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  • Eagles need more than a new coordinator to revamp their offense

    Eagles need more than a new coordinator to revamp their offense

    The long arc of history is a lot shorter in the modern NFL. Howie Roseman offered a nod to it last week. The tone of his voice was quite grave.

    “There’s natural transition in what we do,” the Eagles’ general manager said. “I’m not making an excuse or anything, but there’s a national transition in that in terms of what you’re paying your guys, which side of the ball you’re paying guys who are coming up.”

    Look back at the historically great teams and you will see a familiar pattern.

    The early-’90s Cowboys won three Super Bowls in four years and have not been back to a conference championship since.

    The turn-of-the-century Rams went to two Super Bowls in three years and then had one winning season in the next 15.

    Nick Sirianni’s forceful vote of confidence from Howie Roseman

    The Patriots won three Super Bowls in four years in the early 2000s and then did not win another over the next decade. Then they won three in five years.

    And let’s not forget about the Andy Reid Era Eagles: four straight conference championship appearances with one Super Bowl Bowl appearance followed by one conference championship appearance in the next eight seasons.

    More often than not, you look back and realize that the best version of a team was the one that took everybody by surprise. The Chiefs’ two biggest point differentials in the Andy Reid Era came in Patrick Mahomes’ first two seasons as a starter. The Packers outscored opponents by a combined 452 points in Aaron Rodgers’ first four seasons as a starter and then outscored them by 428 in his next eight.

    Tackle Lane Johnson broke down this season and the Eagles offense suffered.

    The phenomenon extends beyond the NFL. You don’t need to look far. The Phillies in 2008 and 2022. The Sixers in 2018-19. The Flyers in 1996-97 and 2009-10.

    By the time you realize the good times are here again, they are already ending.

    You might reject that thought as depressing, even nihilistic. But it is the reality of the Eagles’ situation. Their regression on the offensive side of the football was more due to the natural order of things than it was to the unique and aggressive incompetence of the head coach and his handpicked play-caller. They were a team with disproportionate reliance on the overwhelming talent of its offensive line. That talent advantage wasn’t as great this season.

    Mekhi Becton left for more money. Lane Johnson missed the end of the season. Landon Dickerson and Cam Jurgens weren’t as healthy as last season. Even if the line was 85% of what it was, that would still jibe with the Eagles overall being 85% of what they were, especially if it was compounded by A.J. Brown and Saquon Barkley not being as uniquely dominant as they were last season.

    Attrition is a natural part of the NFL, both at the individual level and the roster level. Those two things go hand-in-hand, obviously. One can argue that the job of a head coach and play-caller is to adapt to the realities on the ground. That’s more than fair. It is also a difficult thing to do midseason. The Eagles are right to be doing it now in their search for a play-caller to replace Kevin Patullo. But nobody should be surprised if they fail to find one.

    After embarrassing Kevin Patullo pile-on, Eagles must make Mike McDaniel their main OC target

    Over the next few weeks, we’ll learn a lot about the rest of the NFL’s diagnosis of the Eagles. Former Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel is a unique enough genius to be interviewing teams rather than teams interviewing him. A recent report said that he would rather accept a great offensive coordinator position than another head coaching job doomed to fail. A year ago, you would have counted the Eagles as such a job. Maybe they still are. But are they really a better job than the Lions?

    McDaniel reportedly has spoken with Detroit, which previously made Ben Johnson a star. Jahmyr Gibbs is a running back with the same skill set that McDaniel had in Miami with De’Von Achane. Amon-Ra St. Brown, Jameson Williams and Sam LaPorta can make their case over Brown, DeVonta Smith, and whoever plays tight end for the Eagles next season. The Lions’ offensive line has consistently ranked near the top of the league, albeit behind the Eagles.

    Eagles running back Saquon Barkley had a subpar season.

    Brian Daboll and Zac Robinson are two other recognizable free agents. At the same time, the Chargers and Ravens are two other recognizable jobs. The Eagles aren’t just looking for the right guy … the right guy is looking for the right team.

    All of that is to say that the real challenge of this Eagles offseason is figuring out the talent situation. Roseman has done a marvelous job of it on the defensive side of the ball, reinventing that unit in barely two offseasons. This season, the Eagles had seven players from their last three draft classes log at least 700 defensive snaps. No other team had more than five.

    Building the offensive line is always the Eagles’ top priority. But they could sure use some reinforcements at the skill positions. Another wide receiver, a tight end, a change-of-pace running back with pass-catching skills, all would have helped immensely this season. That’s true even before we start to contemplate whether to trade Brown.

    “I think we’ve drafted 15 guys since Nick [Sirianni] has been here in the first and second day, and 14 of them have been long-term starters. We’ve got to keep hitting like that. I know that’s hard, but we’ve got to keep doing it,” Roseman said. “That means we have to have a good process. We’ve got to understand the people that we’re bringing into the building. We’ve got to understand the roles and the vision that we have for them when they’re playing. If we do that, good things will happen. We’ll be able to keep the players that we need to keep under long-term contracts and have an influx of young players that are really good that can play at a high level.”

    It’s no coincidence that the NFL’s championship windows are the same as the four-to-five-year windows of rookie contracts. The Eagles have already begun to extend theirs with their draft success on defense. It’s still the place where they are most likely to fix the offense.

  • Nick Sirianni may have figured out how to last as the Eagles’ head coach. Here’s his secret.

    Nick Sirianni may have figured out how to last as the Eagles’ head coach. Here’s his secret.

    Nick Sirianni is the son of a high school football coach and a mentee of a Division III football coach. Everyone knows this about him.

    When he speaks publicly, he frequently sprinkles in references to his father, Fran, and his nine years in charge of the program at Southwest Central High School in western New York. He talks of lessons learned from his years as a player and assistant under Larry Kehres at the University of Mount Union (it was Mount Union College when Sirianni was there) in northeast Ohio.

    If one of Sirianni’s greatest weaknesses as an NFL head coach is that he’s often too impulsive and emotional, maybe it’s because there’s a fine line between small town and small-time, and he can’t help himself from crossing it. Still, he ain’t changin’ now, and in an honest appraisal of Sirianni’s five years with the Eagles, one can make the case that his background might be one of his greatest strengths.

    Eagles executive vice president and general manager Howie Roseman (left) says the Eagles are fortunate to have an “elite” coach in Nick Sirianni.

    If nothing else, it might be one of the reasons that he’s still in this position and, if Howie Roseman was to be believed Thursday, will be for more than a minute.

    “Obviously,” Roseman said, “I sit here, and I feel incredibly grateful that I’m working with someone who … is elite at being a head coach, elite at building connections with our team, elite talking about fundamentals, game management, situational awareness, bringing the team together, holding people accountable. When you’re looking for a head coach, those are really the job descriptions.”

    What does Nick Sirianni do? A lot, says Howie Roseman, despite Eagles’ frequent offensive resets.

    They’re not much different from the job descriptions of a head coach at any level of football, and for all the suggestions that Sirianni is nothing but an empty hoodie, those qualities still matter at the sport’s highest level.

    What’s more — and this is the important part as far as Sirianni’s future is concerned — they allow him to be flexible, to contour himself both to what the team needs in a given season … and what he needs to do to survive.

    Think about Sirianni for a moment in contrast to his predecessor, Doug Pederson. It’s no secret that Roseman and Eagles chairman Jeffrey Lurie want a head coach who aligns with their thinking on how to win games. Boiled down, a head coach here doesn’t have much independence or power relative to others around the NFL. (The last time Lurie gave a coach such freedom, Chip Kelly started making holiday party-related demands, and Pat Shurmur ended up coaching the 2015 season finale.)

