The biggest risk to the Eagles right now is overcorrection. There’s an alternate history to their 2023 collapse that they should consider before making any drastic changes.
The setup is mostly the same as the one we all know well. A team fresh off a Super Bowl berth arrives in November looking like a good bet to again win its conference. But after a 7-2 start, the hubcaps start to rattle. The team loses four of the next six games, failing to crack 20 points in all four. Questions begin to swirl about its first-year offensive coordinator. The head coach stands by his man. The team finishes the regular season 11-6 and will likely need to win two games on the road in order to get back to the Super Bowl.
In truth, this isn’t an alternate history at all. It’s the actual history of the 2023 Chiefs. The drop-off from the season before was massive on the offensive side of the football. Kansas City scored 125 fewer points in 2023 than it did in 2022, when it beat the Eagles in the Super Bowl. The Chiefs’ average yards per play fell from 6.43 to 5.54. And it really hasn’t rebounded. Since the start of the 2023 regular season, the Chiefs have averaged 23.1 points and 348.7 yards per game, down from 28.7 and 405.2 in 2021-22.
But the Chiefs won the Super Bowl in 2023 despite entering the playoffs having lost four of their last eight to finish 11-6. They beat the Bills and Ravens on the road, thanks in large part to a late missed field goal in Buffalo and two fourth-quarter turnovers inside the Chiefs 25-yard line by Baltimore.
Are there lessons for the Eagles to draw here? I don’t know. Lessons probably isn’t the right word. I’m not going to sit here and argue that people are overreacting to the mess that they’ve seen from Jalen Hurts, Kevin Patullo and Co., most acutely over the last three weeks. But I do think it can be detrimental if we fail to consider the Eagles’ struggles within the appropriate context.
Walking around the locker room after the Eagles’ 24-15 loss to the Bears on Black Friday, I heard several players use the same phrase.
Center Cam Jurgens: “We’re 8-4. The sky’s still above us.”
Running back Saquon Barkley: “The sky’s falling outside the locker room, but I have nothing but the utmost confidence in the men in this locker room, players and coaches included.”
Eagles offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo with Jalen Hurts and Jahan Dotson during the loss to the Bears.
The remainder of the season will be determined by whether the Eagles can internalize all of this talk. They are correct when they say that the situation inside the locker room is not nearly as dire as the angst that abounds outside those walls. They still have three games remaining against the Raiders and the Commanders. That should get them to 11 wins, bare minimum. That would leave the Cowboys needing to win out in order to steal the division from them. The Eagles will tell you that they aren’t thinking about these things. Such is the NFL’s this-game-is-the-only-game ethos. But, sometimes, it can be helpful to take a little peek down the road, if only to remind yourself that you aren’t standing on the edge of a cliff.
The Eagles play in an environment that can make it awfully tough to maintain perspective. The Birds are an all-consuming thing here. Questions, headlines, boos, all of them multiply. There comes a point when any human being will stop and wonder whether everybody else is right.
There is a long list of reasons why it makes little sense to compare the Eagles’ current straits to the ones that led to the 2023 collapse. The one similarity is the way the chicken can become the egg and snowball into a big scrambled mess. The prime mover of the Eagles’ dysfunction that season wasn’t Hurts or Brian Johnson or Nick Sirianni or some chemical imbalance within the locker room. It was a defense that couldn’t get a stop, a defense that was of a wildly different makeup than it is right now.
It’s funny to look back to the numbers from that season. The Eagles’ NFL rankings in yards and points in 2023 were exactly what they were in 2024: seventh in points, eighth in yards. They scored 31 points in a loss to the Cardinals down the stretch in 2023.
The worst thing the Eagles can do is hold on to any sort of thought that the foundation of their collapse in 2023 lies within themselves. The dysfunction grew from the on-field struggles, not vice versa. Yes, that dysfunction eventually reached a point when it became self-fulfilling. But the Eagles allowed it to get to that point. The Chiefs of 2023 did not.
The reality of the NFL is that good teams struggle. It is a counterpunchers league, led by a bunch of maniac coaches who won’t rest until they figure out what you are doing and how to beat it. Andy Reid did not suddenly become a worse offensive coach over the last three seasons. Patrick Mahomes is still the same Patrick Mahomes who threw for 5,250 yards in 2022. Nobody in Kansas City or elsewhere is seriously questioning whether one of them is the problem.
The Eagles made it look easy last year. But last year was an anomaly. The competitive environment this season is much closer to the norm. The Eagles are still one of the two teams in the NFC most capable of making the Super Bowl. In the Rams, they have already beaten the one team that looks better than everybody else.
The message that Sirianni and his team have been preaching is the right one. They just need to keep believing it.
If you want to keep beating your head against the wall, keep expecting Jalen Hurts to turn into Lamar Jackson or Patrick Mahomes or Josh Allen.
If you want to preserve your sanity, however, just accept Hurts as a complementary player.
That’s not an insult. It’s objective analysis. He’s playing a little bit better than his draft projection, which, on the NFL’s website in 2020, read thus:
“Slow recognition of early throw opportunities. Leaves slants and crossers behind targets. Misses check-downs. … Quick to drop his eyes when pressure mounts. … He’ll struggle to beat NFL defenses from the pocket.”
Granted, these were the most negative aspects of Hurts’ profile, which projected him as a second-round pick who might one day develop into a competent starter. Which, to date, is exactly what he became.
Look around the league. Philadelphia is lucky to have him.
He’s a competent starter with a few special gifts. He is a tireless worker, a steady hand on the tiller, a fine runner, fearless, tough, accurate, with exquisite touch on deep passes. He is not the total package. To expect him to be so only courts disappointment.
Eagles first-year coordinator Kevin Patullo might not be calling all the best plays, and his sequencing might be imperfect, but the consensus among analysts and several Eagles sources is that Patullo’s not the problem. Hurts is missing wide-open receivers, sometimes missing multiple receivers on the same play, even when he’s not pressured.
But no sane entity in the Eagles’ organization, to my extensive knowledge, is wishing for Hurts to be replaced by Tanner McKee, who has yet to take a meaningful snap in a meaningful game since being drafted in the sixth round three years ago.
Hurts played his best in 2022, which was his second season with offensive coordinator Shane Steichen, now the coach in Indianapolis. He was superb at times in 2024 under Kellen Moore, who’d coached and coordinated Dak Prescott for five years in Dallas; Prescott had a similar pedigree and projection as Hurts.
This year the Eagles hoped Hurts would develop past the need for an experienced coordinator. He has not.
Have there been streaks over the years in which Hurts looks like a star? Sure. Has he produced in several big games? Absolutely.
Jalen Hurts’ second season with offensive coordinator Shane Steichen, in 2022, perhaps gave a false sense of what the quarterback was capable of.
But the league clearly caught up with him after that first Pro Bowl season in 2022, when his legs were as much as a weapon as his feet. He is running far less frequently this season, on pace for 119 runs, which would be his career low as a starter. The player we’ve seen for large stretches of the 2023, 2024, and 2025 seasons matches that NFL.com draft profile better than it matches the Super Bowl LIX MVP.
Hurts isn’t the superstar owner Jeffrey Lurie and the Jordan Brand wish he was. Rather, he’s at the right place at the right time. He finds himself surrounded by elite talent on both sides of the ball, led by a very good coaching staff, with the NFL‘s best owner and its best GM. Together, they make it work. They win, a lot. But when good defenses set their minds to making Hurts beat them, and disguise their defenses, winning is less certain and much uglier. That’s what has happened in 2025.
There are other issues, of course. Chief among them: Twelve games in, the projected starting offensive line has yet to start and finish consecutive games, and probably won’t do so for at least three more weeks. The defense started poorly but has improved. Saquon Barkley isn’t as explosive, and his debut as an Eagle in 2024 was the best season a back has ever had, and that provided the best sort of camouflage for Hurts.
