INGLEWOOD, Calif. — So we know what kind of team the Eagles are now. It took 13 games, and to watch most of them was to experience the same amount of pleasure as when you slam your fingers in a door. But they have revealed themselves, and there’s no use disputing the diagnosis.
The Eagles are an excellent defensive team, and that is all, and that is not enough, not even close. Not with an offense like this. Not with this team’s tendency to commit untimely and inexcusable penalties. Not with so many questions that don’t get answered and so many problems that don’t get solved.
They lost Monday night to the Los Angeles Chargers, 22-19 in overtime, and we know now that the most basic assessment of their status is deceiving. They still are 8-5, still in first place in the NFC East, still on track to make the playoffs and, in theory, have a shot at winning another Super Bowl in a conference without a dominant team. But anyone who has watched them can see through that spin, that false representation of who they are and how the rest of this season could play out.
They have lost three straight games, and they are poised for a breakdown as bad or worse than their collapse in 2023. That was six losses in seven games and a franchise that faced an inflection point with its head coach. This is different. This disintegration, if it continues, will be harder and graver, because it will mean their season is transforming from an attempt to defend a championship into a referendum on the coach, the quarterback, and any number of players who were presumed to be part of a talented and tested team’s core.
“Who said it was going to be easy?” Brandon Graham said. “This year, coming off a Super Bowl, man, all we got to do is make sure we stay together.”
Easy to say. Challenging to do. The dynamic within the Eagles right now, the divide in performance between one side of the ball and the other, is fertile ground for dissension to bloom. Anyone who has paid attention to them over the last five games could tell you what Monday made clear: that they are regressing on offense, that some of their best and highest-compensated players are letting them down, and that there’s little or no reason to believe that anything about the unit is going to improve in the short term.
Since their bye five weeks ago, the Eagles have played one good stretch on offense, and that stretch was brief. In their loss to the Cowboys on Nov. 23, they scored 21 points in the game’s first 18½ minutes, then didn’t score again. Those 18½ minutes seem like a mirage now. They marked the only game in a month and a half that the Eagles put up more than 19 points, and the offense’s performance against the Chargers only reinforced the reality that something about it has to change.
Jalen Hurts was a mess. Kevin Patullo’s play calls are too predictable too often, the offensive line didn’t help Hurts much, and A.J. Brown helped him even less, dropping a deep ball on the game’s first play, then T-Rex-arming an over-the-middle pass in the fourth quarter that led to an interception. But even with those excuses or extenuating circumstances, Hurts was still a mess.
He threw four interceptions. He failed to see some open receivers and threw wildly to others. His play this season is raising the question of whether, assuming he remains their starting quarterback for several more years, the Eagles will be able to win another Super Bowl, or even come close again, if they don’t surround him with the best roster in the NFL.
We’re getting to the point where removing Hurts and inserting Tanner McKee would be helpful, just to create a control in this ugly experiment that is the Eagles offense. It’s unlikely to happen, and it’s possible, even probable, that such a change would do more harm than good. It would create an instant controversy, no doubt. Hurts might take the demotion as an insult, in the same way Carson Wentz viewed the decision to draft Hurts in 2020, and demand to be traded. There are an infinite number of scenarios that could play out from such a seismic move. One of them, though, could be that the Eagles would acquire some certainty about who and what have been the real problems with the offense all along.
That decision would come with enormous risk for the man who presumably would make it. Nick Sirianni would be acknowledging that he and his handpicked offensive coordinator can’t fix Hurts, can’t help him get back to being someone who at least didn’t hurt the Eagles’ chances of winning. Once Sirianni crosses that bridge, there’s no going back, and there’s nothing Jeffrey Lurie is less willing to forgive than a head coach who fails to allow the franchise quarterback to thrive.
“The people we have in there have won a lot of football games,” Sirianni said. “Right now, we’ve lost three in a row. Again, I saw a great, great week of preparation, and I’m confident in the coaches that we have, the players that we have, the owner that we have, the front office that we have — that we’re built to overcome. We know how to do that.”
Then they’d better get to doing it. Fast. No, this wasn’t just another loss for the Eagles, and this is no small slump. This is a test for everyone in that locker room. And let’s be honest here: Have they given anyone any reason to believe that they’re going to pass it?