    Pederson had been hired as an offensive guy, and he accepted that label and that arrangement right up until he and his team won Super Bowl LII in February 2018. Six months later, his memoir hit stores. At the end of the 2019 season, he asserted in a news conference that embattled assistants Mike Groh and Carson Walch would return — only to have Lurie say, Not so fast, Dougie.

    The Eagles relationship with former coach Doug Pederson (left) shares contrasts to Nick Sirianni’s time as head coach.

    One day after Pederson endorsed them, Groh and Walch were gone. A year later, after a 4-11-1 season, so was Pederson. So much for assertiveness, and so much for the notion that Pederson’s status as the orchestrator and often the lead play-caller for the Eagles’ offense would preserve his job. Once Carson Wentz and the offense collapsed, what reason was there to keep Pederson?

    Murphy: Nick Sirianni’s forceful vote of confidence from Howie Roseman, and some A.J. Brown trade talk highlight Eagles news conference

    Because Sirianni’s personality is more tempestuous than Pederson’s, it was always fair to wonder whether, if he ever found himself in the same post-championship situation, he might try to flex a little bit, too. But he did the opposite Thursday, explaining why his close friend Kevin Patullo was no longer the offensive coordinator, suggesting that he would be open to having the new OC have the kind of say-so over the unit that Vic Fangio has over the defense.

    “You’re looking to continue to evolve as an offense,” he said, “and I’m looking to bring in the guy [who is] going to best help us do that. I think that there are many different ways to be successful on offense, and everybody has different styles. Everybody has different players. And there’s many different ways to be successful.”

    The cynical way to look at this, of course, is that A) Sirianni is acting out of self-preservation; and B) his presence acts as a Kevlar vest for Roseman, protecting him from any public-relations damage if he messes up the assembling of the Eagles’ roster. As great a general manager as Roseman has been, he still makes mistakes. And on those rare occasions when he makes more than his share, the perception that Sirianni is handed an outstanding team every year and that all he can do is screw it up sure takes a lot of heat off the guy who is calling the player-personnel shots.

    There’s another prism through which to view Sirianni, though: that he doesn’t have to control every aspect of a team, or even one specific aspect of a team, to do his job and do it well. He doesn’t need to pick the players, design the offense, call the plays.

    He’ll delegate responsibility, trust his people, fill in the gaps where he can and should. He’ll take the guys who happen to be on his team that particular year and play that particular hand. Sounds like what a high school or small-college coach does. Sounds like a formula to last a while with this particular franchise.

  • Baseball Hall of Fame: Cole Hamels’ prospects, Ryan Braun’s PED problem, and Manny Ramirez’s last ride

    Baseball Hall of Fame: Cole Hamels’ prospects, Ryan Braun’s PED problem, and Manny Ramirez’s last ride

    Compared with the rest of the tribe of baseball writers, my criteria for Hall of Fame inclusion are undemanding. The most controversial element: I do not discriminate against the PED crowd.

    I consistently have voted for Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, and Manny Ramirez, titanic talents of their era who are shunned by a voting bloc — us writers — that ignored and profited from rampant steroid use. Further, I know there are plenty of players who juiced and didn’t get caught, so banning the BALCO boys never made sense.

    Which brings us to Ryan Braun, the best of a weak first-year class of Hall of Fame candidates — no offense, Cole Hamels. Inductees will be announced Tuesday. Don’t expect either to be on the list.

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    Hamels doesn’t deserve it.

    Braun does, but with a generous dollop of ick.

    Between 2008 and 2016, a nine-season span, Braun was, without question, one of baseball’s best players. He was a five-tool player. He twice hit at least 30 home runs and stole at least 30 bases. His .902 OPS ranks fifth in that period among players with at least 4,000 plate appearances. Ahead of him: future Hall of Fame locks Miguel Cabrera and Albert Pujols, Hall of Famer David Ortiz, and, at No. 2, Joey Votto.

    Braun was Rookie of the Year in 2007 and National League MVP in 2011.

    From 2008 to 2016, Ryan Braun was one of baseball’s best players with a .902 OPS that ranks fifth in that period among players with at least 4,000 plate appearances.

    You know what else happened in 2011? Braun tested positive for synthetic testosterone, and ruined his reputation in the aftermath. He challenged the test, smeared one of the testers as being antisemitic (Braun is Jewish), and had his record cleared on a technicality involving the handling of the sample.

    Then, in 2013, later, Braun tested positive again. That invalidated all of his protestations.

    This time, he served a 65-day suspension. Despite excellent production over the next three seasons and despite an effort to rehabilitate his image through varied good works, he never recovered.

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    There’s no way Braun will get the 75% of the vote he needs to qualify for induction; not this year, and probably not for five years or so. He’ll be the next Carlos Beltrán, the scapegoat for the Astros’ signal-stealing scandal in 2017 who should have been inducted years ago.

    Braun certainly belongs in the Hall of Shame, right next to Rodriguez, who once indignantly denied that he’d ever taken steroids then later admitted to juicing as a younger player. A-Rod’s image has never recovered, either. Both belong in the Hall of Fame, too.

    I vote for A-Rod every year. In fact, this is the third consecutive year he’s my No. 1 pick. The only time he wasn’t No. 1 was in 2022, when he was No. 2. Bonds was No. 1.

    Braun’s situation is different. For one thing, he tested positive twice. For another, he was an absolute tool about it. For a third, PED use had plummeted by the time Braun arrived on the scene, so it’s not as if he needed to cheat to keep up. Finally, Braun tested positive in an era in which players knew the likely penalty for testing positive. Mark McGwire, who was first eligible in 2007, was being blackballed every year of Braun’s Hall of Fame run.

    It is a penalty with which I always have disagreed. And, while I acknowledge that Braun’s candidacy is tainted more than any other PED user, I would be as hypocritical as my colleagues if I excluded him purely on the basis of PED use.

    I will vote for him, but, more so than with A-Rod or Bonds or Roger Clemens, I will hold my nose as I check his box.

    And I will think slightly less of myself for doing so.

    The criteria

    I not only divulge my votes, as I believe every writer should do, I also rank my votes and defend them.

    I don’t vote for designated hitters because they don’t play the whole game. That included Ortiz in 2022, and it would have included Harold Baines and Edgar Martinez if I’d had a vote in 2019. Kyle Schwarber one day might make me eat those words.

    I don’t vote for relievers. Traditionally, they’ve been failed starters. I backslid on that criterion in 2025 because I didn’t want to be the reason Billy Wagner didn’t get enough votes in his final year of eligibility. Thankfully, I didn’t have a vote in 2019, when Mariano Rivera was a unanimous selection. I don’t exactly know what I’d have done that year, when two designated hitters also made it. I probably would have abstained. My antireliever stance will further soften as more players who were drafted and groomed as relievers become eligible.

    I use all 10 ballot slots, which means I’ve helped keep Omar Vizquel on the ballot.

    I weigh defense more heavily than most voters, to Jimmy Rollins’ benefit.

    I vote for players nearing the end of their 10-year candidacy limit over players who still have time left.

    The last few players are usually interchangeable: This year, that interchangeability begins at No. 7, with Chase Utley.

    Alex Rodriguez, here in a 2021 event as co-owner of the Minnesota Timberwolves, was one of the great players of his era.

    The vote

    1. Alex Rodriguez, fifth year

    Hit .302 with 642 home runs from 1996 to 2012, the most homers by a margin of 85 (Jim Thome had 557). Hot or cold in his postseasons. Elite fielder. Smug, condescending, weirdo, Yankee. But still.

