Only minutes after the clock on Sunday afternoon at Lincoln Financial Field wound down to zeroes, the flushing began.
Literally.
With only approximately 100 hours from that moment until kickoff on Thursday night at MetLife Stadium, there was not a moment to waste.
"You move on. That's what you do," wide receiver DeVonta Smith said after the loss to the Denver Broncos. "That's what you have to do."
The New York Giants await on Thursday night and every player in the Eagles' locker room knows what that means: It is an NFC East game and the most direct path to the postseason is to win the division for a second straight season, something that has not been accomplished since the Eagles did it in four straight times from 2001-04.
So, flush the past.
That's precisely what the Eagles have done, starting in the locker room as players stretched out on their backs and zipped on the available Normatec compression sleeves for their legs and began the process of healing for a game that's literally up the road and around the corner.
"The nature of the business is that you correct the mistakes you've made, win or lose, and then get ready for the next game," said linebacker Zack Baun. "Even in a normal week, that's the approach you take. Nobody spends much time thinking about the game they just played. There isn't much time between games. The time flies."
The Eagles have won three straight games under Nick Sirianni on Thursday night – beating the Texans in 2022, the Vikings in 2023, and the Commanders in 2024. The players and coaching staff understand the challenges – the shorter week means less time for bodies to heal, for minds to clear and then recharge, and for the X's and O's and strategies to come together.
"You have to play through all that," Baun said. "That's the job."
There is also a bit of a reward on the back end: A mini-bye weekend. The Eagles will arrive back at the NovaCare Complex on Friday morning and the players will lay their heads on the pillows and then the entire weekend is theirs to heal and rest and rejuvenate.
The entire "off" time will be in the neighborhood of 72 hours, but it will be a welcome relief after six regular-season games.
"The important thing is that we get ready to play and win a football game," wide receiver A.J. Brown said. "Nobody is feeling sorry for us. We don't ask for that. We're in the NFL. This is our job. Win or lose, you get ready for the next game.
"I think you learn to prepare and recover every day. Make sure you're getting your sleep and taking care of your body. Every team plays on a Thursday night. It's up to you how you deal with it, so make the best of it."
That is exactly what the Eagles plan to do.
The team was back in the NovaCare Complex on Monday to continue the "flush" with a normal day-after-game workout and meetings and then a walkthrough practice. That they are playing the Giants, a familiar foe coming off a road loss on Sunday at the New Orleans Saints, is helpful. The Eagles know the New York coaching staff and much of the personnel is familiar.
Both teams know the other. Expect a typical NFC East brawl. For the Eagles, it is about bouncing back and correcting the mistakes they made on Sunday.
"It is about us, and how we look into our process and we have to truly take that a day at a time so we can make it as difficult or as easy as it needs to be," quarterback Jalen Hurts said on Sunday. "Ultimately, we just have to have the right mentality going into this week and every week and take (control of) the things that we can control, assess our systems, assess our process, assess all of these things and say, 'What can we improve on? What's working?' Not even what's working, what's efficient, what can we improve on, and really evaluate that and grow.
"But I say this again, it's not a capability thing. We just have to really stay focused on the task at hand, stay focused on the main thing, and be bought into the collective of doing that by any means necessary. So this is a great one to learn from and we will learn from it."
