One of the worst losses I can remember in nearly thirty years of Eagles fandom, no questions asked. Here are a few thoughts in no particular order:
In the preseason I predicted an 11-6 record, which looked comically disrespectful after Philly jumped out to a 10-1 start, but now looms as threateningly possible.
Unlike last week's game that wasn't nearly as close as the score made it look, Philly was outplayed by possibly the worst team in the sport. Arizona outgained Philly 449-275, won the first down battle 32-17, and the time of possession battle 39:39-20:21. Just awful.
The Eagles should have had this game circled for months, considering all that they owe Jonathan Gannon. Instead, a Cardinals team that really had nothing to play for other than pride, showed far more pride than a Philly team that still had a real shot at the top seed in the NFC going into the game.
This marks the sixth straight game in which Philly has failed to cover the spread; other than a gambling footnote the significance of that factoid is that Philly has suddenly become a team that fails to meet expectations, instead of exceeding them.
It's time to ask hard questions about what's going on with the leadership of this team. I've previously defended Sirianni and I'm not going to jump off that position so quickly, but the team showed up flat and entitled today, and that's on the coaching staff. The defensive staff needs an overhaul; that's pretty clear now. Our stop unit failed to stop Arizona once in the entire second half (shades of the Super Bowl), and overall they reminded me of the villain's defense in every football movie I ever saw. Arizona's untalented WRs (their best guy didn't even play) were open all day long, and their mediocre OL pushed Philly off the ball at will.
Where is the pride that we all believed a veteran-led team would have possessed in spades? We have 30+ year old vets all over the roster; where's the leadership? We've also made an effort to draft players from college programs with elite culture (Jalen Hurts most notably); why has the culture not seemed to translate at all?
Going back to Sirianni, while I'm nowhere close to saying he's done, questions need to be asked about if it's time to get him some more veteran assistants. Enough with these young coaches who have the so-called right philosophies (I'm mostly thinking here about the disregard for the run game on both sides of the ball, and the obsession with big plays) and buckets of "emotional intelligence", but minimal experience. My hope is that the offseason will see a lot of older, more experienced coaches fill out the staff.
If I look really hard for silver linings, I can say that Jalen had a pretty good game as a passer. I don't think the OL did him too many favors overall, and Smith's drop on that big play down the right sideline looms large (by the way, you'll hear a lot of chatter this week discussing how much worse this game would have been without the Brown pick six; I think Smith's drop pretty much balanced the scales there). Braden Mann looks like a keeper as a punter and Jake Elliott had another solid day. It would have been fun to see if Covey could have continued his Pro Bowl campaign, but the Eagles inept defense forced no punts.
The Eagles outlook is now simple: if they win and the Cowboys lose to Washington, Philly wins the division and gets the #3 seed. If this happens and Detroit loses to Minnesota as well, Philly climbs to the #2 seed. Otherwise, they'll finish fifth. At this point, it doesn't seem to matter. The way this team has played the last few weeks, they'll be a one-and-done. I'm not sure that actually will be the way this season ends, but without a change to the Eagles' mindset, I'm not sure how else things could turn out. A final word: since it appears that Philly catching Dallas for the division crown is now a relative long shot, it looks like the Curse of the Defending NFC East Champion is alive and well. If in fact Dallas does win this division, there's no debating which of the Curses talked about over the summer applies to Philly: a gut wrenching Late Season Collapse.
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