    2. Manny Ramirez, 10th year

    In his final HOF run, Ramirez will be remembered less as the most important player on the Red Sox teams that broke the Curse of the Bambino than as a juicer. He led baseball with 1,660 RBIs from 1995 to 2008. He led Cleveland in aggregate OPS from 1995 to 2000 and was fourth in baseball behind McGwire, Bonds, and Martinez among players with at least 3,000 plate appearances. He led Boston in OPS from 2001 to 2006 and was third in baseball behind Pujols and Todd Helton, again among players with 3,000 or more plate appearances. He was the best hitter on loaded teams in Cleveland, Boston, and Los Angeles. He might have been juicing the whole time — he tested positive three times — but, again, PED use was rampant during his prime years.

    3. Carlos Beltrán, fourth year

    In a game rife with cheating, it astounds me that so many people hold the sign-stealing scandal against him, a scandal perpetrated when he was 40, in his final season, after an 18-year run of excellence. That included the 1999 AL Rookie of the Year as a Royal; nine All-Star Game appearances, his ninth at the age of 39; three Gold Glove awards; and incredible playoff production: a 1.021 OPS, a .307 batting average, 16 home runs, 42 RBIs, and 11 steals (never caught) in 65 playoff games.

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    That said, he got 70.3% of the vote last year, 57.1% in 2024, and 46.5% in his first year of eligibility. Independent preannouncement polling indicates that Beltrán will cruise into the Hall this year as effortlessly as he played the game itself.

    4. Ryan Braun, first year

    See above.

    5. Jimmy Rollins, fifth year

    I understand why, independent of their controversies, Beltrán and Braun aren’t slam-dunk Hall of Famers. I understand why Rollins isn’t, either. J-Roll is my best example of why defense, baserunning, and availability don’t get enough respect from voters. His 2007 MVP season was the best of an eight-year run in which his most consistent contributions involved superb shortstop play, base stealing, and baserunning, which helped account for his 292 stolen bases and the 395 combined doubles and triples he hit from 2001 to 2008, a league high among players with at least 5,000 plate appearances.

    Rollins also played in 1,237 games in that span, second-most among shortstops (Miguel Tejada) and seventh-most among all players, including the next guy on this list, one of Rollins’ best friends.

    Bobby Abreu had a great career offensively, and he was a good outfielder, but his chances of making the Hall of Fame aren’t good.
    6. Bobby Abreu, seventh year

    Abreu was one of baseball’s best hitters from 1998 to 2009; his .902 OPS is third among players with at least 7,500 plate appearances, behind Helton and A-Rod. He averaged more than 28 stolen bases with a .301 batting average. He was an elite offensive player with one Gold Glove and a golden arm to boot. He got 19.5% last season, but he’s a lost cause.

    Chase Utley is expected to get closer than last year to the needed 75% of Hall of Fame votes.
    7. Chase Utley, third year

    He was a profoundly productive second baseman from 2005 to 2013, so why isn’t “Ut” higher? Because he was a profoundly poor second baseman who played out of position. He should have been at first base. Yes, his .881 OPS in that span ranks 11th among players who played at least 1,000 games, but he missed an average of 30 games per season in that span. He’s compared to Jeff Kent, who peaked at 46.5% in his final year of eligibility, though the new Contemporary Baseball Era Committee wrongmindedly slid him in instead of PED poster children Bonds and Clemens. However, Utley’s current popularity campaign as MLB’s ambassador to Europe — the most unlikely ambassadorship this side of Woody Johnson’s former gig in the United Kingdom — will surely help Utley blast past his 39.8% mark from last year.

    8. Torii Hunter, sixth year

    Hunter’s 5.1% last year barely met the 5% minimum for ballot retention, and he probably won’t be on the ballot after this year, but he was the best center fielder in baseball from 2001 to 2013 and a better player than Dustin Pedroia, Andy Pettitte, Hamels, and maybe even Utley.

    Dustin Pedroia’s career compared favorable to Chase Utley’s, except in home run power.
    9. Dustin Pedroia, second year

    There’s an excellent argument that, if you’re in on Utley, you should be in on Pedroia. His 10-year peak was slightly less homer-heavy than Utley’s, but his overall play probably was better, considering his four Gold Gloves. He also won AL Rookie of the Year in 2007 and was AL MVP in 2008. He won two World Series with the Red Sox, but after his first playoff run in 2007 he hit .212 with a .628 OPS in his next 37 playoff games.

    10. Omar Vizquel, ninth year

    He’s the best defensive shortstop of the modern era after Ozzie Smith. However, his candidacy cratered when, in 2021, he was sued and accused of sexually harassing an autistic adult batboy while managing the White Sox’s double-A affiliate in 2019. No charges were brought, and the sides settled in 2022, but the incident, combined with previous, unproven accusations of domestic violence accusations by an ex-wife, effectively ended Vizquel’s Hall of Fame campaign.

    How can Don Mattingly help Bryce Harper? It starts with his star power.

    He peaked at 52.6% in 2020, his third year of eligibility, but hasn’t broken 25% in the past four years, and almost certainly won’t again this year.

    Honorably mentioned

    If I had an 11th vote, I would throw Hamels, Pettitte, and Félix Hernández in a barrel, pick one out, and he would get that vote. None is especially Hall of Fame unworthy, and all were very good long enough to warrant consideration. Pettitte won’t make it this year, his eighth, so, in the spirit of my expiring candidacy criterion, I might vote for him in a couple of years, after some candidates drop off and after Buster Posey gets in next year as a first-ballot candidate.

    Finally, Braves fans: Miss me with Andruw Jones.

  • No reason for the Phillies to hang their heads about Bo Bichette as the Mets go wild

    No reason for the Phillies to hang their heads about Bo Bichette as the Mets go wild

    Well, that was fun. You can be mad that the Phillies didn’t sign Bo Bichette or you can be grateful for all the takes you heard along the way. However things turn out for the 2026 Phillies, you’ll always have those two weeks in winter when you could dream of a better tomorrow. No amount of money and opt-outs can take that away from you. Don’t you forget that.

    Truth is, Bichette was always likely to turn out to be an illusion. The narrative won’t be spun that way. The reports emerging in the immediate aftermath of the Mets’ agreement with the former Blue Jays star on a three-year, $126 million contract suggest the Phillies thought they were on the verge of signing Bichette to a seven-year, $200 million deal. But that’s more a misreading of the state of play than it is reality.

    If the Mets were willing to offer Bichette these kinds of terms, and Bichette was intent on taking the best deal for his personal finances, the Phillies weren’t going to sign him. Both of those outcomes were more likely to be the case than Bichette accepting a long-term deal that the Phillies felt made fiscal sense.

    Reports: Phillies bring back J.T. Realmuto with a three-year deal after Mets add Bo Bichette

    That’s true — and always was true — for two reasons. The Mets are operating with a different definition of fiscal sense. They are also operating with a different level of urgency, given the departures of Pete Alonso, Jeff McNeil, and Edwin Diaz and their failed pursuit of Kyle Tucker. The Phillies could fail to sign Bichette and still have more or less the same roster that won 96 games last season. For the Mets, Bichette might have been their only hope at coming out of this offseason with a roster that looks to have improved over last year’s disappointment. Necessity plus wherewithal equals motivation. It’s tough to win a bidding war from a weaker position.

    That’s not to say the Phillies were played for fools. If three years and $126 million with two opt-outs is what it took to prevent Bichette from signing with the Phillies, then the Phillies had a very real chance. Because three years and $126 million and two opt-outs is a borderline irresponsible deal. So much so that the Phillies couldn’t even think about structuring a long-term deal that would have beaten it.

