Now that we're saying goodbye to the 2023 Eagles and marching off into the offseason, I think it's time to look back over the last twelve months and see if we can ascertain what may have caused this team to come up short of the expectations we had for this season. This will likely not be an exhaustive list, and I fully expect that the Philly beat will be doing deep dives into the locker room issues that we could tell existed but couldn't prove. That said, we know a lot already:
Philly's 2022 season ends in heartbreaking fashion a full month after almost everyone else's. The Curse of the Super Bowl Loser has largely been debunked, but what is fair to point out is that losing that extra five weeks of R&R has to mean something. History indicates that each day of rest is worth 0.2 points; if that's accurate, how much does five weeks cost?
As with many successful teams, the Birds suffer a brain drain that turned their coaching staff over. The biggest loss is almost certainly OC and playcaller Shane Steichen, but other than DC Gannon, the cuts went deepest on the defensive side where position coaches Nick Rallis (linebackers) and Dennard Wilson (secondary) also departed. Their positions would suffer notable regression in 2023.
Similarly, the roster takes a big hit with the loss of seven starters to free agency. Miles Sanders, Isaac Seumalo, Javon Hargrave, TJ Edwards, Kyzir White, Marcus Epps, CJ Gardner-Johnson; all gone, and don't understate the importance of some of those guys. Sanders lead the team in rushing, CJGJ led in picks. Edwards was the best home grown linebacker here since Jordan Hicks and led the team in tackles (White, Epps, Gardner-Johnson and Hargrave were second, third fourth and fifth on that list; Philly lost its five leading tacklers). Hargrave in particular opened up a lot of pass rushing opportunities from the interior. Seumalo was an underrated OG and has drawn rave reviews in Pittsburgh. Those guys, plus key reserves like Andre Dillard, Gardner Minshew, Zach Pascal and Linval Joseph, represented a rebuild for the depth chart.
Coaches leave, but faulty philosophies stay. I've said it several times already, but once more for the 2023 record: the philosophy (which originates with Nick Sirriani) of focusing on creating and preventing big plays as the end in itself (as opposed to a byproduct of actual quality play) is misguided and puts the cart before the horse. Creating and preventing big plays are the byproduct of sound scheming and fundamental execution. Without those things, you'll see an awful lot of what we saw this season on offense (Jalen holding the ball too long while looking for the deep shot and neglecting the wide open receiver five yards downfield) and on defense (a long drive resulting in a TD, filled with third and medium completions because our guys are playing ten yards off the ball). I had a tepid reaction to Desai's hiring last spring because of his philosophical continuity with The Fraud Jonathan Gannon, but Brian Johnson's seeming need to force feed his philosophies (and his players) at the expense of doing the simple but obvious thing is nearly as awful. Enough of this garbage philosophy already.
Side note to this; some commentators were pining for Gannon after the defense really fell off a cliff late in the season. No one should be supporting Patricia or Desai's work with that unit, but how bad must they have been to make Gannon look desirable? Remember that JG's defense NEVER shut down a good offense; here's the proof:
SEASON | OPPONENT | OPPONENT RANK* | POINTS ALLOWED |
2021 | Cowboys | 1 | 41 |
2021 | Chiefs | 3 | 42 |
2021 | Buccaneers | 2 | 28 |
2021 | Chargers | 4 | 27 |
2021 playoffs | Buccaneers | 2 | 31 |
2022 | Lions | 6 | 35 |
2022 | Cowboys | 5 | 40 |
2022 Super Bowl | Chiefs | 2 | 38 |
AVERAGE | 35.25 |
*rank in Offensive SRS
I didn't count our games against Dallas in January of 2022 as we sat our starters, or the Dallas game in October of 2022 when they started Cooper Rush. In all other games against elite offenses, Gannon's defense was completely inert. Gannon's defenses behaved like the Dallas Cowboys; they could look impressive and run up all kinds of stats and highlights against bad teams but when it mattered most, they folded.
Jalen Hurts got his bag, the keys to the Eagles' kingdom, and the enablement that came with it. Let's not act like the Hurts extension was a big mistake (yet), but let's not hide the truth that the Birds under Lurie have generally handed out giant contracts to their quarterbacks and then enabled them, to bad ends. Look no farther than McNabb (got a giant deal and was mostly hurt or underperforming for the seven seasons after that), Vick (same scenario but only lasted three more seasons), and Wentz (performance largely bombed after his injury, but team gave him a megadeal, fired Pederson partially on Wentz's recommendation, and had to trade him anyway). This year we've seen Hurts regress notably, had more freedom to call his own bad plays, feuded with his star receiver and refused to back his coach. To be clear, none of this is non-fixable and not all of it is Jalen's fault, but this is a situation that is going sideways and needs to be addressed.