Most big-money quarterbacks are asked to be the best player, but Hurts’ real job is to complement players who are better at their job than he is at his, when compared with players who play their positions. Led by Barkley, those players include, without question, receivers A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith and linemen Jordan Mailata, Landon Dickerson, and Lane Johnson. Tight end Dallas Goedert and center Cam Jurgens might qualify, too.
That’s no insult to Hurts. It’s really a compliment to Howie Roseman, who acquired them all, including Hurts, at excellent draft and salary values.
Howie Roseman surrounded Jalen Hurts — a complementary piece — with stars like A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith.
It’s true that a better quarterback would not be diminishing prime years of Brown, Smith, Barkley, and Goedert. But Hurts isn’t going anywhere. He is the darling of Lurie, who insisted on both the drafting of Hurts in 2020 (which devastated franchise QB Carson Wentz) and the unnecessary, $255 million contract extension in the spring of 2023, after which Lurie said Hurts already was one of “the great ones.”
The “great ones” don’t miss receivers, misdiagnose defenses, and make decisions too late to matter. Not this often.
He’s only 27. Maybe Hurts can be great yet. Giants bust Daniel Jones is thriving in his seventh season now that he’s in Indianapolis. Jets bust Sam Darnold resurrected his career in Minnesota in 2024, his seventh season, and he’s even better this season in Seattle. Browns bust Baker Mayfield found new life in his sixth season with his fourth team, Tampa Bay, where he’s gone to the past two Pro Bowls.
That’s not much solace here on the homestretch of a muddled, 8-4 season in which the offense still hasn’t played four quarters of proficient football against a good defense.
The Eagles, as defending champs, have endured a hellish schedule, one that includes losses to unexpectedly good teams like Denver and Chicago. Hurts has yet to deliver the sort of wire-to-wire performance you would expect from a quarterback averaging $51 million per season (even though that ranks just 11th in the NFL).
What 2025 has proved is that Hurts, today, is a pretty good quarterback who can win you games if things fall just right. If that’s not good enough for you, well, too bad.
You can get angry, and you can beat your head against that wall, but nothing’s going to change except the level of your headache.
The Cult of Analytics
You never start an argument with an analytics zealot because you will always lose. They have data and numbers and history. They generally ignore intangibles such as momentum, atmosphere, competition, site, and psyche.
This matters this week because of the meaningless yet fiery debate, fueled by superb (if somewhat self-anointing) NFL analyst Greg Olsen, surrounding the Eagles’ decision to try a two-point conversion with more than three minutes to play, trailing by nine, to make it a seven-point game. It failed. That meant the Eagles needed two more possessions to win, which was unlikely considering the limited time remaining. It made more common sense to kick the PAT and make it an eight-point game.
Nick Sirianni said, “I’m always going to go for a two in that scenario,” citing his personal research on the matter over several years. Sirianni is winning at a legendary clip, so maybe his studies show something publicly available that analytics do not. Those analytics give a slight edge to doing what Sirianni did.
But what Sirianni did virtually assured the loss. By doing so, it removed any real incentive from the defense, which had already been on the field 14 minutes more than the offense. The most realistically hopeful scenario after the missed two-point try was for the defense to hold, for the Eagles to score a TD, then for the Eagles to recover an onside kick, which happens at only about a 5% rate in the last two seasons.
Olsen and his tribe used X/Twitter to preach their message, which, predictably, incensed the anti-analytics barbarians.
The 2 pt conversation is this
Philly trailed by 15
That’s a 2 score game slightly less than 50% of time (2pt success rate)
It’s a 3 score game the remaining %
You want to know as early as possible how many possessions you need.
Nobody’s any good, right? The Eagles lost at home to the Bears, who are the NFC’s top seed. The Colts lost at home to the Texans, the mighty Rams lost in Carolina, the Chiefs lost at Dallas, and Jacksonville’s 8-4, the third seed in the AFC, behind the No. 2 Patriots and the No. 1 Broncos. And both the Chiefs and Lions would miss the playoffs if the season ended today, just like nobody predicted.
The Washington Post’s opinion section enlisted nine writers to share which American city they think deserves the title of the nation’s best sports city.
Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, Boston — even the likes of Kansas City and Cleveland got a mention. Which city was snubbed? Philadelphia.
Taking a look through the comments of their recent Instagram post promoting the list, not to mention the nearly 800 comments on the column itself, we’re not the only ones who raised an eyebrow at the exclusion of Philly from the list.
So we got nine of our own writers to argue why Philadelphia is the nation’s best sports city. Enjoy.
It means more to us
Mike Sielski, sports columnist
Philadelphia is America’s best sports city because sports — not national sports, not the Olympics, but the teams and athletes here — is the lingua franca of the town and the great connector of the city and its surrounding suburbs and communities. Do you flinch when someone says the name Chico Ruiz or Joe Carter? Do you smile at a random mention of Matt Stairs or Corey Clement? Then you know and love Philadelphia sports.
It’s America’s best sports city because Philadelphia is a provincial, parochial region where the love of and devotion to the teams’ histories and traditions are passed down from one generation to the next — a succession of unbroken bonds over a century or more. Did you sit out on your front stoop on a summer night and listen to Harry and Whitey call a Phillies game over the radio? Do you still sync Merrill and Mike’s broadcast to the TV telecast? Do you know who J.J. Daigneault is? Then you know and love Philadelphia sports.
It is America’s best sports city because you can walk down the street here after an Eagles loss or a Phillies loss or a Sixers loss and know that those teams lost just from the vacant looks on the faces of the passersby. Do you turn up the talk-radio station on those terrible Monday mornings? Do you remember where you were when Kawhi’s fourth bounce fell through the net? Then you know and you live and you die with Philadelphia sports.
Most of all, Philadelphia is America’s best sports city because people here care more and sports here matters more than it does anywhere else. If you don’t believe me, go ahead. Tell a Philadelphia sports fan that your city, your teams, your traditions are better. Go ahead. Dare ya.
Philly fans celebrate the Eagles’ Super Bowl LIX win in near City Hall.
Nobody parties like us
Stephanie Farr, features columnist
Philadelphia is undoubtedly the best sports city in the United States and it has everything to do with our fans, who are as passionate and dedicated as they come. Here “Go Birds” is a greeting, talking trash is an art form, and being a part of it all is totally intoxicating, even if you’re completely sober (which, to be fair, most of us aren’t).
Nobody celebrates a major win like Philly — by partying in the street with Gritty and Ben Franklin impersonators, dancing with Philly Elmo and his drum line, and climbing greased poles. When the Phillies won the NLCS in 2022, I watched Sean “Shrimp” Hagan climb a pole and shotgun seven cans of Twisted Tea thrown to him by the crowd. To his credit, at some point Hagan realized he was too drunk to get down safely and waited for firefighters to bring a ladder.
“It couldn’t have happened without the crowd being so [expletive] Philly,” he told me. “What other city’s first thought when they see a guy on a pole would be to throw him a beer?”
Do our Bacchanalian celebrations border on absolute lawless anarchy? Yes, but if you want to live safe and know how something will end, go watch a Hallmark movie. This is Philly, where we are fueled by the raging fire of a thousand losses — even when we win — and we thrive off the unpredictability of life.
In my early 20s, I lived in Tampa for a brief stint. The downtown area is small enough that all of its neighborhoods are in proximity to each other. My apartment was in a section popular among locals for its dining and nightlife scene. But it was close enough to the hotel district to be in the eye of the storm when the Eagles came to town.
One Saturday evening in late October, we were sitting at a popular outside bar when the place was suddenly overcome by a wave of midnight green. Everywhere you looked, there were packs of Eagles fans who looked like they hadn’t seen the sun in two months. They swaggered through the place in their Brian Dawkins jerseys with zero regard for humanity. They ordered their Bud Lights in multiples of two and yelled Eagles chants at each other as horrified young women clung desperately to each other and wiped errant sloshes of domestic Pilsner off each other’s going-out clothes. A friend of mine stepped off the patio to have a cigarette. He returned with a stunned expression on his face. “An Eagles fan just peed on my foot,” he said with a mixture of anger and respect.
