Foolish Commanders mistake by Stefon Diggs gifts Eagles a season-opening win

The late, great Denny Green said it first and said it best:

They are who we thought they were.

The Eagles were pretty good, the Commanders were pretty dumb, and the Birds won, 24-22.

They both are what we thought they were.

Green said it in 2006, after his Cardinals blew a Monday Night Football lead, and he said it in frustration, but Eagles fans should be anything but frustrated after this one.

The difference began with Jalen Carter, who blocked a point-after-touchdown kick in the second quarter.

That played big.

Stefon Diggs caught a touchdown pass with 9 minutes, 59 seconds to play, but then hopped onto the goal post and gave it a brief, full-body hug. That behavior is illegal. The Commanders trailed by two points and had the Eagles on their heels after a nearly six-minute drive, so, they go for two, right? Well, the 15-yard penalty would have pushed a two-point conversion try from the 2-yard line to the 17-yard line, so they kicked the PAT and cut the lead to 17-16.

The Eagles scored, but then so did the Commanders, with 1:01 to play. Forced to go for two, they failed, and that was that.

“I got a little overzealous, I got a little excited, you know,” Diggs said afterward, smiling sheepishly. “Finally, when we clicked, after not clicking for a little while, it got to me a little bit. So just being smart[er].”

Diggs recalls when such actions were legal.

“As soon as I wrapped my arms around it, I’m like, ‘Oh!’ I forgot,” he said. “It’s not back in the day. You know, I’ve been playing for a long time. You used to could do that.”

Actually, he could never do that. The NFL outlawed goalpost celebrations in 2014 after Saints tight end Jimmy Graham bent a goal post in 2013. But Diggs certainly had seen it done.

It made a big difference Sunday evening against an Eagles team that was just good enough to win.

The Eagles, with new offensive coordinator Sean Mannion and old defensive coordinator Vic Fangio, looked like a quality team with quality players that should contend for a Super Bowl berth. They beat a quality team in the Commanders, with a superior quarterback in Jayden Daniels. The Eagles’ head coach, Nick Sirianni, moved to 6-0 in season openers, as did his franchise quarterback, Super Bowl LIX MVP Jalen Hurts. The defense limited the visitors all day, and squashed a two-point conversion when Moro Ojomo sniffed out a shovel pass and tackled John Bates.

Simply, events followed script.

“We played a gritty game,” All-Pro cornerback Quinyon Mitchell said. “Obviously got some things that we got to clean up, but the fight was there, and the resilience was there.”

So was the talent.

A healthier offensive line gave Hurts enough time to throw three touchdown passes, two to tight end Dallas Goedert, who is a touchdown-catching machine. The line helped Saquon Barkley gain 83 rushing yards. Hurts had 203 passing yards, 46 rushing yards, and no interceptions.

Middle linebacker Zack Baun remained the team’s most consistent player, as he has been the past two seasons. He finished with 12 tackles, wrecked a third-quarter possession by himself, forced a false start on a fourth-quarter blitz, and deflected a touchdown pass late in the fourth, one of his two passes defensed.

The Commanders keyed on Barkley, who gained 41 yards on the 14 carries that didn’t include his 42-yarder that set up Hurts’ second touchdown pass. The Commanders cheated coverage toward DeVonta Smith, who caught three passes for 53 yards, but whose presence helped free Dontayvion Wicks for a 64-yard bomb and a 9-yard TD catch.

It was not all rosy, but then, since Sirianni hides his starters in the preseason and since Mannion — a first-time coordinator who installed a mostly new offense — this essentially was a preseason game. Not bad for a dress rehearsal.

Mistakes happened.

Hurts misdiagnosed defenses, as Fox analyst Tom Brady repeatedly noted.

The offensive line, healthy again, was pretty good, with the exception of Landon Dickerson. The sixth-year right guard seemed a bit slow off the ball and did not resemble the dominant player of 2023 and 2024; he committed a holding penalty in the third quarter. Dickerson, who exited college with a litany of surgeries, this offseason underwent stem-cell procedures on both knees and both ankles.

Former full-time nickel corner Cooper DeJean, playing safety against two-receiver sets and nickel against trips, seemed lost. He committed two illegal contact penalties and gave up the fourth-quarter touchdown that cut the lead to 17-16.

But the defense was good, the offensive line was competent, Hurts didn’t turn the ball over, completed 14 of 25 passes, and led the team to a win.

Which is all they need to do. It’s seldom elegant, and almost never pretty, but a win is a win is a win.