    Even if Bichette doesn’t opt out, he will reenter free agency at the age of 30 needing to sign a four-year, $75 million deal to come out ahead of where he would have been had he accepted the Phillies’ reported seven-year, $200 million offer. If he opts out after next year, he’ll need six years and $159 million, heading into his 29-year-old season. Kyle Schwarber just landed five and $150 million heading into his 33-year-old season.

    Bo Bichette is expected to move from shortstop to third base with the Mets.

    The one silver lining for the Phillies is the price their division rivals will pay for very little upside. A lot of Bichette’s value is his youth — but the Mets aren’t getting any of that value given that he can become a free agent after next season. They are only getting the downside risk that Bichette’s value craters, in which case he won’t have been worth anywhere close to $42 million for one season and they’ll also owe him an additional two years and $84 million.

    There is a reason the Phillies don’t like to include opt-outs in deals. They pretty much eliminate the ability to recoup value on your investment. Imagine if Zack Wheeler had opt-outs in his original five-year, $118 million deal with the Phillies. Basically, the Mets either win a World Series this season because of Bichette or they are right back where they started.

    The Phillies can hardly stand on principle when it comes to fiscal moderation. But they are clearly in a different realm from the Mets or the Dodgers. I guess you can feel good about the fact that they will need to win games the old-fashioned way, relative to the competition. Let’s go, J.T. Realmuto!

  • Nick Sirianni’s forceful vote of confidence from Howie Roseman, and some A.J. Brown trade talk highlight Eagles news conference

    Nick Sirianni’s forceful vote of confidence from Howie Roseman, and some A.J. Brown trade talk highlight Eagles news conference

    There isn’t a whole lot of literal truth you can glean in most press conference settings. That’s especially true in the NFL, where the shield on the logo carries more than a little metaphorical weight. They are messaging platforms, not intelligence briefings. It can be frustrating. It can also be instructive, in certain moments.

    After embarrassing Kevin Patullo pile-on, Eagles must make Mike McDaniel their main OC target

    Take Howie Roseman, for instance. On Thursday afternoon, the Eagles general manager was sitting next to Nick Sirianni listening to the head coach wind down an answer to a question about the team’s search for a new offensive coordinator. As soon as Sirianni finished speaking, several reporters began talking over each other to ask the next question. But Roseman had something he wanted to add, and jumped in.

    “I’ve got a lot of things I could say about coach and the job that he’s done here,” the general manager said. “I’m incredibly proud of him. He’s shown that when we bring people in he’s open to doing whatever’s best for this football team. That’s all he cares about is winning. When he’s brought in people he’s given them the flexibility to put their own spin on things. Obviously I sit here and I feel incredibly grateful that I’m working with someone who as a head coach is elite at being a head coach, elite at building a connection with our team, elite about talking about fundamentals, game management, situational awareness, bringing the team together, holding people accountable, and when you’re looking for a head coach those are really the job descriptions.”

    The strongest votes of confidence are usually the unsolicited ones. It would be hard to interpret Roseman’s statement as anything else. Two years ago, the Eagles did Sirianni a disservice with the way they handled the fallout from their late-season collapse and one-and-done showing in the 2023 playoffs. From their decision to wait nine days to announce that Sirianni would return amid rampant speculation that his job was in jeopardy, to their external hunt for an offensive coordinator, the Eagles left the impression that the coach was being Office Spaced out of power. Not only was it an indignity, it led to an offseason full of distractions that easily could have metastasized during the Eagles’ 2-2 start to the 2024 season.

    This time, Roseman made it a point to eliminate any doubt. As he should have. The Eagles are about to embark on an offensive coordinator search that could see them bring in any of a number of big name former head coaches who have their own schemes and, potentially, their own assistant coaches. During Thursday’s press conference, there were several questions about the level of autonomy the new offensive coordinator will have, including the one that prompted Roseman’s unsolicited amicus brief. If the Eagles felt like a clarification of the record was in order, now was the time to provide it.

    Will A.J. Brown and Lane Johnson be back? Those are key questions facing the Eagles and Howie Roseman.

    It speaks volumes that Roseman took advantage of the opportunity, and that he did it forcefully. A coach needs all the political capital he can get, especially a coach who suffers from perception problems. Sirianni has brought some of those on himself with his occasional emotional regulation issues on the sidelines. But it was always a silly and unrealistic narrative to suggest he was the NFL coaching equivalent of a guy who stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night. It was also willfully ignorant in a league where John Harbaugh and Mike Tomlin had been two of the most successful coaches of the modern era.

    Howie Roseman and Nick Sirianni are charged with finding answers after the team fell short of its Super Bowl goal.

    As for the exact nature of the Eagles coaching search, and their offseason personnel strategy, you’ll have to rely on your own deductive reasoning. There was little in the way of concrete answers from either Roseman or Sirianni regarding their vision for the Eagles offense.

    — Roseman said the Eagles won’t necessarily be targeting an OC who they think could remain with the team for an extended period of time.

    “It’s a great compliment when guys get head coaching jobs from here because it means that we’re having success,” he said.

    — Sirianni was noncommittal when asked about his role — and his current assistants’ roles — in the future offense. Which is common sense. If the Eagles hire Mike McDaniel, in whom they reportedly have some interest, they will clearly hire him to be Mike McDaniel the same way they hired Vic Fangio to be Vic Fangio. That said, in most cases, game-planning and play-calling is a far more collaborative process than a lot of people seem to think. The Eagles have always valued that collaborative spirit, especially in the wake of the Chip Kelly era.

    “I know that I want to be the head football coach and I think that’s what the team needs,” Sirianni said. “Everything that I’m doing isn’t because it’s what I want to do, it’s because it’s what’s best for the football team and I think it’s best for the football team when I’m the head football coach.“

    — Speaking of reading between the lines, I’ll leave it to you, dear reader, to evaluate Roseman’s comments when asked about the possibility of trading star wideout A.J. Brown.

    “It’s hard to find great players in the NFL and A.J.’s a great player,” Roseman said. “That’s what we’re going out and looking for, when we go out in free agency and the draft, is trying to find great players who love football and he’s that guy. So that would be my answer.”

    I would qualify that wording as “careful” rather than explicit and definitive. But I do think it points to a general truth about the situation. It wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense for the Eagles to trade Brown unless they can somehow do it in a way where they replace him with an equal or better talent. The cost savings and draft pick return almost certainly won’t be enough to legitimize the move on that front. But if they can reap some sort of asset in a deal and also use the $7 million or so they’d clear with a post-June 1 move to add some other pass-catcher, it could make sense. But those are my words, not Roseman’s.

  • Can QB whisperers Josh McCown or Cam Turner salvage Jalen Hurts as the Eagles’ new OC?

    Can QB whisperers Josh McCown or Cam Turner salvage Jalen Hurts as the Eagles’ new OC?

    The Eagles don’t just need an offensive coordinator. They need a quarterback whisperer.

    They need Josh McCown. Or maybe Cam Turner.

    Kevin Patullo wasn’t ready for the OC job in Philly, but then, Bill Walsh and Sid Gillman wouldn’t have won a Super Bowl the way Jalen Hurts played in 2025.

    Hurts’ development has stalled. He might even be broken. He’s largely the same quarterback at the end of the 2025 season as he was at the end of 2022. Defenses know that, and they exploit it. As the offensive line deteriorated, and as Saquon Barkley and A.J. Brown started to show their age, more was asked of Hurts, who delivered ever less.

    Nick Sirianni had a worse year than Kevin Patullo, Jalen Hurts, A.J. Brown, or anyone on the Eagles

    The Eagles don’t just need a play-caller.

    They need an offensive coordinator who can invigorate a veteran quarterback whose career is idling. Both McCown, a former Eagles backup quarterback, and Turner, who has the bluest of NFL bloodlines, have done just that.