Tampa got the last laugh the next day when Matt Bryant kicked a walk-off field goal from 62 yards out. But I always think of that weekend when people ask me if Philly sports fans are as crazy as their reputation.
An Eagles fan sits on top of the traffic light post at the intersection of Broad and Pine Streets after the team won Super Bowl LIX in February.
There are a lot of different prerequisites that a city needs in order to consider itself a great sports town. For instance, it must be an actual city, one with history and character that stands on its own even without sports. Furthermore, a great sports town requires a certain level of market penetration. Sports must sit atop the pedestal in a way that it doesn’t in places like New York and L.A. There must be a critical mass of folks who are born and raised, which eliminates pretty much any city south of the Mason-Dixon and west of the Mississippi. The list is a short one. Boston, Chicago, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Detroit, maybe Milwaukee.
From there, the thing that sets Philly apart is the people. They are a strange lot, prone to overexcitement and, every now and then, over-indulgence. But, man, do they care. You see it any time one of their teams hits the road. You hear it, too. There is an energy that is difficult to define but impossible not to feel. It’s the secret sauce of this place. And, yeah, it’s the best.
A veteran Eagles reporter wrote recently that last Sunday’s Eagles-Cowboys game was the Birds’ worst ever loss to their rival. They blew a 21-point lead, exposed some glaring flaws, and lost on a walk-off field goal. Fair point. But it was pushed back immediately on social media. You think this loss was bad? That’s what makes Philadelphia a great — maybe the greatest — sports city. We celebrate our wins like no other but we also wear our losses forever. This was a brutal loss but we still remember that botched chip shot on Monday Night Football in 1997. And that blowout loss in the playoffs while we were stuck inside during the Blizzard of ‘96. Oh yeah, remember what happened in 2010?
I don’t know if any city in the U.S. holds onto losses more than Philly. We do that because we care. We lose sleep when the Phillies blow a save, have a bad week if the Eagles lose, still can’t believe they didn’t call the Islanders offside, and are still waiting for Ben Simmons to dunk it. So yeah, that’s why it means more here when the teams do win. Because we care so much when they lose. You can have L.A., Seattle, and Kansas City. I’ll stay in Philly.
A Phillies fan holds up a sign paying tribute to another viral Phillies fan before the team’s 2025 home opener.
We feed off being underdogs
Julia Terruso, politics reporter
Look, I’m not pretending to be neutral here. I went to spring training in Clearwater in pigtails as a child. I fell in love at an Eagles tailgate and flew to London to watch the Phillies play the Mets on my honeymoon. But even non-Philadelphians would be out of their minds not to put us in the top three — let alone the top nine.
Rooting for the Phillies, Sixers, Eagles, and Flyers is a cross-class, cross-generation rite. We’re one of only eight U.S. cities with all four major teams, and our stadiums are actually accessible — yes, Los Angeles, I’m looking at you. Tickets are (mostly) affordable, the crowds are electric, and the fervor is real. We boo because we care. And unlike other cities, we don’t sneer at bandwagoners. The citywide greeting is “Go Birds,” and the uniform is fair game for the lifer who knows about pickle juice and The Process, along with the new Fishtown transplant who couldn’t diagram a wheel play but looks fantastic in kelly green — because everyone looks fantastic in Kelly green.
But the thing that really makes Philly a great sports town is our shared history of heartbreak and near-misses that drives us forward. We’re used to being underestimated. So go ahead, leave us off your list, WaPo. Underdogs run on disrespect, and we’ve got miles to go.
Stand on the South Street bridge at 7 a.m. and you’ll know the time of year, and that says it all. The rivers of medical professionals walking and biking back from their night shifts, and those heading to their morning duties, give it away in unison. Red caps? It must be October. Kelly and midnight green beanies? The NFL playoffs are coming. Blue or black starred jackets? The NBA playoffs are underway and our hearts will soon be broken, again.
I am a Philly transplant who comes from the tradition of European soccer, where rivalry between teams from the same city is the driver of passion. I always thought that there is nothing more electric than winning a derby game, and having your team crowned as the city’s best. But Philadelphia taught me that I was wrong. There is something more electric: a city united, together, declaring love to its teams in every nook and corner.
Jubilant Eagles fans dance around a fire on Broad Street after the Birds beat the Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX.
Philadelphia isn’t just the best sports city in America (“next year on Broad?”), it’s an organism that breathes sports fandom unlike any other place.
The days of throwing snowballs at Santa or batteries on a hated player are far gone. This is the city that gave a struggling shortstop who just arrived in town a standing ovation, that travels in droves so E-A-G-L-E-S chants come through the broadcast of every away game, and has a community of sickos who rode with its Sixers through one of the weirdest experiments in NBA history.
The electric energy isn’t confined to the city lines. It’s a moment that every Philadelphian cherishes. Don an Eagles hat in any other city in America, or even abroad, and you are more likely than not to lock eyes with a stranger passing by.
“Go Birds,” they inevitably say.
“Go Birds!” you respond.
Nothing beats that. And if you don’t like it. All good. We don’t care.
The Washington Post’s opinion section has been having a rough go of it. Which makes me wonder if this list, too, had to be cleared by the Amazon overlord, and maybe Jeff Bezos just hates Philadelphia?
I mean … Cleveland?
The size and scale of the two recent Eagles parades speak for themselves. The fact that there used to be a jail in the bowels of Veterans Stadium speaks for itself. Attending one Phillies playoff game at Citizens Bank Park would speak for itself. “Go Birds,” is a passing “hello” to a fellow Philadelphian in another town, a phrase of familial camaraderie. Due respect to Los Angeles, a city I love to be and eat in. But the sheer number of sports that happen in a place doesn’t make it a good sports city. That’s not human. People and passion make a place.
The Penn Relays at Franklin Field are one of just a few annual sports traditions in Philadelphia.
We have much more than pro sports
Tommy Rowan, cheesesteak/Philly history expert
A criteria would have helped, but really, any discernible or coherent formula would have really pulled that Washington Post list together. Here, instead, are three reasons why Philadelphia is one of the cornerstone cities in American sports …
History: The fabric of American sport was woven here. The Heisman Trophy is named after John Heisman, who played at Penn. The Phillies are one of the key reasons fans are allowed to keep foul balls that land in the stands. All because an 11-year-old Phillies fan didn’t blink when the team had him thrown in jail for larceny.
Tradition: We’re more than pro sports. We’ve hosted the annual Army-Navy game, and the Dad Vail Regatta, and the Penn Relays. Tennis found an American foothold at the Philadelphia Cricket Club.
Passion: Support is an undergarment. This city has passion. Fandom here is passed down from generation to generation, just like their houses. And sure they’re loud, and they generally take it the worst of any fanbafan base. But they’re vocal, they’re informed, and they care. These teams mean something to these people.
Sports fans start young in Philly, as fandom gets passed down from generation to generation.
We know our stuff
Ariel Simpson, sports trending writer
Oct. 9 was a tragic day for Philly sports fans. The Phillies season ended with a heartbreaking loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Eagles suffered a devastating 34-17 loss to the New York Giants, and the Flyers dropped their season opener to the Florida Panthers.
That very next day, I wandered the streets of Philadelphia in what felt like a walk of shame. The heartbreak could be seen on each fan’s face as they still sported their favorite team’s colors. And when asked about the losses, each fan gave me a full breakdown of what needs to be done in order for the teams to be more successful.
That’s what makes Philly such a great sports city. Not only are the fans passionate, but they are knowledgeable when it comes to their sports teams. Sure, sometimes they may rush to call for a head coach to be fired or boo their own teams, but that’s only because they care so much.
They wear their heart on their sleeves and they expect more from each team. And when they do succeed, they show up and celebrate like no other. If you need an example, look no further than the city greasing its light poles in an attempt to stop fans from climbing them in celebration.
