Lane Johnson on Eagles nearly blowing second-half lead: ‘It should have been a 40-point game’

PHILADELPHIA — Lane Johnson doesn’t take collapses well. The memory of last season’s epic collapse after a 10-1 start still haunts him. 

In two of those losses during that collapse, the Philadelphia Eagles had two fourth quarter leads that were blown in the final minute. The Eagles are 6-2 this season and had a loss where they had a fourth-quarter lead in the final minute.

It almost happened again on Sunday. The Eagles had a 22-0 lead with 9:25 remaining in the third quarter, only to see that lead become 28-23 with the Jacksonville Jaguars having the ball — and an opportunity to win the game — with 2:11 left. 

Jacksonville got to the Philadelphia 13-yard line with 1:42 left before Nakobe Dean picked off Trevor Lawrence in the end zone to seal the victory. 

Crisis averted. Collapse over. 

“I felt like we left — it should have been a 40-point game,” Eagles right tackle Lane Johnson said after the game. “And I felt like the yards we obtained should have been a reflection of that. It comes down to scoring points. It doesn’t matter about yards. You don’t win the game with yards. There’s multiple times we could have had some points and we didn’t.”

That wasn’t an indictment of Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni leaving points on the field, but the failed opportunity to capitalize on fourth down and two-point conversions. The Eagles were 0-for-2 on fourth down and 0-for-3 on two-point conversions in Sunday’s win, yet that wasn’t the sole reason behind Johnson’s frustration. 

Philadelphia was up 22-0 in the second half. Jacksonville had a chance to steal a win, which would have been the Eagles’ fourth blown lead in the final minute in their last 14 games. 

That’s unacceptable. 

“Lack of focus,” Johnson said. “When you get up on teams, a sense of complacency can naturally come on you. The talent level in this league and the players in this league, they will expose you. It’s really what’s it’s like week to week.”

So how does that get fixed? 

“You can fix it in practice,” Johnson said. “It goes down to Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. When the pressure is hitting on you, you have to make it pressurized. So it can translate to the game.”

Clearly the Eagles have second half issues to clean up, and Johnson wants to make sure these situations don’t happen again. The Eagles are letting victories get too close for comfort.