    Fire starters

    The most compelling story of the 2024 season involved Sam Darnold, the No. 3 overall pick in the 2018 NFL Draft and a bust with the New York Jets, Carolina Panthers, and San Francisco 49ers, who made the Pro Bowl in his seventh season and led the Minnesota Vikings to a 14-3 record.

    McCown was Darnold’s quarterbacks coach.

    The most compelling story early in the 2025 season involved not only Darnold’s continued ascendance, now in Seattle, but also Daniel Jones. He was the No. 6 overall pick in 2019 but turned out to be such a bust with the New York Giants in his first six seasons that they released him.

    Jones signed with Indianapolis, where Turner, as quarterbacks coach, had been developing Anthony Richardson, the No. 4 overall pick in 2023, while helping veterans Joe Flacco and Gardner Minshew squeeze out a few more NFL starts. When given an established talent like Jones, though, Turner made hay. Turner convinced head coach Shane Steichen to bench Richardson in favor of Jones, and Turner was right. The Colts were 8-2 and Jones was a dark-horse MVP candidate with a career-high 101.6 passer rating when he broke his leg in Game 11. Jones suffered a torn Achilles tendon two games later.

    Colts quarterbacks coach Cam Turner played a big role in Daniel Jones’ resurgence before the quarterback suffered a season-ending injury.

    So, amid all the flashy possible candidates — fired Miami Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel, fired Giants head coach Brian Daboll, fired Washington Commanders coordinator Kliff Kingsbury, figurehead 49ers OC Klay Kubiak — you have, in McCown and Turner, two position coaches who played the position, who possess credible pedigrees, and, within the past two years, have salvaged the careers of quarterbacks who were in even worse shape than Hurts.

    Granted, they wouldn’t be acting as Hurts’ position coach. However, if head coach Nick Sirianni — also never a QB, and only briefly a QB coach — will assume more of a role in scheme construction and game-planning, which he’s going to help with anyway, McCown or Turner could spend more time with Hurts than would a normal OC.

    Granted, they haven’t called plays. But then, neither had Ben Johnson when he became offensive coordinator in Detroit in 2022. He’d never even coached quarterbacks. He still turned out to be excellent at running an offense, both with the Lions through 2024, as well as in 2025, his first season as head coach with the Chicago Bears, who are two wins from making the Super Bowl.

    The team desperately needs some QB IQ in the building after the caliber of coaching Hurts received this season. And no, we’re not referring to Patullo.

    Scot who?

    There was a lot of head-scratching last winter when Sirianni hired career college coach Scot Loeffler as quarterbacks coach. Loeffler’s only season in the NFL was as quarterbacks coach for the Lions in 2008, when Daunte Culpepper, Jon Kitna, and current ESPN analyst Dan Orlovsky combined for an 0-16 record. Loeffler coached on the first 0-16 team in NFL history, a season best remembered for Orlovsky, while facing modest pressure, unwittingly scrambling out of the back of the end zone (the Lions lost by two points).

    Unlike Loeffler, McCown and Turner bring significant NFL bona fides.

    McCown played for 10 NFL teams over a 16-year career. He only approached being a full-time starter four times, but at his last eight stops, he was credited with making the other quarterbacks better as a sort of extra coach. In 2006, with the Lions, he actually played wide receiver, and caught both passes thrown to him. In 2019, he came out of retirement and served as Carson Wentz’s backup and mentor. Not coincidentally, Wentz’s career cratered after 2020.

    Even if he doesn’t get the OC job, McCown always will have a home in Philly. Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie loves him. He offered McCown a coaching job after the 2019 season, which McCown, then 40, declined, hoping to take one more shot as a player. Lurie then signed McCown to the practice squad in 2020 but still let McCown live at home in Texas until the Houston Texans signed McCown onto their active roster in November.

    Who will be the Eagles’ next offensive coordinator? Start with these eight names.

    Other than recently redeeming failed quarterbacks, McCown and Turner share little else in their backgrounds.

    Depending on how you view things, either Turner is one of the NFL‘s most egregious proliferate examples of nepotism, or he has impeccable NFL coaching DNA.

    His uncle, Norv Turner, won two Super Bowls in the early 1990s as Jimmy Johnson’s offensive coordinator in Dallas. His cousin and Norv’s son, Scott Turner, has spent 14 seasons coaching in the NFL, and he’s the Jets’ passing game coordinator now, but that shouldn’t count against Cam.

    Independent of his connections, Cam has proved himself worthy of his appointments. He was the assistant QB coach in Arizona in 2020, when Kyler Murray went to his first Pro Bowl, and was the head QB coach in 2021, when Murray went to his second.

    Turner also has the benefit of working with Steichen in Indy. Steichen, of course, was the OC when the Eagles made it to the Super Bowl after the 2022 season.

    Colts coach Shane Steichen, the former Eagles offensive coordinator, started the 2025 season 8-2 with Daniel Jones as his starter and Cam Turner coaching quarterbacks.

    Turner also worked in Arizona under Kingsbury, one of the retread candidates everyone has been sniffing around since Black Monday began claiming victims last week.

    “Sniffing around.”

    Sounds about right.

    The names

    With a $128 million offense like the Eagles’, why risk a season on lesser-known candidates like McCown and Turner?

    Because being lesser-known doesn’t necessarily equate to lesser ability.

    McDaniel is a big name, but the awkward departure of Vic Fangio as his defensive coordinator after their 2023 season together would cause instant friction if McDaniel joined a franchise and moved to a city where Fangio is worshipped. Anyway, McDaniel seems certain to get another head coaching gig during this hiring cycle. If he doesn’t, he’d be foolish to turn down the Lions OC job if offered, since, in this moment, Jared Goff is a better quarterback than Hurts.

    Daboll was hired by the Ginats to develop Jones. He did the opposite. Also, his combustible personality is likely to clash with Sirianni’s.

    There isn’t a universe in which Ravens offensive coordinator Todd Monken doesn’t accompany John Harbaugh to Harbaugh’s next stop, since Harbaugh’s refusal to fire Monken apparently influenced his firing in Baltimore.

    Murphy: After embarrassing Kevin Patullo pile-on, Eagles must make Mike McDaniel their main OC target

    and got fired by the Cowboys as QB coach after 2022, failed as Kellen Moore’s QB coach with the Chargers in 2023, and was the QB coach in Philly during Hurts’ mediocre 2024 season. Not exactly a sterling resumé.

    Frank Reich, the OC in 2016-17 under Doug Pederson, is Lurie’s favorite employee ever, and, at 64, he’s unlikely to be poached by any other team if the Eagles thrive with him as coordinator. But Reich was less responsible for Wentz’s development than hard-nosed quarterbacks coach John DeFilippo. As for “Flip” himself, team sources have said in the past that DeFilippo long ago burned any bridge that might ever bring him back to Philadelphia, and there have been plenty of opportunities to do so.

    Rams passing game coordinator Nate Scheelhaase has never coached NFL quarterbacks, has one year as a college offensive coordinator, and with all due respect, seems to be this year’s long-shot assistant who gets the Duce Staley Treatment — that is, token interviews for head-coaching jobs with NFL teams trying to fulfill Rooney Rule requirements.

    Still, Scheelhaase seems far more qualified than Klay Kubiak. He spent seven of his first eight years out of college coaching high school, and only three of those as a head coach. He joined the Niners in 2021, and he has been offensive coordinator for just one year, but he doesn’t even call plays. Kyle Shanahan does.

