Welcome back, A.J. Brown. The wide receiver returned to the Eagles’ lineup and registered six catches for 116 yards to spark Philadelphia past Cleveland, 20-16, on Sunday.
Brown, who missed the last three games after pulling a hamstring during a Week 2 practice, was bookend critical in Sunday’s win, cooling the flames under the seat of head coach Nick Sirianni. After catching a 22-yard touchdown from Jalen Hurts to give the Eagles a 10-0 second-quarter lead, he also caught a 40-yard pass that allowed Philadelphia to ice the win in the final two minutes.
The Eagles (3-2) also got a big boost from the return of wide receiver DeVonta Smith. Playing for the first time since sustaining a concussion in Week 3, Smith had three catches for 64 yards, none bigger than his 45-yard touchdown that broke a 13-13 tie in the fourth quarter. But other than those catches by Brown and Smith, defense dominated this one.
Neither team ran a play inside the red zone until Deshaun Watson’s 13-yard pass to Amari Cooper gave Cleveland (1-5) a first-and-goal from the 8-yard line with five minutes left in the fourth quarter. But the Eagles’ defense held the Browns to a field goal. The Dustin Hopkins kick cut Philadelphia’s lead to 20-16 before Brown’s catch put the game away.
“You’ve got to play to the end,” said linebacker Brandon Graham, who played his 200th game. “As you can see, we were in a fight.”
A fight indeed, especially during a game-turning series of events late in the first half. After Browns linebacker Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah sacked Hurts on third-and-1, Myles Garrett blocked Jake Elliott’s 57-yard field-goal attempt and former Eagle Rodney McLeod returned the loose ball 50 yards to knot the game, 10-10, at intermission.
When Cleveland took the ball out of the locker room and drove down the field, Graham elevated the Eagles’ defense. Graham blasted Browns receiver Cedric Tillman for a 5-yard loss on third-and-1 to force a missed field goal.
“We went out there and did what we were supposed to do,” Graham said. “It wasn’t as pretty as some people thought it should be, but that’s the league. They have a good defense. They play hard, we play hard. At the end of the day, we kept them out of the end zone and I’m proud of that as a defense.”
That defense held Cleveland not only without an offensive touchdown but also limited the Browns to just 244 yards. Cleveland hasn’t scored more than 18 points in a game since Week 17 last season. Watson, meanwhile, still hasn’t reached 200 passing yards in any game this year.
Cleveland’s defense, however, was stout. The Browns held Saquon Barkley to just 47 yards on 18 carries (2.6 avg.). Barkley and the Eagles now head on the road to meet his former team, the Giants, next week.
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