The lack of hand-wringing about the Phillies bullpen this offseason isn’t too surprising. By the time everyone finishes worrying about the offense, their palms are raw. Nearly half of the starting lineup from Game 1 of the NLDS is no longer under contract. They need to re-sign or replace their catcher, left fielder, center fielder, and designated hitter. The guy who was their longtime right fielder is a $20 million sunk cost. Other than that, the bats are looking great.
But, hey, save some angst for the later innings. Dave Dombrowski has 99 problems and a pitcher is one … namely, a pitcher who is capable of locking down high-leverage situations. Even if Jhoan Duran is the guy he has been throughout his career, and if Matt Strahm is the guy he has been during the last three regular seasons, if Jose Alvarado is the guy he was in 2022-23, the Phillies will still need a fourth guy who is better than Orion Kerkering was even before he short-circuited in Game 4 of the NLDS loss to the Dodgers.
Phillies pitcher Orion Kerkering posted a 3.30 ERA in 2025.
That’s true whether Dombrowski realizes it or not. You’d think he would by this point in time. But, then, you’d be thinking. Everyone knows the cliche. Doing the same thing over and over is the definition of Dombrowski’s bullpen plan. As the nation at large celebrates the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, there’s a very good chance that the Phillies will be celebrating the 250th anniversary of realizing they need another reliever six days after the season starts. The Masters isn’t the month of April’s only tradition unlike any other.
It’s getting to the point of mathematical certainty. If ’n’ is the number of high-leverage arms the Phillies need in order to win a postseason series, then ’n-1’ is the number of such arms the Phillies actually have. Feel free to alert the Fields Medal committee.
Look at the list of relievers who have pitched make-or-break innings for the Phillies over the last several postseasons.
Craig Kimbrel? The Phillies probably win a World Series if they have an elite shutdown arm to pitch the ninth inning of Game 3 and/or the eighth inning of Game 4 in the 2023 NLCS.
David Robertson? He faced three batters last postseason, all in Game 1 of the NLDS, two of whom scored.
Jordan Romano? Nope. Just kidding. He didn’t pitch a make-or-break inning in the postseason. Actually, he didn’t pitch any innings.
Jesús Luzardo? He was exactly what the Phillies needed out of the bullpen in the 10th and 11th innings of Game 4 against the Dodgers. There was only one problem. He was their No. 2 starter. And he will be again.
Phillies president of baseball operations David Dombrowski is tasked with building the Phillies’ bullpen.
Nobody wants to admit this, but the best way to fix the Phillies offense is to build a roster where the offense doesn’t need to matter so much. It’s easy to forget that the Phillies took a 1-0 lead over the Mets into the eighth inning of Game 1 of the 2024 NLDS before Jeff Hoffman and Strahm combined to allow five runs in the eighth. As lopsided as that series felt in hindsight, the Phillies were two shutdown innings away from potentially heading to New York with a 2-0 series lead. They also blew a 1-0 lead when the bullpen allowed four runs in the bottom of the sixth in Game 4.
Bryce Harper and Trea Turner are fast approaching the points of their careers where the next season probably won’t be as good as the previous one. Same goes for Kyle Schwarber, assuming the Phillies re-sign him. J.T. Realmuto is already there, and re-signing him is still their best option at catcher. At some point, building an elite bullpen becomes a more feasible option than counting on a Max Kepler bounce back season.
Unless we assume that John Middleton is going to bump up his spending to the level of the Dodgers, then we’re wasting our breath arguing that what the Phillies really need is Kyle Tucker or Alex Bregman or Pete Alonso. It would be a silly thing to assume. If you are worth $2 billion, then a $100 million contract is 5% of your net worth. Even us common folk aren’t lighting our cigars with $1,000 dollar bills.
Which brings us to the real issue with the Phillies’ bullpen. You have to squint a lot harder to see a fiscally sound path to improvement. The Orioles just signed closer Ryan Helsley to a two-year, $28 million deal after a lackluster campaign. Braves closer Raisel Iglesias took a big step backward last season and will be 36 years old next year. He just re-signed for one year and $16 million.
Chances are, both of those deals will look awful a year from now. Look at last year’s market. Of the 12 relievers who signed for an AAV of $8.5-plus million, seven finished with an ERA north of 4.30, five of whom had an ERA over 5.00. That group doesn’t include the Mets’ A.J. Minter, who pitched only nine innings after signing for two years and $22 million.
Essentially, the success rate on big-ticket bullpen signings was 33%. Even that is overstating things. The Dodgers spent a combined $39.9 million in AAV on Tanner Scott, Kirby Yates and Blake Teinen. The odds said that one of them should have panned out. But none of them did.
Unless the Phillies are willing to shell out $20-plus million for Edwin Diaz, they’ll be fishing in treacherous waters. There are a lot more Jordan Romanos than Josh Haders, at pretty much every price point. Dombrowski has found value before with Strahm, Hoffman and Alvarado. He’ll need to do it again in order to win this offseason.
Over in the visitors’ locker room, the head coach had his shirt off. He was flexing and jumping and shouting and looking like a man who might soon be taken away by some folks in white gowns. Ben Johnson had every right to act a fool. He earned it. His team earned it. All anybody else could do was shrug.
“We’ve got great people in this team that I have a lot of faith and belief in,” Eagles tight end Dallas Goedert said after a disconcertingly definitive 24-15 loss to the Chicago Bears. “I think we still have everything we want ahead of us.”
It is getting harder for those of us outside the locker room to share in that belief. The Bears didn’t just beat the Eagles on Friday evening. They shook them to their core. They walked into Lincoln Financial Field on the day after Thanksgiving as a seven-point underdog with a rookie head coach and a second-year quarterback who might not be good and they walked out with a win that lifted them to the second-best record in the NFC and dealt a serious blow to the Eagles’ hopes of landing the conference’s top playoff seed.
The Bears will frame it as a statement victory. It felt more like a statement loss by the Eagles. They lost an important game in tough conditions against an opponent that entered the day having earned none of the benefit of the doubt. In short, the Eagles did exactly the opposite of what they had done, almost without exception, over their previous 32 games. They made it very clear that they were not the better team.
That’s a remarkable thing to write, considering the circumstances. The Bears entered the day with an 8-3 record that couldn’t be taken seriously. They’d played the second-easiest schedule in the NFL, the easiest in the NFC by far, with six of their eight wins coming against teams that ranked among the 12 worst in point differential. The other two victories came against winning teams who barely qualified as such: the 6-5-1 Dallas Cowboys and the 6-5 Pittsburgh Steelers. In fact, until Friday, the Bears had been outscored on the season.
“The sky is falling outside the locker room, we understand that, but I have nothing but confidence in the men in this locker room, players and coaches included,” said running back Saquon Barkley, who finished with 56 yards on 13 carries and has now gained 60 or fewer yards in nine of 12 games on the season. “It’s going to take all of us to come together, block out the noise.”
Until Friday, we could err on the side of nodding along to such sentiments. All season, as the Eagles have struggled to replicate last year’s dominance, they’ve insisted that their Super Bowl blowout of the Kansas City Chiefs was an exorcism of the demons of 2023. They swore they were a different team. They’d learned their lessons. Plus, they had an actual defense.
Neither of those things was evident against the Bears.
They allowed 281 rushing yards, their most since 2015 and the third-most in the last 50 years. They lost the turnover battle, in a fashion meek and mild, a fumble on a Tush Push and an ugly interception, both at the hands of the quarterback. Neither could be written off as the unfortunate byproducts of a warrior mindset.
Eagles offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo and quarterback Jalen Hurts have failed to inspire confidence for much of the season.
Every quarterback has bad days. Where they differ is in their energy. Some quarterbacks are maddening, some erratic, some just plain dumb. Hurts at his worst looks listless. A nonfactor. Completely uncompetitive.
