Man, you guys are lucky! All you ObsHeads got a special opening-day edition of 10 Random Observations before kickoff on Thursday, then you got the usual 10 Instant Observations when the game ended on Friday morning and now you’ve got the usual Sunday version of 10 Obs.

For those of you scoring at home, that’s 30 Observations in the span of 78 hours!

1. People need to forget the notion that this was an “ugly” win or a “bad” win or a “disappointing” win. Start out with the notion that weird things always happen on opening day. You have teams that haven’t played together under coaches who haven’t coached together playing teams with new coaches and unknown schemes and it’s bound to not look very sharp. All that matters is that you get out of there with a win.

And that’s why if anything the Eagles’ win over the Cowboys was actually super impressive. There was so much conspiring against them Thursday night.

You lose your best defensive player before he’s played a snap and you’ve got to put together a new game plan on the fly. You have a new offensive coordinator calling plays in an NFL game for the first time. You allow points on your first four defensive drives. Your superstar receiver doesn’t catch a pass for 58 minutes, your No. 2 WR finishes with 16 yards and your superstar running back averages 0.0 yards per carry over the last 28 minutes.

You don’t record a sack or an interception. You’re facing a quarterback who historically has owned you and started off hot with an all-pro wide receiver who’s facing an overmatched corner playing his first game as an Eagle.

And on top of all that just when you finally got momentum, there’s an hour-long weather delay.

That is a lot to overcome, and what you love about this game is how the defense gradually figured things out as the game went on and didn’t allow a point in the second half. And how the offense kept the team in the game when the Cowboys were scoring on every drive in the first half. And how the punter booted back-to-back kicks inside the 20 when the Eagles were clinging to a four-point lead in the final minutes and the kicker made a clutch 58-yard field goal, his longest in two years.

This was a character win if I’ve ever seen one. The Eagles got the Cowboys’ best effort, just like they’re going to get everybody’s best effort all year because they’re the world champs. And just about everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong, and they just kept fighting and battling until the clock said all 0’s.

They’re not all going to be 40-22. They’re not all going to come easily. It doesn’t say “pretty” or “ugly” in the standings. It only says 1-0.

2. The Eagles are now 46-14 in their last 60 games, one shy of the best record in franchise history in any 60-game span. From September 2001 through December 2004 they had two separate 47-13 stretches. The last NFC team with more wins in a 60-game span is the Saints, who went 47-13 from October 2017 through September 2021.

3. Andrew Mukuba played 36 coverage snaps, according to Stathead, and allowed five passing yards. That’s kind of insane. That’s against a 10-year veteran quarterback who’s made three Pro Bowls and has the 11th-highest passer rating ever against the Eagles facing a rookie 2nd-round pick playing his first NFL game.

Prescott targeted Mukuba just once, and he allowed only a five-yard completion to Pro Bowl tight end Jake Ferguson on a 2nd-and-6. Jihaad Campbell’s NFL debut was electrifying, but the Eagles’ other rookie defensive player was pretty darn good as well.

4. I loved Zack Baun trying to punch the ball out as he chased Miles Sanders down the left sideline on that 49-yard run. Loved it. Because first of all Sanders is a guy who will fumble, as we saw a few minutes later. But Baun came to an instantaneous and correct realization that the Eagles’ best chance to get a stop on that drive was to punch the ball out, and if it cost an extra 10 yards it was worth the risk.

Baun had so much confidence in his ability to get Sanders on the ground short of the end zone at some point that it made sense to try to force a fumble. That one won’t show up on the stats, but it’s another example of what makes Baun an all-pro.

5. How young is this defense? The Eagles used 22 defensive players, and 19 of them are 26 or younger — all but Adoree’ Jackson, Marcus Epps and Baun. According to the Stathead database, the last time the Eagles played more defensive guys 26 or younger in a game was Week 2 of the 1988 season, when they used 20 in a 28-24 loss to the Bengals at the Vet.

6. How about a shout-out to Brett Toth, who gave the Eagles some solid snaps at left guard after Landon Dickerson left the game? Toth played 11 snaps — his first meaningful snaps for the Eagles since 2020 — and hung in there pretty well. You take these things with a grain of salt, but Pro Football Focus gave him a 73.3 grade, which was actually higher than Lane Johnson or Tyler Steen graded.

