Ryan Mathews scores one of his two touchdowns of the day in Eagles 24-15 win over the Atlanta Falcons. Photo by Andy Lewis / contrastphotography.com

The Eagles needed a win in order reset their season, they accomplished that with a quality 24-15 victory over the Atlanta Falcons on a beautiful fall Sunday afternoon at Lincoln Financial Field.
The Eagles held a team that had been averaging 33 points per game to just 15.

Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan – a Philadelphia native – came into the game with a 119.0 quarterback rating, second best in the NFL.

“Matty Ice” as he is known, finished 18 of 33 for 267 yards, was sacked twice, threw just one touchdown pass, was picked off once and finished with a quarterback rating of 78.7.

Ryan was asked about coming up short scoring after doing so well in their first nine games.

“Yeah, that part is disappointing,” Ryan said. “We’ve done some good things. You know nothing of what we’ve done in prior weeks is going to have any bearing on what we did today. That’s one of the things I’ve learned throughout my career. It’s disappointing for sure but we are capable of playing better than that. But I think it starts with first and foremost: we’ve got to be better on third down. I think we were 2 of 11 on third down. In order to get into a rhythm and get things going, you have to convert in those situations.”

The Falcons only rushed 13 times for 48 yards. They had averaged more than double that coming into the game.

Falcons Pro Bowl center Alex Mack tipped his cap to the Eagles defense.

“Kudos to the Eagles defense,” Mack said. “They did a good job. They made plays when they needed to and we didn’t. A big part of having a really consistent offense is being good on third down, sustaining drives and it felt like we couldn’t stay on the field.”

Mack said he didn’t think the Eagles success against the Falcons’ offense in the first quarter was the reason they lost.

“It’s important,” Mack said about starting out strong. “But it is more important to be able to recover. I think we had a couple of chances later in the game and we didn’t make plays.”

Mack says he expects his team to get right off the mat and come up swinging.

“It’s going to be really big for us to see how we can recover,” Mack said. “We need to take this as a learning opportunity, see where we made mistakes and try to and learn from that.”

Eagles linebacker Brandon Graham said the Birds just wanted to get a win as a team. The Eagles four losses this season were by a combined total of 19 points – all on the road. All had some sort of self-inflicted mistake happen that helped the Eagles lose the game.

“We just needed to get that winning feeling again,” Graham said. “I’m just happy we went out there and didn’t beat ourselves today. If we did have a turnover here and there, we picked each other up, we didn’t waiver, we stayed together.”

Carson Wentz was 25 of 36 for 231 yards and led the Eagles (5-4) to a comeback victory for the first time this season. Caleb Sturgis made three field goals, including a clutch kick from 48 yards to seal the win late.

Matt Ryan threw a 76-yard touchdown pass to Taylor Gabriel in the fourth quarter to give Atlanta (6-4) a 15-13 lead, but the Eagles responded.
Mathews ran in from the 5 and also converted the 2-point conversion for a 21-15 lead with 7:14 left in the game.

On the Falcons next possession, Julio Jones dropped a pass on third-and-12 and the Falcons punted away. Jones couldn’t make a difficult catch on fourth-and-5 on Atlanta’s next drive.
Graham did not avoid noting the drop by Falcons All Pro receiver Julio Jones, who finished with 10 catches for 135 yards, but did no TDs.

“I’m not going to lie,” Graham said, his always present smile getting wider. “Julio (Jones) dropped a couple that we were like ‘thank you’ we need a little bit (of luck). But it happens in games. You’ve got to take advantage of those opportunities. The last couple of weeks we didn’t.

Mathews ran for 108 yards on 19 carries and two touchdowns.

• The Eagles limited the Falcons to season lows in points scored (15), total net yards (303), first downs (11), offensive plays run (48) and time of possession (21:50). Entering Week 10, Atlanta ranked 1st in the NFL in points per game (33.9) and 2nd in the NFL in total net yards per game (429.2).

• The Falcons’ 11 first downs were their fewest in a single-game since 12/16/07 at TB (5 first downs). Atlanta’s 21:50 time of possession was its lowest mark since 9/27/09 at New England (20:11).
RUSHING ATTACK

• The Eagles rushed for a season-high 208 yards, their most in a single game since 11/27/14 at Dallas (256 rushing yards).

• Ryan Mathews led the team with 109 yards and 2 TDs on 19 carries (5.7 avg.), marking his second career game with 100+ rushing yards and 2+ rushing TDs (also 1/2/11 at Denver with San Diego – 120 yards, 3 TDs).

• Mathews has a career-high 8 offensive TDs (7 rushing TDs, 1 receiving TD) in 2016. Mathews is just the fifth Eagles player since 1950 to record 7+ rushing TDs in the first nine games of the season, joining LeSean McCoy (10 in 2011), Ricky Watters (8 in 1996), Wilbert Montgomery (7 in 1982) and Billy Ray Barnes (7 in 1958).

• Wendell Smallwood also added 70 yards on 13 carries (5.4 avg.).