Philadelphia: Carson Wentz passed for 152 yards and a touchdown on Thursday as the Philadelphia Eagles held on to beat New York 24-19, a win that prevented the Giants from earning their first play-off spot since 2011.
The result allowed the Dallas Cowboys to clinch the NFC East title and the top seed in the NFC play-offs.
The Giants (10-5) had two chances to pull it out in the fourth quarter. First, they drove to the Eagles 37-yard line, but a fourth-down pass from quarterback Eli Manning was batted down by defender Nolan Carroll. Then, with five seconds to play, Terrence Brooks picked off Manning on the Eagles’ 11-yard line.
The Giants (10-5) have to hope that the Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers, Tampa Bay Buccaneers or Atlanta Falcons lose on Sunday. Any loss by one of those teams would do it.
The Eagles, who dropped to 6-9 on the NFL season, lost Wentz briefly in the third quarter when he was hit hard by Giants defensive end Olivier Vernon after throwing a pass.
Vernon was penalised for the hit and Wentz was forced to leave the game with an apparent head injury. He was replaced by Chase Daniel for one series before returning. It marked the first time Wentz had to leave a game all season.
Manning had three interceptions to go with 38 completions on 63 passes for 356 yards and one touchdown. Two of those interceptions were by safety Malcolm Jenkins, who returned the first one 34 yards for a touchdown that gave the Eagles a 14-0 lead.
New York receiver Odell Beckham caught 11 passes for 150 yards.
The Eagles are 13-5 against the Giants since 2008, and they own five victories in the past seven meetings with New York.
The Giants had won eight of their last nine games and their defence hadn’t given up a touchdown in the previous seven quarters.
Meanwhile, the Cleveland Browns are running out of time, but quarterback Robert Griffin III says they’ll battle to the end of the season to avoid joining the 2008 Detroit Lions in 0-16 NFL ignominy.
“I think guys are going to fight all the way through to the finish,” Griffin said of the Browns’ determination not to join the 2008 Lions as the only teams since the league expanded to a 16-game schedule in 1978 to finish without a victory.
The expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers went 0-14 in 1976.
Griffin will be making his third straight start when the Browns play the Chargers in their final home game of the season on Saturday. They close the season against the Steelers in Pittsburgh.
Griffin was sacked five times in Browns’ loss to the Buffalo Bills last weekend — taking the total of sacks surrendered by Cleveland this season to 53.
Although Griffin said the team wasn’t feeling extra pressure to avoid the dreaded 0-16, he acknowledged that “everybody is aware of it.”
The struggles of the Browns stand out in even sharper relief after Cleveland celebrated the NBA championship of the Cavaliers in June, and the Indians’ run to the World Series in 2016.
But coach Hue Jackson says their predicament — the Browns have lost six straight games by at least 13 points and have been out-scored by a league-leading 188 points — isn’t due to lack of effort.
“There are some things we have to do much better. But I can never question if our guys are trying and playing hard,” Jackson said Monday.
“Do I think we can play better? Yes I do, but I do not think by any stretch it is an effort issue.”
Unfortunately for the Browns, as their defeats pile up, their opponents become even more determined not to be the first to fall to them.
That’s certainly true of the Chargers, who have produced back-to-back losing seasons and will miss the play-offs for the seventh time in eight years.
“We’ve got to find a way to win this one,” head coach Mike McCoy said.
A lot of people are pulling for the Browns, however, and that includes members of that hapless 2008 Lions team.
“I feel for them,” linebacker Ryan Nece, who played on that Detroit team, told the Detroit Free Press this week. “I’m actually hoping that they find a way to get a win, because just to be able to get that monkey off their back in the next two games, I think will be tremendous for them.”