His coaches look that way, too. For most of the last month, Nick Sirianni and Kevin Patullo have looked like video game players who suddenly move the difficulty slider from All-Pro to All-Madden. Again, the computer won handily. The issue isn’t a lack of improvement. It’s that things are getting worse.
“It was both units, offense, defense, hats off to them,” Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said. “They played a good game; they coached a good game. They outcoached us; they outplayed us. That’s obviously something that I need to go through and watch, look through it, but to say I don’t want to — again, they ran for however many yards. We didn’t run for many yards. We lost the turnover battle. We lost the explosive play battle. All those things are going to dictate the win and loss.”
They didn’t just lose. They are at a loss. No answers. No ideas, even. This was the most concerning game of the Sirianni era, and it isn’t particularly close. Sure, 2023 was ugly. But at least it hadn’t happened before. The three scariest words in the world are “here we go again.”
If this Eagles season ends up where it is currently heading, the faces of the Bears will be the last thing they see on their final swirl around the toilet bowl. This was the kind of loss that can break a team through what it reveals. Until now, they’ve maintained an air of invincibility, a belief in the virtue of winning ugly. While the latter may be true, the Eagles looked entirely vincible on Black Friday.
They could write off their loss to the Denver Broncos as a game they should have won. Their loss to the New York Giants was a Thursday night fluke. After their loss to the Cowboys last week, they could cling to their one great quarter.
Their loss to the Bears? It felt like a culmination to all of that. The end of their suspension of disbelief. They are back in the same place they were when it all went up in flames. Talk has sufficed until now. Adversity is easy in its hypothetical form. Now, the Eagles must actually show us what they are made of.
It was easy to catch the chants rising out of the Lincoln Financial Field stands Friday, a call for change that feels closer and closer to happening, no matter what Nick Sirianni might say, no matter how much the Eagles head coach might stand behind his friend and offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo. Those “FIRE-KEVIN” singsongs were clear to everyone inside the stadium and to a nationwide streaming audience on Prime Video.
Just like the Eagles’ 24-15 loss to the Chicago Bears and another ragged offensive performance, those chants and that atmosphere of frustration and disgruntlement were a sign that this season is reaching a tipping point. And for all the loyalty to Patullo and defiance to reality that Sirianni flashed after the game, his words might not end up meaning much.
“No, we’re not changing the play-caller,” Sirianni said, “but we will evaluate everything.”
The most important word in that sentence from Sirianni, though, was we, because we could end up including team chairman Jeffrey Lurie and vice president Howie Roseman, and those members of we have filmed this movie before — and not that long ago. Sirianni was equally steadfast in 2023 about taking up for then-defensive coordinator Sean Desai, but, sure enough, Sirianni’s defense of him was about as strong and effective as the Eagles’ defense under Desai and his replacement, Matt Patricia. That is, not very.
Now Patullo has become the latest poster child for the Peter Principle. He’s gregarious and friendly and has spent a lot of time in the NFL coaching quarterbacks but had spent no time calling plays until Sirianni turned the offense over to him. Now a unit that boasts some of the most talented and accomplished and highly paid skill-position players and offensive linemen in the league is among the worst offenses in the league. Twelve games this season, and the Eagles have scored 24 points or fewer in eight — two-thirds — of them, including the last four.
Lurie and the Eagles aren’t about to bench Jalen Hurts or A.J. Brown or Saquon Barkley or anyone else. And even if Patullo is hamstrung as a play-caller by Hurts’ height, by his reluctance or inability to throw the ball into tight windows of space, by the injuries and spotty play of the offensive line, he also hasn’t shown that he’s creative and imaginative enough to overcome those flaws and shortcomings in the offense.
Sirianni’s mantra, since his arrival, has been that players make plays, that a wide receiver or a lineman or a tight end, if he’s coached well enough in the fundamentals, ought to prevail in his one-on-one matchup against a cornerback or a defensive end or a linebacker. The problem for the Eagles is that they’re winning fewer of those micro-contests, those games within the game, than they did a year ago, and Patullo isn’t helping them win more of them.
A simple question was put to tight end Dallas Goedert after Sunday’s game: How often do you guys feel like you have a strategic advantage on a defense, where you’re going to fool them or you’re going to run something that they don’t see coming?
Goedert paused for five seconds, then answered.
“Tough question. I don’t know if I really have an answer for that one. We’ve got to make plays. We’ve got to execute better. And all 11 have to be on the same page.”
Something is missing offensively for the Eagles, and it might be Kevin Patullo who will have to answer for it.
Barkley refused to chalk up the Eagles’ struggles to their strategy or system. “I don’t really look into plays like that,” he said. “The times that we have successful plays, it’s not just because we have a strategic edge. We’ve got guys making plays. We’ve got coaches making great calls.
“I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I know what everyone is probably saying. When you go back and watch the film, we’ve got some great calls, and we just didn’t make the plays, or we’ll have a penalty. We keep seeing the same stuff. I get up here and say the same thing, and it’s not like I’m just feeding you guys these answers to, I don’t know, be a pro. But it’s the truth, and I guarantee Jordan [Mailata’s] saying the same thing. Zack [Baun’s] saying the same thing. Lane [Johnson’s] saying the same thing. The reality is, we’ve got to go do it.”
There is a chicken-or-egg element to the Patullo question. No one, other than Patullo himself, can say for certain whether he’s orchestrating this offense to account for Hurts’ weaknesses, whether he’s calling what Hurts is comfortable with and capable of carrying out, whether Hurts’ limitations are limiting Patullo’s options. There’s no getting around the reality that the Eagles have made Hurts and the passing game the locus of their offense before — early in 2021, early in 2024 — and each time, they shifted their play selection toward running the ball, toward taking it out of Hurts’ hands.
Last season, they won a championship with that approach because Barkley and the offensive line were that good, that dominant. The Eagles could afford to be predictable then; their opponents knew what was coming and still were powerless to stop it.
Now the Eagles’ opponents know what’s coming, know how to stop it, and do stop it. Lurie has always placed a premium on having a team that could score lots of points and do so relatively easily, and he can’t be happy with this two-game losing streak, this season-long slog, and the offense’s contributions to those developments. What had been a slump is now a slide and could yet be another collapse, and Lurie isn’t likely to let his head coach’s assertions and assurances stand in the way of a change that he deems necessary to save a shot at another Super Bowl.
Jalen Hurts gave up two third-quarter turnovers Friday against the Chicago Bears — first, a bad, deep throw, then a fumble during a Tush Push. Both inexcusable. Both plays that reek of poor fundamentals.
Poor fundamentals mean poor coaching.
Bears running backs D’Andre Swift and Kyle Monangai ran for 125 and 130 yards, respectively. It’s the first time since 1960 that two opposing runners gained more than 100 yards on Eagles home turf — astonishing, considering how awful some of the Eagles’ defenses have been. They surrendered a total of 281 rushing yards, the most they’ve allowed in a decade.
How did this happen?
Mainly, poor tackling. Poor tackling means poor fundamentals.
Poor fundamentals mean poor coaching.
As has so often happened this season, the offensive play calls took far too long to be communicated to Hurts, then from him to the team. First-time offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo is 12 games into his career as a play-caller. It’s not as if the offense is particularly complex. Crowd noise was no factor: It was a home game.
Maybe they couldn’t hear above the boos.
Bears running back D’Andre Swift runs for 17 yards past a fallen Cooper DeJean during the second quarter.
The Eagles’ Super Bowl hangover is getting worse as time grows short in the 2025 season. As was the case after Nick Sirianni and the Birds won the NFC title after the 2022 season, the coach and the team, who won Super Bowl LIX, have been unimaginative, ineffective, and have appeared unmotivated for most of the season.
It took 11 games in 2023 for the malaise to collapse the season. It has taken only 10 games in 2025.
After the Eagles blew a 21-point lead and committed 14 penalties at Dallas on Sunday, Sirianni fell on the sword. He did so again Friday:
“We all have to do a better job. And that’s going to be starting with us as coaches — starting with me, as a coach.”
