'We knew they were going to come away with the win': Devonta Smith and the Eagles on how they beat the Browns

Smith & Brown

Philadelphia's offense is like night and day when wide receivers Devonta Smith and AJ Brown are in the game.

The Week 5 bye allowed Brown to recover from a hamstring injury and Smith to recover from his concussion. For the first time since their Week 1 win over Green Bay, quarterback Jalen Hurts had his top targets on the field.

Hurts expressed gratitude for their performances as Brown had six catches for 116 yards (19.3 per reception), Smith caught three passes for 64 yards (21.3 per reception) and both ended with a touchdown.

Cleveland's defense entered Week 6 ranked seventh in fewest passing yards allowed per game (184.4), but Hurts' 264 passing yards on Sunday came mostly against man-to-man coverage.

The first big play was Brown's 22-yard touchdown reception in the second quarter, where he wanted the ball because the defense noticed him.

“I was begging for the man, begging for the man and fighting the emotions that went into it… (Jalen) gave me a great ball,” Brown said.

According to Next Gen Stats, Brown only managed 0.3 yards between himself and Cleveland's Martin Emerson Jr., with a completion probability of 24.5%. Still, Brown took Emerson down and played on the left sideline, and he claimed he wasn't surprised to see he was in a one-on-one situation with Emerson.

“I'm not surprised because they sprinkled it in, you know, most of the time they started putting the system on the side and throwing it on my side,” Brown said. “But whenever I head out, I want the ball because, you know, I’m trying to change the game.”

Before Smith's 45-yard touchdown reception in the fourth third, he lined up to his left with Cleveland's Greg Newsome II closely defending him.

Smith's crossing route took him to the right side of the field, and while Newsome was initially behind him, he suddenly found himself caught in traffic as teammate D'Anthony Bell was defending Philadelphia's Jack Stoll, who was running a crossing route in the other direction.

The basket helped Smith break free and he used it all to give Philadelphia a 20-13 lead.

Smith said it was what he expected.

“We knew it was a man (coverage), so it was a perfect 'man' game,” Smith said. “Especially when you play against a team that you know is going to play against a man. You know this team is going to be playing against men, so you have to take advantage of that.”

The final blow was Brown's 40-yard catch after the two-minute warning, where he flew past Greg Newsome II and made a great catch to put Philadelphia in the red zone and force Cleveland to use its final timeout.

“It’s a warning in my head, yeah,” Hurts said. “If you alert something, it always has the potential to be number one. He’s not necessarily the guy you want to go to, but everyone is there for him.”

Eagles defense

With less than eight minutes to play, Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson finally surpassed the 100-yard mark with a 35-yard reception by Jerry Jeudy.

The Eagles found ways to make Watson uncomfortable in the pocket while preventing the Cleveland offense from scoring a touchdown.

“It meant a lot to us because we prepared hard throughout the week (and tried to eliminate mistakes”), Eagles rookie cornerback Quinyon Mitchell said.

Late in the first half, Watson threw a deep ball to Jeudy that was nearly intercepted by Philadelphia. Both CJ Gardner-Johnson and Mitchell read the play and reached for the pick at the same time, eventually colliding into each other in the air.

“We're just two competitors trying to get the ball, that's all, we just went to the sideline and laughed about it,” Mitchell said after the game. “(CJ) is a ballhawk, so he’s going to get the ball and I’m going to get the ball.”

The Eagles held Browns receiver Amari Cooper to 42 yards rushing, and he was the Browns' leading receiver on the day.

The defense sacked Watson five times and forced several ejections.

Milton Williams, the defensive tackle who had one of his five sacks that day, talked about the feeling when he came in.

“We just executed the whole game, you know they blocked the field until the end of the half. So it's like, 'Damn,' I mean, we felt bad,” Williams said. “But it’s like really looking at it. They had three points and we did our job, we just had to keep going.”

They would do exactly that.