    Maybe it won’t matter who they hire. Considering how so many podcast pundits and online experts spend their Monday mornings eviscerating folks like Kevin Patullo, game planning, sequencing, adjusting, and play-calling can’t be all that hard. Can it?

  • After embarrassing Kevin Patullo pile-on, Eagles must make Mike McDaniel their main OC target

    After embarrassing Kevin Patullo pile-on, Eagles must make Mike McDaniel their main OC target

    The worst kind of mob is the one that is displacing its aggression. Then again, maybe every mob is that kind of mob. The more unhinged the vitriol, the more concentrated its direction, the more likely it is driven by fears and frustrations that are much more difficult to reconcile than the ones that have bubbled to the surface. The easier the target, the more likely it is the wrong one. Because the fixes are rarely easy.

    Kevin Patullo isn’t the first person to experience the downside of this city’s manic emotional instability when it comes to professional sports. He might be the first one to have his house egged, and he almost certainly is the first one to have his image offered as a target by a golf simulator company. But the general phenomenon is something that we see any time a Philly sports team underperforms expectations to the extent that the Eagles offense did this season. Frustration is a lot easier to process if you can convince yourself that it would not exist but for the gross incompetence of one person. It is even easier when that person has a job that is relatively easy to replace.

    My point here isn’t to shame anybody. Actually, my point is to lobby the Eagles to spend whatever it takes to hire Mike McDaniel as their offensive coordinator. It’s a move that would give them a radical upgrade in play-calling and game-planning expertise and that would give them a fighting chance at reinventing a scheme that has stagnated under Patullo and Nick Sirianni and may be obsolete due to some serious personnel regression. But I also feel a little bit guilty expressing an opinion that legitimizes or adds to the unrestrained and oftentimes unthinking pile-on of poor Patullo that we’ve witnessed here over the last month-plus. It should be possible to criticize and/or question a person’s professional performance without disregarding the person part of it, especially when that person is someone who lives among us in the community and whose kids attend our schools.

    Kevin Patullo out as Eagles offensive coordinator

    I’m not suggesting that everybody, or even most people, have crossed the line into gratuitous abuse/humiliation. It sure feels that way in the aggregate, though. I don’t have a personal relationship with Patullo. If I did, I would certainly apologize to him on the city’s behalf. I actually think most people would do the same if they randomly found themselves talking to him one-on-one, maybe in an airport bar, or at their kid’s CYO game. I suppose that’s another funny characteristic of mobs.

    I wasn’t going to bring up any of this. Mostly because I don’t want a mob to come after me. I know I’ll be accused of saying something I’m not actually saying, a common mob tactic that serves to stake out a defensible rhetorical position and reframe an argument into one that can actually be won. So, although it won’t matter, I will say it again. I agree with a lot of the criticisms of the Eagles’ offense, and that Sirianni’s decision to make a change at offensive coordinator is both warranted and necessary.

    Kevin Patullo (center) talks with quarterback Jalen Hurts on Sunday in what was his final game calling plays for the Eagles.

    That said, Eagles fans and media will be setting themselves up for a self-perpetuating cycle of offseasons like this one if they will not acknowledge the very obvious structural problems that exist well below the play-calling level on this Eagles offense. Even when this unit was at its best, it was trying to score points the same way it did under Patullo this season. The formula is the same as it was under Sirianni or Shane Steichen or Brian Johnson or Kellen Moore. The scheme and the personnel structure are built to stay ahead of the sticks with dominant run-blocking and to fill in the blanks with big plays from their elite talent at wide receiver and running back.

    Listen to what DeVonta Smith said on Sunday when somebody asked him if the Eagles’ scheme needed to change after their season-ending loss to the 49ers.

    “This the scheme that we’ve been in the whole time [since I’ve been here],” the receiver said. “Whatever anybody thinks, nothing changed. It’s the same scheme.”

    Who will be the Eagles’ next offensive coordinator? Start with these eight names.

    Other players and coaches have said it countless times. Nobody seems to want to accept it. Yes, the Eagles have had four offensive coordinators in four seasons. And, yes, the offense was markedly worse this season than it was in the past. But it was the same scheme. It was the same philosophy.

    The biggest difference between the Eagles offense this season and last season? On Sunday against the 49ers, Eagles running backs had eight carries that gained zero or negative yards. They had 20 such carries all last postseason, over four games. Eight on 30 carries against the dilapidated 49ers defense vs. 20 on 108 carries against the Rams, Packers, Chiefs, and Commanders last year.

    Lane Johnson, one of the NFL’s ultimate warriors, is battling a foot injury that kept him from playing Sunday. Landon Dickerson basically shrugged when somebody asked him if he could get his body back to where it was last season. Cam Jurgens was pushed around all afternoon against the 49ers.

    Mike McDaniel spent four seasons as Miami’s head coach and is a highly coveted candidate for several head coaching and offensive coordinator openings.

    The Eagles’ only option is to bring in a fresh set of eyes and a proven track record of inventive run-scheming. They need to reinvent this offense, and McDaniel is the perfect mind to do it. Since he arrived in Miami in 2022, the Dolphins rank sixth in rushing average at 4.5 yards per attempt. He did this while also calling an offense that saw quarterback Tua Tagovailoa throw for 4,624 yards and go 11-6 in 2023.

    There are all kinds of reasons to think it won’t happen. McDaniel is an eccentric personality who has spent the last four seasons with total control. Vic Fangio lasted less than one season as his defensive coordinator. McDaniel already reportedly has an interview scheduled with the Lions, who can offer him a good offensive line, excellent pass-catchers, and a running back that has the Devon Achane mold in Jahmyr Gibbs. That’s if McDaniel doesn’t land one of the remarkable nine head-coaching jobs that are currently open.

    All the more reason for the Eagles to be aggressive. Howie Roseman and Jeffrey Lurie pride themselves on being ahead of the curve. They’d rather be a year early than a year late. Right now, it is getting late early. McDaniel or not, they need a new voice, an inventive mind, and a fresh set of eyes. Anybody else will end up right where Patullo is. And that’s not fair to anybody.

  • From Lane Johnson’s worth to a fan base’s anger, here’s what we learned about the 2025 Eagles

    From Lane Johnson’s worth to a fan base’s anger, here’s what we learned about the 2025 Eagles

    In the final scene of Burn After Reading, the Coen brothers’ brilliant comedy about government espionage and … divorce, a CIA administrator, played by J.K. Simmons, listens as a subordinate named Palmer lays out a wild sequence of events. To sum it up: Tilda Swinton is married to John Malkovich but has been having an affair with George Clooney, who himself is married but has been dating Frances McDormand, who is friends with both Brad Pitt, who gets shot in the face by Clooney, and Richard Jenkins, who is in love with McDormand but gets hacked to death with an ax by Malkovich, who is left in a coma after getting shot by a CIA agent. At the end of the story, a dumbfounded Simmons finally rolls his eyes and asks, “What did we learn, Palmer?”

    I don’t know about you, but that scene makes me think of the 2025 Eagles.

    So, what did we learn from this season? Here’s what:

    The offensive line has been the key to the Eagles’ success for years. This year, they lost that key.

    The debates around Jalen Hurts, Nick Sirianni, Kevin Patullo, and A.J. Brown — and around what Jalen Hurts, Nick Sirianni, Kevin Patullo, and A.J. Brown might have said to one another on the sideline during the Eagles’ loss Sunday night to the San Francisco 49ers — are all, to a large degree, academic. If the team’s offensive line had played at the level that it did in 2024, or anywhere close to that level, the entire scope of the season, let alone Sunday’s result, would have been different. One statistic clarifies how great the falloff was: Last season, Saquon Barkley averaged 3.8 yards before contact. This season, he averaged 1.4, according to TruMedia.

