Little keeps his nerve from 57

The Jaguars left themselves one second and used it properly.

Cam Little’s 57-yard field goal gave Jacksonville a 19-17 win over the Philadelphia Eagles at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, finishing a game that kept changing hands and then changed once more. Philadelphia had gone 17-16 ahead through a 48-yard kick with eight seconds left. The reply came from the return, not from panic: Ameer Abdullah ran it back 53 yards, and Little was sent out for the longest decision of the afternoon.

He made it.

The kick mattered on its own, but the route to it said something useful about Jacksonville under pressure. BBC Sport reported that the winning attempt was set up with help from back-up long snapper DaVon Hamilton, an emergency piece in a specialist unit that usually gets noticed only when it fails. In the final sequence, it held.

The game had begun in disorder. Eagles linebacker Jeremiah Trotter Jr and Jaguars defensive end Bryan Thomas Jr were ejected for fighting on the opening kick-off. A Jacksonville touchdown return from Josh Cameron was wiped out in the same passage because of the penalties, which was an early lesson in how quickly free points can vanish.

Philadelphia handled the middle of the contest better and led 14-3 at half-time after touchdowns from Will Shipley and Darius Cooper. Jacksonville did not need a flood of offence to get back into it. Little cut the gap with a field goal, Parker Washington scored twice, and the Jaguars found enough field position and enough composure to keep the game alive until the last kick.

There was even a small warning inside the comeback. Little missed the extra point after Washington’s second touchdown, leaving Jacksonville 16-14 ahead rather than creating breathing room. That miss is the sort of detail that usually returns to punish a team in a tight NFL finish. For a few seconds, it looked as if it had.

Instead, the Jaguars walked out with a third straight win and the sort of special-teams finish that can rescue a season’s mood as much as a single result. Philadelphia took a third straight defeat from a game it had almost closed.