For the second straight week, he swore he wouldn’t replace Patullo, who is reaching Sean Desai-levels of unpopularity. (Desai was the scapegoat defensive coordinator for part of the lost 2023 season.)
Blame Nick. Blame Kevin. Blame whoever you like but the Eagles are now 8-4 after a 24-15 loss to the visiting Bears. Petulant receiver A.J. Brown caught 10 passes for 132 yards and two touchdowns, and had eight catches for 110 yards at Dallas in the previous game, so he’s been productive and presumably happy, but he’s an outlier.
The Eagles’ well-paid, pedigreed offense has managed just three solid drives in the last six quarters, and one came against a prevent defense in the fourth quarter Friday night.
The Eagles were unprepared for Dallas’ five-man front in their last game. They were unprepared to stop the Bears’ running attack Friday. They don’t seem to know what’s coming. On the other hand, the Eagles offense and defense both seem entirely predictable, and when they aren’t disciplined, they’re a disaster.
“Turnovers and sloppy sloppiness,” said center Cam Jurgens.
How to fix it?
“Watching film being brutally honest.”
It sounds as if there’s been less accountability lately.
“You know, in a walk-through somebody false starts — like we need to make a point of every single part,” Jurgens said. “You know, and it’s happening in the game. We need to make sure we’re covering all of our bases and stay on top of it, because we’re just the sloppier team today.”
There might have been a play or two Friday that the officials didn’t call in the Eagles’ favor, but if you’re underthrowing passes and failing to cover backs out of the backfield, and then you’re begging the refs to bail you out, well, that’s just kind of sad.
Speaking of sad, the Eagles’ final possession of the first half went like this:
Weird, soft, 1-yard pass to Brown;
The Eagles wasted about 30 seconds when they could not get a play call in before the two-minute warning. In a bizarre moment postgame, Sirianni, clearly rattled and desperate to protect Patullo, delivered a nonsensical answer that asserted that they wasted that time on purpose;
Aborted route over the middle by Brown, who would have been hit hard by Jaylon Jones as he caught it;
Offensive pass interference on Brown, who pushed off (softly) to negate a 12-yard completion;
On third-and-19, an 11-yard pass to Will Shipley, who, with 1 minute, 43 seconds to play, foolishly ran out of bounds, saving the Bears about 30 seconds.
Braden Mann then shanked a downwind punt 44 yards. He shanked another at the start of the fourth quarter that went 40 yards.
Needless to say, the Eagles left Lincoln Financial Field to a chorus of boos. They’d gained just 83 yards in the first half, their worst first-half production of the season.
It got worse.
On the first play of the second half, Hurts hit Saquon Barkley in the right shoulder pad with a pass. Barkley wasn’t ready. Hurts stared him down. In the fourth quarter, Barkley dropped another pass.
Even when things went right, they went wrong.
Midway through the third quarter, from the Bears’ 33, Hurts went deep. He underthrew Brown, who adjusted, ripped the ball away from Nahshon Wright, and walked into the end zone to cut it to 10-9.
A few seconds later, kicker Jake Elliott pulled the point-after attempt left.
Seriously.
The Eagles now have nine days to prepare for a West Coast road game against the Los Angeles Chargers, a 7-4 team that is likely to be 8-4 after Sunday’s home game against the Las Vegas Raiders.
The single greatest motivator in professional sports is not pride or love of the game or legacy. It’s money.
The second greatest motivator: winning.
When it comes to the Eagles, most of their offensive players seemed to have satisfied their appetite for both.
They’ve won a Super Bowl. They’ve been paid. And now, faced with a demanding schedule, playing with the residual fatigue of three postseason runs, and with everyone getting a year older, they look like a shadow of what they should be.
The Eagles don’t rank among the top half of the NFL’s teams in rushing offense, passing offense, or scoring. This, despite allotting just under $130 million of their salary cap on offense, more than twice the allotment on defense.
After the Eagles scored zero points for the final 41 minutes and blew a 21-0 lead at Dallas, running back Saquon Barkley said this:
“They wanted it a little more.”
Eagles linebacker Nolan Smith wraps up Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott in the second half of their game last Sunday.
He hit the nail on the head, and he hit it as hard as any hole he’s hit all season.
Something’s missing with the Eagles this season, especially with their offense. They lack desire. They lack motivation.
What they do not lack is money.
They’re 8-3, which isn’t bad, until you drill down and realize why they’re 8-3. They have three losses because they played flat all game against the Giants on Oct. 9 and because they didn’t show up for the second half on the road vs. Dallas (Denver, the other loss, actually is a pretty good team).
That, as the Eagles host an 8-3 Bears team ravenous for relevance on Friday, is troubling.
They’re smelling themselves, and we’ve seen this before.
Just like the 2017 team that won Super Bowl LII with Doug Pederson, the Super Bowl LIX winners and Nick Sirianni are basking in the afterglow of the title. It’s hard to blame them because it’s hard to win it all, and when you’re set for life, and you’re wearing a $50,000 ring, it’s a little bit harder to hold that backside block or finish a decoy route.
Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni kisses the Lombardi Trophy after defeating the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX on Feb. 9.
That’s the difference between dynasties and winners. Dynasties hold their blocks and finish their routes. Dynasties seek greatness for its own sake and are not weighed down by million-dollar pocketbooks.
Barkley, wide receiver A.J. Brown, left tackle Jordan Mailata, left guard Landon Dickerson, right tackle Lane Johnson, and quarterback Jalen Hurts are playing on what likely will be their most lucrative contract. Some got new money after the Super Bowl win. None are playing to their expected level.
The exception: wide receiver DeVonta Smith, who is on track for an excellent season.
Meanwhile, on defense, linebacker Nakobe Dean, defensive tackles Jordan Davis and Jalen Carter, and corners Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean are playing like demons. Not coincidentally, all are playing on rookie deals and are due for big raises. The exception here: sixth-year linebacker Zack Baun, who cashed in on a career season and has been elite again. At any rate, after a rocky start, a midseason infusion of talent via trade, an unretirement, and a return from injury, the defense, which led the team to the title last season, is dominant again.
The offense, meanwhile, has yet to deliver consecutive halves of proficiency against a good team. Former Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins this week suggested to Tim McManus of ESPN.com why the Eagles seem flat: “You just won a Super Bowl. So even though you go back to the starting line, in your mind, you are a Super Bowl-caliber team, and you think you deserve, almost, to get there, even if you don’t talk about it, you might say the right things internally.”
Former Eagles player Malcolm Jenkins feels the afterglow of winning a Super Bowl has contributed to the Birds’ inconsistency this season.
He wasn’t done dealing hard truths.
“A lot of times, you lie to yourself. … Everyone in the sport tells you how good you are and why they expect you to do something. And then the season comes, and you realize that this season has nothing to do with last year,” Jenkins said. “I think the faster teams get to that truth, that they’re starting at zero and [not to] take anything for granted — I think those are the teams that can repeat, that can create dynasties, and that can stand the test of time.”
One of the best barometers of efficiency is penalty count. The Eagles last season committed 103 penalties for 793 yards, which ranked 11th-fewest and fifth-fewest, respectively. Their 37 pre-snap penalties tied for seventh-fewest.
This season, they rank 26th in total penalties against, 27th in total yards against, and 25th in pre-snap penalties against. It’s getting worse: They had 14 penalties at Dallas, the most since Sirianni took over in 2021.
They are an accomplished, veteran team, but they’re playing like a rebuilding bunch of kids.
Jenkins is one of the most qualified people on the planet to say what he said.
He was one of the hardest-working, toughest, most resilient Eagles in history, and for that, he will be inducted into the team’s Hall of Fame on Friday, assuming these comments don’t put him in Jeffrey Lurie’s doghouse. Jenkins played six seasons in Philly, went to three Pro Bowls, was the team’s unquestioned leader, and, most significantly, won Super Bowls with both the Saints and the Eagles. Jenkins knows what a Super Bowl hangover looks like.
Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni, left, asserted that he felt both sides of the ball were working well in his team’s loss to the Cowboys.
Sirianni pushed back on the assertion from Barkley.
“I felt like, when I watched the tape, I saw the effort sky-high on both sides of the ball,” Sirianni said.
Wonder who else was sky-high during that film session … or some of the others this season.
Sirianni and his pithy axioms — great without the greatness of others, tough, detailed, together, flower power — have not been able to overcome this offensive malaise. Maybe there’s just too much, this time.
The Birds have, in Brown, a wide receiver who, considering his words, actions, and social media posts, clearly is more interested in burnishing his Hall of Fame prospects than simply winning.
They have, in Barkley, a running back who has stopped hitting the right holes and has started seeking the sideline — but at least he got a Wawa sandwich named after him. Consider, though, that Reggie Jackson hit 223 more homers after the “Reggie” bar came out. Saquon hasn’t hit a homer yet this year.
Saquon Barkley appears far from the form that aided his breakthrough season for the Eagles last year.
The offensive line, once a pack of stampeding rhinos bent on destroying linebackers on the second level, now can’t keep Barkley clean at the line of scrimmage.
All of these are issues of effort, not execution.
As Jenkins said, the Eagles themselves probably have not realized this. They had given no indication before Barkley’s confession on Sunday.
There’s a chance that the effort is the same. Maybe injuries have more to do with it than they’re letting on.
Barkley missed a chunk of training camp with a groin injury that has flared again recently. Brown missed most of training camp with a hamstring injury that also cost him Week 8. Dickerson has endured three injuries so far, and Johnson was hurt twice before a foot sprain sidelined him indefinitely two weeks ago. Pro Bowl center Cam Jurgens missed two games with various ailments, and, after offseason back surgery, he hasn’t been anywhere close to 100% all year.
Regardless, they’re not moving the ball.
Jalen Hurts could benefit from the ferocity the Eagles’ offensive line delivered to him last season again.
They can not afford to be this kind of team with a quarterback who is limited, as Hurts, whose unremarkable arm strength, slow release, and ponderous processing are only modestly offset by his speed, power, toughness, accuracy, and leadership. The rest of the offense has to operate at an extremely high level — holding those blocks, completing those routes, hitting those holes — to compensate for Hurts’ limitations.
There’s a chance, too, that the culprit is fatigue. Between Super Bowl runs after 2022 and 2024, plus a playoff game after 2023, the Birds have played about two more months of football than every other team except Kansas City.
And the Chiefs look pretty ragged, too.
To the Eagles’ credit, most of the offensive players who got paid last year got paid before they won the Super Bowl. When the monetary incentive disappeared, winning was enough to fuel their fire.
Now, though, they’ve won.
What, if anything, fuels their fire today?
Gameday Central: Bears at Eagles
The Eagles enter Week 13 with an 8-3 record, holding first place in the NFC East and remaining among the conference’s top contenders. They’re looking to rebound after last week’s disappointing loss to the Cowboys. Join The Inquirer’s Olivia Reiner and Jeff McLane on Gameday Central for expert analysis, insider insights & live updates. Listen live.
I tell folks all the time: Philadelphia is the best place in the country to be a sportswriter, and maybe the best place in the world. It has everything, including soccer.
And it’s not New York. (Relax. I’m from New York.)
There is no patience here for complacency, at least not since the foot-dragging Phillies got their new ballpark and the Sixers stopped losing on purpose. Now that I think of it, there wasn’t much patience for that garbage then, either.
I’ve been here for more than three decades, and I’ve trudged through the Clarence Weatherspoon and Nerlens Noel editions of the Sixers; the Desi Relaford and Maikel Franco editions of the Phillies; and the Koy Detmer and Nnamdi Asomugha editions of the Eagles. There have been lots of Thanksgivings when there wasn’t much on the Philadelphia sports scene to be thankful for.
This Thanksgiving, there’s plenty.
Forthwith, then, my completely subjective and possibly incomplete top seven, an entirely arbitrary number fallen upon because seven filled the space I was allotted for this column.
Sixers guard Tyrese Maxey reacts after hitting a three-pointer against the Toronto Raptors on Nov. 19.
1. Tyrese Maxey
It’s remarkable that, in a city that boasts the reigning Super Bowl champion and a former NBA MVP, Maxey is its most universally adored athlete. He’s a tireless worker. He’s constantly improving. He’s a spectacular teammate. He’s a fearless player.
Perhaps Maxey is so beloved because of the contrast in personality with other stars in town and the connection to the city that other stars lack. Joel Embiid won the league MVP award in 2023, but he’s always hurt, he’s seldom in shape, and he has a history of feuds with fans. For a third consecutive season, Eagles receiver A.J. Brown is providing a self-centered distraction. And Super Bowl MVP Jalen Hurts, despite his best efforts, remains aloof and chilly — at least compared to Maxey.
The only player close to Maxey in demeanor, accomplishment, and connection is running back Saquon Barkley, and he’s having a down year.
2. Jeffrey Lurie and Howie Roseman
The Eagles’ owner gives the GM cash, and the GM spends it wisely. They’ve taken the Eagles to the Super Bowl three times in the last eight seasons, they’ve won it twice, and, in an era of NFL parity, they’ve delivered a golden era to a historically downtrodden franchise.
Lurie sets the example for other owners in the city to follow on the field and in the community.
Roseman’s genius grows by the year, lying mainly in his ability to draft NFL-ready players — Quinyon Mitchell, Cooper DeJean, Nolan Smith, Landon Dickerson, Cam Jurgens, Jordan Davis, Jalen Carter, Drew Mukuba — and his ability to pivot when things go badly, such as with the deadline trade for edge rusher Jaelan Phillips.
Jalen Hurts has a a 60-26 record as Eagles quarterback, including the playoffs.
3. Jalen Hurts
You can choose to dwell on Hurts’ shortcomings: the slow release, the average arm, the inability to diagnose and process defenses. But those are shortcomings by comparison.
Hurts’ release was quick enough, his arm was strong enough, and his processing good enough to compile a 60-26 record, six of those wins in the playoffs, one of them Super Bowl LIX, of which he was the MVP. He’s won all of those games, despite having a coach who creates distractions and a wide receiver who frequently is critical of him. He also has served under six play-callers: former head coach Doug Pederson, current head coach Nick Sirianni, former offensive coordinators Shane Steichen, Brian Johnson, and Kellen Moore, and, now, Kevin Patullo. What’s more, Sirianni, Steichen, Johnson, and Patullo had never called plays before.
Hurts isn’t perfect, but he has made the most of what he’s had, he’s avoided controversy, and he wins, wins, wins.
4. Bryce Harper
Harper fought a wrist injury for at least the first half of the season and didn’t produce the way he has produced in the past, but his .912 OPS since joining the Phillies in 2019 is still fifth-best in baseball among players who played at least 800 games. His intangible value has increased the past three seasons.
Since Rhys Hoskins left after sitting out injured in 2023, Harper, along with Kyle Schwarber, has become more of a clubhouse leader and more of the face of the team. That has real value in a city that scrutinizes its baseball team so fiercely.
Harper’s presence also was a major reason that ace Zack Wheeler, catcher J.T. Realmuto, and Schwarber signed or re-signed their deals. And if Schwarber decides to re-sign, Harper’s presence will weigh into that decision, too.
Keith Jones (left) and Danny Brière have been entrusted with turning around the Flyers.
5. Danny Brière and Keith Jones
When the Flyers in May 2023 hired two alumni with scant experience as their GM and president, respectively, it smacked of the same sort of corporate nepotism that dragged the franchise into rebuild mode in the first place.
But Brière and Jones have deftly navigated a roster rebuild that, currently, presents a very watchable hockey club on a nightly basis. Consider the obstacles they faced.
