumped over Packers safety Evan Williams and snatched a 50-50 ball out of the air to extend the Eagles’ lead to 10-0 with a 36-yard touchdown. There was more than 10 minutes on the clock, but that was more than enough for the Eagles’ defense.
It was Smith’s third touchdown of the season. He finished with four catches on seven targets for 69 yards. He has gone over 50 yards in six of the Eagles’ nine games and is on pace to eclipse his previous career-high of 1,196 yards set in 2022.
“Everybody is mentioning I’m having the best so far, but I honestly don’t feel like it,” Smith said. “I feel like I left a lot out there. I feel like it’s been a little slow. But it takes time, it takes patience. I sit and wait and try to make the most of my opportunities.”
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That has been the case for the offense as a whole at times through the Eagles’ first nine games. But they are 7-2, atop the NFC, after finding a way to win again.
A bruising opening drive that lasted 16 plays and stretched 82 yards ended with no points after a Hurts fumble. The Eagles’ next 15 plays netted just 24 yards. There were a combination of factors that included conservative play-calling, untimely penalties, and negative runs.
The Eagles were especially conservative on third-and-long scenarios. But on a critical third-and-12 with five minutes to play and the Eagles clinging to a 10-7 lead with the ball on their own 26-yard line, Hurts found Smith for a 16-yard gain that moved the chains, kept the clock moving, and helped tilt the field.
“That’s something that you live for in this game, to be able to go out there and make those big plays to change games,” Smith said.
He has done that consistently in recent games. With A.J. Brown out due to a hamstring injury in Week 8, Smith caught six of nine targets for 84 yards. A week earlier, in Minnesota, he caught nine of 11 targets for a career-high 183 yards and a touchdown.
He also has, like he did Monday night, consistently made 50-50 balls look less like coin flips and more like sure things.
“I feel like I am one of the best guys at 50-50 balls,” Smith said. “My quarterback says he’s going to give me a chance. I take pride in that, to go make that play for him.”
Barkley said he feels like “people forget” Smith won the Heisman trophy.
“Like, he’s a pretty good [expletive] football player,” Barkley said. “I don’t know why that’s forgotten. You know how hard it is to win the Heisman. He comes up big for us every single time.”
Barkley recalled a video his former running back coach at Penn State, Charles Huff, showed him. It was about Steph Curry. “Success is not an accident,” Barkley said.
In this context, Barkley meant that Smith’s habits tell the story. When there are breaks in team drills during practices, Barkley knows where to find Smith.
“If you just try to find Smitty, he’s going to be on the Jugs [machine] catching footballs,” Barkley said.
Smith’s explanation for it all — the season he is having, the catches he has made — was rather simple: “That’s part of my job,” he said. “My job description is to go out there, get open, catch the ball.”
The Eagles have often made that look more difficult than it needs to be for a 7-2 team that has the talent they have.
“It’s not a capability thing,” Hurts said. “When we look at ourselves in the mirror, it’s not a capability thing at all. We’re very confident in what we can do. We just have to go out there and play at a high level more consistently. I think this game was a perfect example of what it could be when we take advantage of our opportunities, and then when we don’t control the things that we can, how that can hinder us.”
The offense, Smith said, doesn’t “feel good at all” after Monday.
“We need to be better,” he said. “Defense is playing their ass off. We need to help those guys out. We need to be better. That’s going to come. You have your ups and downs. We have good weeks, we have bad weeks, and this week wasn’t one of our best.”
Thanks in part to him, it didn’t have to be. It only takes one play.
