The Eagles Defense Took Down The Falcons With A Thrilling Red Zone Stand

The Philadelphia Eagles and Atlanta Falcons sure played a football game on Saturday, in that 60 minutes of the sport were played and a few minutes of them were actually interesting.

Thankfully, those interesting minutes came at the end, with the Falcons trying to go ahead in a 15-10 football game. That comeback effort included two long reviews to see whether catches were made, as well as a fourth down conversion after one of those catches was overturned by replay officials.

While the “what is a catch?” debate continues to baffle basically every person in football, what’s clear is that a Falcons comeback effort somehow fell short when Julio Jones couldn’t come up with a 4th-and-goal pass in the end zone.
Matt Ryan rolled to his right, drifted back to his left, and lofted a pass to Jones in the end zone that went through his hands. Jones actually slipped and fell, but stood up and tried to make a play on the ball. Much to the chagrin of Falcons fans, that didn’t happen, and the Eagles stayed alive in the postseason.

It’s a bit of a shocking result given how sure-handed Jones usually is, and how big he came through just moments earlier. But sometimes weird things happen on broken plays, and this was definitely a whole lot of broken on Saturday night.

Here’s another look at it from the end zone that really shows the chaos of the final meaningful moment in the game.

https://twitter.com/NFL/status/952343241814310913

That final Falcons drive alone had two long reviews, one which overturned a Falcons first down and another that was clearly a Jones catch near the goal line. But that wasn’t even the end of the shenanigans. Atlanta had a slim chance of getting the ball back by forcing a punt or, better yet, causing the Eagles to bumble away a chance to close it out close to their goal line.

But an encroachment penalty helped the Eagles get a first down and put the game away. And after a week where the 6-seed Falcons were largely considered to be the favorite over the top seed in the NFC, the Eagles were eager to celebrate their underdog victory.

Probably going to be a lot of dog masks sold in Philadelphia this week. And a lot more playoff tickets, too.