    Eagles linemen (from left) Tyler Steen, Cam Jurgens, and Landon Dickerson had their ups and downs this season.

    There are obvious explanations for the line’s regression: injuries, general wear and tear, replacing a road-grading guard in Mekhi Becton with a lesser run-blocker in Tyler Steen. Demoting Patullo, as the Eagles did Tuesday, was the predictable and correct move. Still, there’s no getting around the reality that one of the reasons few people complained about Kellen Moore’s play-calling in 2024 is that the 2024 OL could create holes and lanes for Barkley anytime, anywhere. Patullo did not have that luxury, and it’s unlikely the next conductor of the Eagles offense will, either, because …

    The 2025 Eagles played not to lose. In the end, that’s why they did.

    … Lane Johnson has been the franchise’s most important player for a long time, and his future is murky. He turns 36 in May. He didn’t play after mid-November because of a Lisfranc sprain in his right foot. He is a surefire Hall of Famer. Since the Eagles drafted him in 2013, their record with him is 110-57-1, and their record without him is 18-27. The end of a great career is approaching, perhaps not next season but certainly sometime soon, and the franchise has to start making plans to replace him or to mitigate the effect of his absence. One way would be to draft some promising offensive linemen. Another would be …

    … for the Eagles to set themselves up as a defense-first team. That’s where their best young players are, and there are such players at every tier of the unit: Jalen Carter, Jordan Davis, and Moro Ojomo at tackle; Jalyx Hunt and Jihaad Campbell on the edge; Zack Baun and Nakobe Dean (if they can keep him) at linebacker; Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean in the secondary. Plus, well, Vic Fangio. And the Eagles are going to need that defense to be elite, or as close as possible, because …

    … the questions about Jalen Hurts aren’t going away. The biggest of them, ahead of the 2025 season, was whether the Eagles could rely on him more than they once did. In ’24, their running game was so dominant that they could get away with throwing the ball less often than any other team in the NFL and still win the Super Bowl. This season — without Barkley ripping off 6 yards every carry, with Hurts himself running less frequently and without the same explosiveness he had in the past — the offense sputtered and stalled. Given that Hurts will turn 28 in August and has absorbed his share of punishment over his five years as the Eagles’ starter, it’s fair to wonder whether that dynamism with his legs is gone forever.

    Jalen Hurts is tackled by San Francisco’s Keion White and C.J. West during the fourth quarter of the playoff loss on Sunday.

    It’s not that the Eagles can’t win a championship with Hurts. Of course they can. They did. It’s that they have to ask themselves, What conditions do we have to create to ensure that Hurts will be at his best, and can we create them? The Eagles and everyone around them have to set their expectations for Hurts and the entire franchise accordingly, for these last five-plus months proved that …

    … Philly fans are at their worst when their teams don’t meet expectations. Based on the collective outrage since Sunday’s game, you’d never know that the Eagles won a Super Bowl less than a year ago and haven’t had a losing season in five years.

    Eagles fans react during the wild-card playoff loss to San Francisco.

    There seems to be a repulsive sense of entitlement and hair-trigger anger growing within the fan base, symbolized by a Bucks County indoor golf course whose owners allowed customers to drive balls at a projection of Patullo’s face. Patullo already had someone chuck eggs at his house in November, and if that incident could be dismissed as dumb kids doing dumb things, this one had a calculated maliciousness to it, especially considering the way it spread over social media.

    You want to be a jerk in the privacy of your own home? Go for it. But a business or anyone else doing something like this for the likes and the attention is lousy, and it has the potential to snowball into something worse. It doesn’t matter how bad a play-caller Patullo was or wasn’t. Cut out the juvenile crap. The Eagles lost. Grow up and get over it.

  • Nick Sirianni had a worse year than Kevin Patullo, Jalen Hurts, A.J. Brown, or anyone on the Eagles

    Nick Sirianni had a worse year than Kevin Patullo, Jalen Hurts, A.J. Brown, or anyone on the Eagles

    Nick Sirianni had a very bad year.

    He hired an overmatched offensive coordinator, watched his franchise quarterback regress, and did nothing to curtail the serial insubordination of A.J. Brown, then oversaw an offense that delivered the Eagles’ worst playoff loss in 22 years.

    “At the end of the day, we didn’t do a good enough job,” Sirianni said, “and that starts with me.”

    Yes, it does.

    Kevin Patullo’s offense wastes two Quinyon Mitchell interceptions in crushing Eagles playoff loss

    How impotent was Sirianni?

    For the last two seasons, Brown frequently has criticized the passing game both in person and on social media. This came to a head when Brown called the offensive issues a “[expletive]-show” on Nov. 11.

    Later that week, owner Jeffrey Lurie had to step in and muzzle the wide receiver. At practice. In public.

    Some folks consider Sirianni to be a brilliant coach. Really? Do you think Andy Reid or Bill Belichick would have needed Clark Hunt or Robert Kraft to come to practice to muzzle Tyreek Hill or Randy Moss?

    The enduring image of the offseason surely will be Sirianni, Patullo, and Hurts on the sideline during a timeout discussing the final play of the final drive on Sunday. As Patullo spoke to what appeared to be a befuddled and reluctant Hurts, Sirianni stood there, mostly silent, looking like a cross between a deer in headlights and a dog hearing a high-pitched whistle.

    You know what he didn’t look like?

    A confident head coach.

    More and more, Sirianni seems less a coaching savant and more a dude who happens to be in the right place at the right time to take advantage of the best rosters in Eagles history.

    Culture creatures

    Since Lurie’s admonishment to Brown, and in violation of league rules, Brown has boycotted the media. That included Sunday’s game and Monday’s locker clean-out. As he did so often this season, he left his teammates to clean up his mess.

    ‘It’s too soon to think about that’: Jalen Hurts puts off talking about Kevin Patullo’s future

    It was unprofessional — but then, unprofessionalism always has been an issue during Sirianni’s five-year tenure. He sets that tone and creates that culture.

    When the Eagles won in Kansas City in 2023, he taunted Chiefs fans as he walked up the tunnel.

    When the Eagles beat the Browns at home in the middle of the 2024 season, Sirianni taunted Eagles fans as he left the field, then, incredibly, brought his three young children to what was certain to be a fractious postgame news conference.

    Sirianni issued an apology after that incident, but, two weeks ago, after the Eagles won in Buffalo, Sirianni taunted Bills fans as he walked up the tunnel — a taunt that drew a side-eye eye roll from Brown, who was walking beside him.

    On Sunday, he charged down the sideline to hurry Brown off the field, then had a few choice words for Brown, who barked back at him, then, a few moments later, tried to get after Sirianni again.

    This ended the lost season nicely, considering it began when defensive tackle Jalen Carter, having walked toward the Cowboys huddle to taunt a young lineman, then spat on Dak Prescott and was ejected.

    It’s hard to blame the players. After all, why should they be expected to control themselves if their coach can’t control himself?

    Focus

    Left tackle Jordan Mailata, the team’s de facto spokesman and often the adult in the room, was asked both at midseason and after Sunday’s loss about the Eagles’ biggest issue. Each time, his answer was the same:

    “Focus.”

    Another clear measurable of a lack of discipline: penalties.

    In 2024, the Eagles committed 103 penalties for 793 yards, 37 of them pre-snap penalties. In 2025, they committed 117 penalties for 1,073 yards, 42 of them pre-snap calls. Those are increases of 14%, 35%, and 14%, respectively.

    This is a team that was expected to defend a Super Bowl title.

    This was a disaster.

    Sirianni’s disaster.

    That’s why it’s amazing how little culpability has fallen at Sirianni’s feet.