Toth is one of the crazier stories on this team. He began life with the Eagles as an undrafted rookie out of Army in 2019 and has bounced around the 53-man roster and the practice squad with detours in Arizona and Carolina, but he always winds back here eventually. He’s a Jeff Stoutland favorite, a guy who never pass-blocked in college, a long-range project who has just gradually gotten better and better each year. But as recently as the days before roster cutdown day, it was hardly a lock that he was going to even make the team. But he did and when he got an opportunity Thursday he made the most of it.

Last time he played that many meaningful snaps in an Eagles uniform was his first NFL game — Week 6 of 2020 against the Ravens, when he played 17 snaps at right tackle after Jack Driscoll had to leave the game with an ankle injury. Driscoll was playing in place of Lane Johnson, who was out with an ankle injury of his own. Toth’s last start was with the Panthers against the Titans at right guard in 2023, after the Eagles released him and before they re-signed him.

Toth began his NFL career in 2019 as the longest of long shots. Now, depending on Dickerson’s health, he may be about to make his first start as an Eagle in five years, and if he plays the way he did Thursday, he’ll be fine.

7. Jackson’s 32.4 Pro Football Focus grade against the Cowboys is the lowest by an Eagles starting outside cornerback since Michael Jacquet had a 26.9 grade against the Cowboys in Week 16 of the 2020 season. Jacquet was starting for injured Avonte Maddox. That was the second and final start of Jacquet’s career. PFF lists Dak Prescott going 5 for 7 for 103 yards when targeting Jackson. Really want to see more Jakorian Bennett Sunday.

8. Jalen Hurts completed only one pass of 10 yards or more Thursday, the 51-yarder to Jahan Dotson. His 2nd-longest completion was a 9-yarder to Dallas Goedert. Last time the Eagles had just one double-digit pass play in a game? You have to go back 22 years for the last time that happened, and they won that game, too. On Oct. 19, 2003, the Eagles beat the Giants 14-10 at Giants Stadium, and their only double-digit completion was a 25-yarder from Donovan McNabb to tight end L.J. Smith in the first quarter that led to a Brian Westbrook touchdown run. McNabb only completed nine passes in that game, and his 2nd-longest completion was an eight-yarder to Chad Lewis.

9. Jake Elliott is 8 for 13 in his career on field goal attempts from 56 yards and out. Every other kicker in Eagles history combined is 2 for 25: Tony Franklin 1 for 5, David Akers 1 for 5, Tom Dempsey 0 for 5, Alex Henery 0 for 3, Sam Baker 0 for 2 and Mark Moseley, Luis Zendejas, Paul McFadden, Gary Anderson and Happy Feller 0 for 1.

10. Looking ahead to next Sunday, is it time to start looking at Patrick Mahomes a little differently? He’s still really good, but is he still the best in the league? I’m starting to wonder.

Since the start of the 2023 season, 32 quarterbacks have thrown at least 1,000 passes, and Mahomes’ 92.9 passer rating ranks 19th out of those 32. He’s got the 7th-most touchdowns in the league during that span (54) but the 2nd-most interceptions (25). His average of 6.9 yards since 2023 per attempt ranks 23rd of 32, and his 10.2 yards per completion ranks 26th. He’s had a passer rating of 100 in 10 of his 33 starts during that span, and 16 quarterbacks have had more.

Now, he is 25-8 during that span with two trips to the Super Bowl and a win. So he’s definitely clutch in the postseason, and that’s huge. I also don’t think Brett Veach, the Chiefs’ GM and one-time Howie Roseman assistant, has given him the weapons he needs to be elite.

But from 2019 through 2022, Mahomes had a 106.0 passer rating, and since then he’s at 92.9. He didn’t look awful in the loss to the Chargers, and that’s a very good defense he was facing. But he also hasn’t looked quite like himself in a while. He turns 30 in a couple weeks, and maybe he’ll get back to where he was in his first five years as a starter. But it’s also very possible his best days are behind him.