They inherited irascible coach John Tortorella, whom they fired last spring. They hired former Flyers winger Rick Tocchet to replace him. So far, so good. Stay tuned.
They lost franchise goalie Carter Hart when Hart took leave to face sexual assault charges in Canada. He ultimately was acquitted, but the legal process cost the Flyers at least 1½ seasons of his services.
Cutter Gauthier, the No. 5 overall pick in the 2022 draft, forced a trade in 2024 before he played a game for the Flyers. He went to Anaheim, where he was an All-Rookie selection last season and this season had 26 points in 22 games entering Wednesday night.
All things considered, the future looks bright.
6. Vic Fangio
In a year when Barkley signed as a free agent, the defensive coordinator was an even bigger addition for the Eagles. He led the No. 1 defense in the league last year. When healthy, it’s one of the better defenses in the league this year.
Fangio understands his players’ capacities, asks them to do the things they can do, and tells the truth to them and to us.
Refreshing.
Denise Dillon coaching the Villanova Wildcats during an exhibition against Towson last month.
7. College basketball
It ain’t what it was when I got here 30 years ago, but Philly still has a vibrant and healthy college basketball scene, led by Villanova women’s coach Denise Dillon. Can’t wait to see what former Iowa coach and Philly high school legend Fran McCaffery does at Penn.
It’s a weird year in the NFL. Each of the traditional powers is missing something. Everything we fret about with the Eagles are worries in Kansas City and Buffalo.
The Chargers have failed to take the next step. The Lions and Ravens might miss the playoffs. Brock Purdy just threw three interceptions against the Panthers. Drake Maye is a great quarterback. Do the Patriots really have a great roster?
Something to be thankful for: Nobody else is great, either.
We’ll see that on Friday, when the Eagles host the Bears. Chicago is among the more fraudulent 8-3 teams we’ve seen.
Here is a look at all of the NFC teams that matter more than the Bears.
1. Rams (9-2)
It sure feels like 2025 is setting up for a Rams-Eagles NFC championship game that could launch an era-defining rivalry. The only thing missing right now is a big Rams win. The Eagles have beaten them four times over the last three seasons after initially replacing them as NFC champs in the 2022 season. But the Rams have walked away from the last two outings feeling like the Eagles’ equals if not betters.
First came that snowy 28-22 playoff loss when the Rams gave away six points on fumbles and still had a first down on the Eagles’ 21-yard line with 1 minute, 25 seconds remaining and a chance for a go-ahead touchdown. Then came Week 3, when L.A. blew a 26-7 lead and still had a shot at a game-winning 44-yard field goal with three seconds left only to have Jordan Davis block it and score a touchdown to boot.
The Rams are due. Sean McVay is too good of a coach, Matthew Stafford too good of a quarterback, and Les Snead too good of an executive to not eventually announce it to the rest of the world. What they’ve done in the four years since they won the Super Bowl is every bit as impressive as the mini-dynasty that Nick Sirianni, Jalen Hurts, and Howie Roseman have put together.
Eagles defensive tackle Jordan Davis brought the last meeting with the Rams to a thrilling end with his touchdown.
Snead and McVay have orchestrated an incredible turnaround on par with the Eagles post-2017. Stafford is one of only four players remaining on either side of the football who played at least 20% of the offensive snaps in 2021, when the Rams won the Super Bowl (The others: OT Rob Havenstein, TE Tyler Higbee, CB Darious Williams). They exited their Super Bowl with a bloated cap sheet and just one first-round pick between 2017 and ’25. Now, suddenly, they are the most impressive team in the NFL. The only impressive team, arguably, along with maybe the Colts. Since losing to the Eagles, their only loss was in overtime to the division rival 49ers (more on them later). They’ve beaten the Colts, the Ravens, the Jaguars, the 49ers, the Seahawks, and the Bucs. Of their six straight wins, five have been by at least two touchdowns. Of their nine overall wins, seven have come against teams whose Super Bowl odds rank in the top half of the NFL.
2. Detroit Lions (7-4)
The eye test says Detroit is a team nobody should want to face, particularly at home. But they wouldn’t even make the playoffs if they started today. And they would need to overcome some considerable odds if they hadn’t pulled out an overtime win over the Giants on Sunday. The Lions’ last six games are all losable: on the road against the Rams, Vikings, and Bears; at home against Green Bay, Dallas, and Pittsburgh.
Don’t get it twisted. They are a serious threat, one of two teams in the NFC who would have a strong argument to make to be favored over the Eagles in a playoff game at home. That’s a long shot to happen, given the tiebreaker the Eagles hold. But the Lions’ 16-9 loss at Lincoln Financial Field in Week 11 didn’t exactly establish them as the definitive favorites even at home.
Baker Mayfield and the Bucs have a soft schedule ahead.
3. Buccaneers (6-5)
Tampa Bay has one of the easiest remaining schedules in the NFL. Arizona, New Orleans, Atlanta, Miami, and Carolina twice. Find me two losses among those, assuming Baker Mayfield starts at quarterback. Even if Mayfield misses a week or two with his sprained nonthrowing shoulder, the Bucs should be able to finish atop the putrid NFC South. That means they have six weeks to get Mayfield and Chris Godwin healthy. Which means they could easily be a threat once the playoffs arrive.
4. 49ers (8-4)
Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Like I said, the field is weird this year. Who else would you put ahead of San Francisco? The Eagles are the only legitimate contender of the NFC’s three-loss teams. They already beat Green Bay on the road. Seattle is quarterbacked by Sam Darnold and will be playing as a wild card with the Rams winning the division. The Bears are the fakest of them all. You’ll see that on Friday.
The 49ers? They are faker than they usually are. The Fred Warner injury — out for the season — was the final deal-breaker. They sorely miss Deebo Samuel and Brandon Aiyuk on the offensive side. San Francisco is only a threat to the Eagles if the Eagles turn out to be the team they’ve looked to be over the last several weeks. That team is capable of losing to anybody with a competent quarterback and a great head coach.
5. Cowboys (5-5-1)
This is not recency bias. The Cowboys would be second on this list if you could guarantee me that they would make the postseason. As it stands now, they will probably need to win two out of three against the Chiefs (home), Lions (road), and Chargers (home) just to have a reasonable chance of qualifying for the postseason. And that’s assuming they beat the Vikings, Commanders, and Giants.
Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott running for a touchdown in the fourth quarter against the Eagles.
That being said …
If all of that happens, then we’d be foolish to consider the Eagles as anything better than a coin flip in a playoff game against the Cowboys, whether at home or on the road. Dallas has outplayed them even this season, once in a game the Eagles should have lost and, more recently, in a game the Eagles should have won. In both games this season, the Eagles have struggled to find an answer for CeeDee Lamb and George Pickens. Dak Prescott is playing at a near-MVP level and gives the Cowboys the advantage at quarterback. Mostly, this is a referendum on the rest of the NFC.
6. Seahawks (8-3)
Look, Darnold has been better than anybody could have envisioned after the Jets drafted him at No. 3 overall. But he is still the biggest reason to doubt that Seattle has been anything more than the beneficiary of a light schedule. The Seahawks’ best wins have come on the road in Pittsburgh in Week 2 and on the road in Jacksonville in Week 6. It’s definitely worth something that they put up 414 yards of total offense and nearly beat the Rams despite Darnold throwing four interceptions. But, then, Darnold threw four interceptions.
Eagles linebacker Nakobe Dean forcing a fumble by Packers quarterback Jordan Love on Nov. 10.
7. Packers (7-3-1)
Jordan Love is the most overrated quarterback in the NFL, and Matt LaFleur might be the most overrated play-caller. Not a good combination. The Eagles already beat Green Bay at Lambeau Field on a night when a better team would have beaten them. No worries here.
8. Bears (8-3)
For whatever reason, I’ve watched more of the Bears this season than virtually any other team. At no point have they looked capable of beating even a semicompetent team. That holds true for some of the games that they’ve actually won. Caleb Williams is missing something. I think we will see that on Friday.