    Nakobe Dean and Jaelan Phillips want to be back with the Eagles, but one has a greater chance than the other

    Granted, Patullo didn’t take advantage of his first OC opportunity … but, after losing at home to the Bears in Game 13, Sirianni inserted himself into the game-planning process. After Sirianni’s insertion, the Eagles played three playoff teams. They averaged just 17 points.

    Hurts, mired in self-preservation mode, ran the ball 33% less often this season than his previous three seasons and scored only eight rushing touchdowns after averaging 14 the three previous seasons. Patullo makes the calls, but the buck stops with Nick.

    Brown dropped two passes in Sunday’s wild-card loss to the visiting 49ers and, during the regular season, too often seemed … indifferent? Disengaged?

    “I have a special relationship with him,” Sirianni said after Sunday’s dustup.

    Eagles wide receiver A.J. Brown had a critical drop in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s NFC wild-card game.

    If that’s true, then Sirianni needed to mobilize that connection, because Brown just had the worst of his four seasons as an Eagle.

    There were other issues.

    Saquon Barkley’s rushing total dropped from 2,005 yards and 13 touchdowns to 1,140 yards (865 fewer yards), and seven touchdowns (six fewer scores). For context, only 21 backs gained at least 865 yards this season and/or scored more than six touchdowns.

    The offensive line regressed, and while injuries to Lane Johnson, Landon Dickerson, and Cam Jurgens limited their performance and availability, the performance of their backups left much to be desired.

    At any rate, now that it’s over and the distractions have faded, we can better assess Sirianni’s role in the lost season of 2025. The football world will zoom out to the “30,000-foot view,” as Sirianni likes to call his CEO style of coaching.

    What they see will not be pretty.

    None of this is irredeemable. Sirianni is still a newish head coach, only five years in, and, at 44, he’s a relatively young man.

    It’s the first time he’s been in a situation dealing with overpaid divas who won him a Super Bowl.

    Maybe, if he’s in this situation again, he’ll act the way a head coach should act.

    With backbone.

    And conviction.

    What now for Kevin Patullo, A.J. Brown after the Eagles offense went belly-up again in the playoff loss to the 49ers?
  • The Eagles need to ask themselves some hard questions. Jalen Hurts should face a few of them.

    The Eagles need to ask themselves some hard questions. Jalen Hurts should face a few of them.

    Multiple things can be true at the same time. They usually are when a team’s season ends the way the Eagles’ did on Sunday.

    It takes a special kind of bad to lose this limply. It is a collective bad, an existential bad, a bad that raises all kinds of hard questions that a team must confront head-on and wrestle with in the darkness. That is true even of a team that is less than a year removed from winning a Super Bowl. In fact, it is especially true for such a team.

    The bad that the Eagles were in a 23-19 loss to the 49ers is a disconcerting bad. It is a bad that shakes you to your core, a bad so bad that you spend an entire season desperate to disbelieve it.

    More than anything, it is a bad that is nearly impossible to achieve if your quarterback is doing the things he needs to do.

    Jalen Hurts did not do those things for the Eagles on Sunday. His counterpart did them for the 49ers. That is why the Eagles are headed home. It is why the 49ers are headed to Seattle. The difference in this particular playoff game was the same as it is in most of them. One team had a quarterback who rose above his circumstances. The other did not.

    “It starts with me and ends with me,” Hurts said afterward.

    Whether or not he truly believed those words, he was correct.

    A team that cannot, or will not, put pressure on a defense in the intermediate-to-deep part of the field is a team whose luck will eventually run out. Whether Hurts can’t or won’t doesn’t matter at this point. He didn’t, and that’s that. He completed just three passes that traveled more than 10 yards in the air, on 11 attempts. Those three completions gained a total of 38 yards. He was 17-for-20 on his short throws.

    Compare that to Brock Purdy, who was dealing with an offense that lost its last blue-chip pass-catching weapon when tight end George Kittle tore his Achilles tendon with six minutes left in the second quarter. The game should have been over then, one of several moments when that was the case. That it wasn’t is largely a testament to Purdy, whose poise and patience and intentionality were on display against an Eagles defense several calibers above that of the practice-squad Niners.

    San Francisco’s game-winning 66-yard touchdown drive late in the fourth quarter featured a 16-yard completion to Demarcus Robinson and a 5-yard scramble, both for first downs, to help set up his 4-yard touchdown pass to Christian McCaffrey with just under three minutes remaining. A couple of possessions earlier, he found fullback Kyle Juszczyk of all people for a 27-yard gain that set up a trick play touchdown on an end-around pass from wide receiver Jauan Jennings to McCaffrey.

    The 2025 Eagles played not to lose. In the end, that’s why they did.

    There was a 14-yard pass to backup tight end Jake Tonges on third-and-14 late in the second quarter, a 45-yarder to Jennings earlier in the period, and a 61-yarder to Robinson that set up a touchdown on the 49ers’ opening drive.

    Purdy’s numbers on throws longer than 10 yards: 8-of-13, for 178 yards. His two interceptions were the cost of doing business.

    “You’ve got to be able to be explosive,” Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said. “It’s really hard to dink and dunk down the field. It’s really hard to get behind sticks with negative plays. You’ve got to be able to create explosives. Again, at the end of the day, there were a lot of elements [where] you end up with a loss, and we haven’t had this feeling of ending our season since 2023 with the loss. That’s why it hurts because it’s been a while. But yeah, at the end of the day, we need to find ways to be more explosive. Again, that starts with me.”

    Sirianni is right. Everything starts with him. But it ends wherever the quarterback takes it. The ball is in his hands. The clock is in his head. He is the one who decides how long to continue looking down the field. Whatever the game plan, whoever the play-caller, a quarterback almost always has the ability to force the issue. That’s especially true for a quarterback with Hurts’ ability to buy time and gain yards with his legs. He gained 14 yards on five carries against the 49ers. Purdy gained 24 on nine.

    “Well, I think finding a rhythm and whatever you define aggression as, maintaining the fluidity and the flow throughout four quarters of the game, so I think there’s opportunity for us to improve in that,” Hurts said. “Just finding a rhythm. Ultimately it is just all something that you either learn from it or you don’t.”

    One thing people lose sight of while focusing on the play-calling is that the quarterback sets the rhythm. He is the orchestra conductor. The great offenses are almost always a reflection of their quarterback. It wasn’t Tom Moore’s offense or Todd Haley’s offense or Charlie Weis’ offense: it was Peyton Manning’s and Ben Roethlisberger’s and Tom Brady’s. It’s no coincidence that the energy of this Eagles offense as a collective often resembles Hurts’ individual demeanor.

    Nobody should have to apologize for pointing out these things. High standards are not unfair. The only way to fix an offense as bad and boring and listless as the Eagles’ is to be unflinchingly honest about its component parts. The quarterback is inseparable from the play-caller. The right guy for the second job is a guy who can make it work with the guy in the first one. The next Eagles play-caller will be getting a quarterback who does not have elite size, or arm strength, or pocket presence, and who no longer makes up much of that difference with his ability to create on the run.

    Hurts didn’t get much help from his pass-catchers on Sunday. He didn’t get as much help from his play-caller as Purdy got from his. The Eagles will need to fix both of those things this offseason. Hurts isn’t, and shouldn’t be, going anywhere.

    The defense propped the Eagles up all season. On Sunday, it bent, broke and the 49ers advanced.

    That said, Hurts is who he is. Who he was on Sunday is the guy he has been all season, and most of the last 2½ seasons, if we’re being honest. It worked when the Eagles had an overwhelming talent advantage at all of the other positions. If that is no longer the case, they need to figure out a new formula.