Eagles tight end Zach Ertz will be remembered in Philadelphia forever, after bringing down the game-winning touchdown in the Super Bowl.
But when he thinks back on what got them here, he’s going to remember the bye week the Eagles earned in the playoffs, and the week of preparation it led to.
That week, the Eagles tried to recover from some sloppy performances down the stretch with an aggressive week of practice, and Ertz said it made the difference.
“The management of the bye week was huge,” Ertz said. “We had ones against the ones that whole bye week, and that kind of set the tone for the playoffs. A lot of coaches in that situation would have let it be a bye week. But with the situations we had at quarterback losing Carson [Wentz] like that, that is probably the biggest week for us in terms of preparing for this stage.
“I had to go against Malcolm Jenkins for a whole week, and I had not done that since training camp. That was a huge week for us as a football team, and I do not know if we would be here without that wee of preparation.”
The Eagles were certainly the sharper team down the stretch, and that might have been because of the decisions Doug Pederson and his staff made a month ago, while they were dealing with the shock of losing Wentz to a torn ACL.