Eagles’ players credit fans, NFL schedule for home field dominance

After Sunday afternoon’s 24-15 victory over the Falcons at Lincoln Financial Field, the Eagles improve to 4-0 at home on the season. They’ve allowed just three touchdowns in the four games and only 38 points total — less than 10 per game.

Clearly the Philly defense plays better at home. More than 69,000 fans make it a lot easier to mess with opposing offenses.

“You got the crowd here,” cornerback Leodis McKelvin, who had a game-clinching interception in Week 10 said. “When youhave the Philadelphia crowds in the background they are yelling and making noise. Getting a win for these guys is always great.”

The Eagles have outscored their visiting opponents by a league-best 70 points. They also have the most sacks, best red zone attack and most forced fumbles among teams playing at home this year.

“I know for a fact that we are feeding off of this energy from the crowd,” wide receiver Jordan Matthews said. “It has been great. We can’t say enough about the fans coming out and supporting us the way that they do. But that is expected, obviously, because we know what the fans are like here.”

The Eagles have hosted the Steelers (2-0 at the time), Vikings (5-0 at the time) and Falcons (6-3 at the time). And they’ve prevailed every time.

That’s pretty impressive.

“Our games here have been big games where we felt like we had to go out there and win,” Matthews continued. “Now we have to take that same approach and attitude to every single game. Going into the Steelers game, there were a lot of people saying we didn’t have a chance, but we went out there and got the job done. The same thing happened with the Vikings, and even with this game, I feel like a lot of people probably counted us out because they thought we were on a downhill slope. We just have to take that same aggression to each game no matter who we are playing.”

The Eagles have finished half their home schedule, and if they can steal a game or two on the road and continue to dominate at home, they could be playing well into January. All three NFC East rivals plus the Packers remain on the home schedule.

“When you got your fans in it it makes you excited and ready to make plays, do what you need to do to perform for them,” McKelvin said.”They spent a lot of money to get to get game and you have to make sure you play at the highest level and get these fans a win.”