Eagles Tank

Washington Gets an Easy Win from Eagles

By: Grant Turner

After an interesting game this past weekend, the Washington Football Team will most likely be NFC East division champs after beating the Philadelphia Eagles. Washington’s coach Ron Rivera celebrated his team’s victory by saying, “This one’s special just because of how hard it was." However, millions of people who watched the game would agree that this statement was certainly questionable due to the fact that the Eagles quite obviously threw the game intentionally Washington was pretty much handed the win.

In a game this previous week, the Philadelphia Eagles lost to the relatively newly named Washington Football Team. During the third quarter of the game, the Eagles were down 14-17 and had ample opportunity to at least tie the game with a field goal or even pull ahead with a touchdown. Instead of making a hard attempt at scoring, they put out a weak attempt on their fourth-and-goal and failed to get any points. Nate Sudfeld, a third-string quarterback for the Eagles, was also putting out a weak performance when he managed to fumble a snap and make multiple terrible passes after he was put in during the third quarter.

Many wonder why Sudfeld was in the game at all. Head Coach Doug Peterson said he was just trying to give Sudfeld a chance to play after he took out his starting QB Jalen Hurts. This seems suspect as Sudfeld didn’t see any playing time in 2019 and this was his first time in during the 2020 season. The Eagles desperately needed to score and they decided to put in their third-string quarterback. Who does that? The answer: nobody who wants to win a game. 

Peterson claims that he, "was coaching to win” and maintains that he chose to put in a 3rd-string QB when the game was on the line because he, “felt he deserved an opportunity to get some snaps.” 

It seems pretty obvious to me that they threw the game, and with good reason. If the Eagles were to win the game, they wouldn’t have gotten much out of it, but if they lost they would get a better draft pick for next year. There are no penalties for tanking, and it isn’t like they did terribly the whole game so no one will likely be affected negatively by this choice.