Blame Nick Sirianni for the Eagles’ latest slump originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia
The unthinkable has become the norm. Nightmare endings have become inevitable.
It keeps happening and Nick Sirianni can’t seem to do anything about it.
The players have changed. A lot. Twenty-two guys who started a game last year are gone.
The coaches have changed. Both the coordinators and half a dozen position coaches are new this year.
The one thing that hasn’t changed, the lowest common denominator, is Sirianni. And if we’re going to lay the blame for yet another absurd Eagles loss, that’s where we should start.
Because his job now is to set the culture, prepare the football team and make the big decisions that set the tone for what we see on the field.
And what we’ve been seeing far too often on the field lately is disastrous.
They lost to the Jets after leading with 46 seconds on the clock. They lost to the Seahawks after leading with 28 seconds on the clock. They lost to the Cards after leading with 32 seconds on the clock. And now they’ve lost to the Falcons after leading with 38 seconds on the clock.
Sometimes you just get beat. Like the blowouts of the 49ers and Cowboys late last year. They’re almost easier to stomach than this one. Because few things are worse than giving away a game in the final seconds, and the Eagles have done that four times now in less than a year.
These kinds of losses touch your heart.
In four of their last seven losses, the Eagles led with less than two minutes left on the clock.
That hasn’t happened once in their previous 144 games.
When it happens over and over again, you have to look the head coach in the eye and ask yourself why.
He still has that gaudy won-lost record, one of the best in NFL history, and he’s done some really good things since he’s been here. This team played in a Super Bowl just 19 months ago, and there’s still a chance he can become that NFL rarity — a head coach who leads his first four teams to the postseason. Early days and all.
But the Eagles are also 2-7 in their last nine games and each game has been a 4and-quarterly collapse or a crooked shame.
It’s easy to blame Saquon Barkley for the dropped pass on a late third down that could have decided the game or Darius Slay for the missed coverage on the Falcons’ game-winning touchdown. But in the bigger picture, this loss raises some tough questions about the coach and his ability to maintain a winning culture, instill confidence in his team, and make the critical late-game decisions that give the Eagles a chance.
Because what we saw on Monday night was a lot like what we saw at the end of last season. The Eagles should have gotten that out of their system by now, given all the changes to the roster and staff. But the final two minutes of that game were straight out of the 2023 Eagles Highlight Film.
Who is to blame?
I don’t know where else to look.
As soon as Barkley dropped that pass, and before the Falcons even got the ball back, I told the other guys on the NBC Sports Philadelphia postgame set—Ron Jaworski, Barrett Brooks, and Michael Barkann—that the Eagles were going to lose. I was convinced. It didn’t matter that the Falcons had to cover 70 yards in a minute and a half with a barely moving 36-year-old quarterback.
If you’ve seen the same movie a few times, you know it’s going to have the same ending.
Yes, it’s only one game, and yes, at 1-1 they still have a chance to achieve all their pre-season goals. And it seems like the rest of the division might not be quite as good. But for all of Sirianni’s talk about core values ​​and bonding and foundations and competing, the one thing this team has been best at lately is giving games away.
For me, it’s not even about the questionable decisions — when to go for it, when to kick a field goal, when to throw, when to run. Those are valid questions, but this goes way beyond that.
What really matters is whether Sirianni is still able to prepare the team mentally and physically for football.
Not 58 or 59 minutes, but 60 minutes.
It may seem strange to ask this question about a coach who has had so much success, but there is growing evidence that this is not the case.
