After an offseason filled with hope, hype, and more than enough drama for an entire season, the Philadelphia Eagles marched onto the field opposite the Washington Commanders and watched Jalen Hurts do what he does in Week 1s: win.

On paper, the numbers looked good: the Eagles took down the Commanders 24-21, Saquon Barkley ran the ball 15 times for 83 yards, Dontayvion Wicks dazzled in his debut, and Hurts took care of business in a major way, throwing for 203 yards and three touchdowns plus a very respectable 46 yards as a runner. Vic Fangio's defense looked as good as ever, even if players like Cooper DeJean and Jihaad Campbell found themselves out of position at times on key plays, and even Michael Clay's special teams lived up to expectations, with Jalen Carter blocking another field goal after agreeing to a $152 million contract.

And yet, securing a last-second, three-point win over a team that might not win three games period isn't the kind of showing most fans were hoping to see, especially when other NFC Super Bowl contenders like the Seattle Seahawks and the Chicago Bears ran up the score in their 2026 debuts.

With a Week 2 showdown against the Tennessee Titans next on the schedule, the Eagles won't have a true test of their mettle until Week 3, when Sirianni's squad takes a flight from PHL to O'Hare – or Midway – for a battle with the Bears on Monday Night Football. But when that showdown does arrive, the Eagles had better be ready to make consistently positive plays against one of the best teams in the NFL, as Sean Mannion's offense looked a little too much like Kevin Patullo's in his offensive coordinator debut.

Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts (1) runs with the ball against the Washington Commanders during the first half at Lincoln Financial Field.
Bill Streicher-Imagn Images

Sean Mannion needs to figure out the Eagles' running game in a hurry

As a general rule, if the Eagles are able to rush for at least 4.0 yards per attempt, they are generally going to win.

Over the entire Sirianni era, the Eagles are 38-21 in games where they averaged 4.0 or more yards per attempt, plus a 4-1 record in the playoffs, and have generally been able to parlay a successful ground game into big plays through the air, even if that production isn't quite as consistent as players like AJ Brown would like.

In Week 1, the Eagles averaged 5.4 yards per carry on the ground, rushing the ball 25 times for 136 yards, but that number is a bit deceiving because it's propped up by a pair of really long runs on the ground by Barkley and Hurts.

First came an electric 42-yard run from Barkley midway through the second quarter, flipping the field on 3rd-and-2 and setting up a nine-yard touchdown pass to Wicks just two plays later. And then, in the fourth quarter, the Eagles got another electrifying run from their QB1, with Hurts calling his own number on 3rd-and-18 and weaving through traffic to get the first down, setting up a massive 43-yard touchdown pass to Dallas Goedert on the next third down to effectively put the game away.

Before Barkley's 42-yard run, the Eagles didn't have a single rushing attempt over eight yards, and over the course of the game, they actually made more negative attempts than double-digit ones, four versus three, excluding a pair of kneel-downs on the final drive. Remove those two 20-plus-yard runs, and the Eagles' rushing averages look far less impressive, recording just 72 yards on 23 attempts for a 3.13 average.

Now granted, some of the Eagles' rushing issues had more to do with their offensive line than Mannion developing a Patullo-esque (lack of) situational awareness. Cam Jurgens, Tyler Steen, and especially Landon Dickerson all struggled against an at-best average Commanders interior pass rush, and some of Hurts' biggest scrambles came from having to improvise on the fly. Fortunately, Mannion is aware of this issue, and between his comments on Tuesday and the decision to place Dickerson on IL in favor of Drew Kendall or Willie Lampkin, the Eagles should be able to improve in a way Patullo struggled to in 2025.

“Some of it is just execution, some of it’s fundamentals, but I think you kind of hit it. The biggest takeaway for me from the game was just being able to stay on schedule. We got behind the sticks a little bit. If there’s a guy unaccounted for — we had a free safety pressure early. We’ve just got to communicate a little bit better upfront,” Mannion said.

“In large part, we always want to have a hat for a hat. We try to avoid those situations. Some of it’s execution, some of it’s fundamentals, but the better we’re able to stay on schedule, the better we’re going to be as an offense. That was the main takeaway from the game. That was some of it. Just a couple instances where it kind of got behind the sticks. The examples you’re speaking to led to at least a couple of them.”

If the Eagles can go from playing four-on-five to five-on-five in Week 2 against the Titans, they would already have more time for Hurts to drop back as a passer and for backs like Barkley to get past the line of scrimmage and into the open field, where he does maximum damage. Granted, Hurts may run for a few fewer yards, as his biggest run was on a third-down scramble, but at the end of the day, having that weapon in the chamber doesn't mean the Eagles always have to use it, and more often than not, winning through the air is the safer play than a QB run.

Another aspect of the run game that really didn't live up to expectations was the screen game, where Makai Lemon found himself the unlikely holder of -5 receiving yards to his name after being blown up behind the line of scrimmage. To Mannion's credit, this also came down to some execution issues, with Lemon twice going into motion before the ball was snapped before being absolutely decimated behind the line of scrimmage because one of his teammates – Wicks and Jordan Mailata- didn't pick up their man in the open field.

If the Eagles make these blocks, does Lemon have 15 yards instead of -5, something he can build on into the future? It certainly feels like it.

Was the Eagles' passing game perfect in Week 1? No, Hurts only completed 56 percent of his passes, and could have been sharper on a few of his completed attempts too. But at the end of the day, he didn't throw a pick and hit multiple perfect deep balls to Wick and DeVonta Smith down the field. Pair those big-time passing plays with a consistent rushing attack that averages over four yards per attempt without having to overly rely on big runs, and the Eagles might just be able to hang with the Chicago Bears and Los Angeles Rams of the world when they appear on the schedule later in September.