Eagles Motivated To Avenge Blowout Loss To Giants Just Two Weeks Ago

PHILADELPHIA – If there is any such thing as a revenge game, Sunday’s NFC East matchup between the Eagles and Giants at Lincoln Financial Field would qualify after New York took the Eagles out to the proverbial woodshed and gave them a good beat down just 17 days ago, winning every aspect of the game on their way to a 34-17 win on Oct. 9.

The Eagles aren’t viewing it that way. They aren’t happy about what happened, but revenge?

“I don’t know if it’s revenge,” said cornerback Cooper DeJean. “I think it’s just another opportunity to play these guys and put out better tape than we did last time. It’s a new opportunity.

“Obviously, they’re coming here, but it’s still a division game. They’re going to want us to beat us again. They’re confident coming in, obviously, after what happened. So, we gotta be ready come Sunday to play a physical football game.”

Loss Serving As Extra Motivation

Safety Reed Blankenship prepares to do a drill during an Eagles OTA practice on June 3, 2025. | Ed Kracz/Eagles on SI

Physicality was an area of the game the Giants won handily, something that doesn’t happen often to the Eagles. Nor do 17-point defeats. The last time the Eagles lost by 17 was in Week 4 last year when Tampa Bay won 33-16. All the Eagles did was rebound and win the Super Bowl.

"I don’t really think (it's a revenge game), " said running back Saquon Barkley. "I can’t speak for everybody, but it’s hyped up enough. A division rival, so it’s gonna be a fun game. Obviously, we just played them 17 days ago and they beat us, so we know how big it is to get wins in the NFC East, we know how important it is, so I think that’s enough fuel."

Whether they can use the motivation New York gave them to do it again remains to be seen. It starts with winning the division and even though the Giants are just 2-5 compared to the Eagles 5-2, Philly can’t afford to get swept.

“I mean, once you get your (butt) kicked like that, I'm definitely going to use it as motivation,” said safety Reed Blankenship. “It's just another game, but the end of the day, the last time we played them, things went wrong and we didn't like that. So, we're motivated, we're excited.

“We never like to get our tails whooped like that, and especially with our defense, we didn't play as aggressively as we should have. I mean no excuses needed to be made. They just played better than us. You know, they had more energy on their sideline, and we just played on our heels the whole time. So luckily, we got back with a win and we can keep it going forward.”

It was a laundry list of things that went wrong. On defense, the Eagles couldn’t get off the field on third down, surrendering 11 first downs on 16 third down attempts. They couldn’t stop the run game, with Cam Skattebo hammering his way to 98 yards and three touchdowns with quarterback Jaxson Dart adding 58 yards on 13 runs, including a 20-yard touchdown for New York’s first score of the game.

Offensively, the Eagles were shut out in the second half and Jalen Hurts threw his first – and, so far, only – interception of the season.

“We just made an unusual amount of mistakes and I don’t think our physicality was up to our standard that we’ve set here for ourselves, especially our defense,” said linebacker Zack Baun. “We’re competitors. We wanna win. We hate losing so whenever we - in life, whenever you get an opportunity to redeem yourself, you definitely wanna do that.”

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