Final note: we should not discount the possibility of Jalen's health issues being a much larger factor than we currently know. Time and good reporting will let us know, but it certainly seemed that Hurts was not himself as a runner for most of the season.
The injury bug shows up in a big way. After watching their team get wrecked with injuries for four straight years (2017-2020), Eagles brass decided to change up how they approached practice and sports science, and it seemed to work as Philly got through the 2021 and 2022 campaigns with remarkable good health. The thinking seemed to be that maybe they had solved their problems.
They did not.
This table shows the games missed by starters or key reserves, including playoffs. It doesn't account for the long list of games played by guys who were nursing injuries, or for players like Zech McPhearson or Shaun Bradley, key experiences reserves at positions where they could have been used (corner and LB). Both players missed the whole season. In total, I count 22 starters or key reserves that missed 80 games, and a scan through the list showed how much some of those guys were missed; particularly hard hit was the back seven, which accounts for 60 of those 80 missed games.
Sean Desai mismanages the defensive line rotation. I talked about it in the preseason and mentioned it again more recently, but Philly really should have had the best rotation of pass rushers in the league by a wide margin. A quick review:
Haason Reddick is one of four players in the NFL with at least 50 sacks over the last four years.
Josh Sweat had gotten better in each of his first five years in the league and had emerged as one of the better rushers in the league in 2022.
Brandon Graham had his first 10+ sack season in 2022... at age 34... coming off an Achilles injury.
Nolan Smith was considered one of the premier edge rushers in the draft last spring, and was a candidate to be taken 20 slots higher.
Derek Barnett was underrated by the end of his time here, and has shown the Birds up in his time in Houston so far.
Patrick Johnson is likely never going to start in this league, but is overqualified to be a team's #6 pass rusher.
Similarly, in Fletcher Cox, Jordan Davis, Milton Williams, Jalen Carter, Kentavius Street and Marlon Tuipulotu the Eagles had six tackles that they knew they could play. In the most successful defensive seasons in recent Eagles history, they rotated all their D linemen to keep everyone fresh and win the battle of attrition.
So what did this year's team do? Graham, Smith, Barnett and Johnson combined for 720 snaps for the whole season. Reddick played 862 snaps and Sweat racked up 828. Small wonder that both largely disappeared late in the season, and no coincidence that the defense looked rough during that same stretch. The DT rotation was more balanced (Cox, Carter, Davis and Williams each played between 494 and 684 snaps), but I'd still like to see capable depth guys like Tuipulotu, Street and Moro Ojomo get more than the 317 total combined snaps they were given. In summary, the talent and depth of the DL was the one and only hope for the defense, and while the talent showed up at time, the misuse of the depth completely exhausted that group.
Side note: overuse of key players was not limited to the defensive line. Devonta Smith led all WRs in snaps with 1,100; AJ Brown finished ninth. Kevin Byard led NFL safeties in snaps. James Bradberry was eighth among corners. You get the idea.
Communication in the defensive backfield embarrasses the team. I'm not going to say much else about this, partly because we all saw just how bad the pass defense was, and partly because there's been brilliant in-depth reporting on this already (both Brooks Kubena of The Athletic and Jonny Page of Bleeding Green Nation have done great work on this). Suffice to say that the Eagles finished 31st in pass defense, 28th in defensive ANY/A and 29th in passer rating allowed. There was enough talent here to be better than this.
Offensive failures abound. You have to fault both Brian Johnson and Sirianni for the offense; as bad as the playcalling has been, Johnson is still largely going to be doing the head coach's bidding. You all saw the issues, but let's quickly recap some of the worst:
Continuing a longtime Eagles tradition, the team was often too quick to abandon the run game. There are probably dozens of examples that we could cite, but the deep pass on third and two from the playoff defeat really stood out. Just painful.
Why the obsession with deep shots in the passing game? We all get the appeal of the killer big play, but if a WR is running open for a first down, why try to force a longshot pass into tight coverage (like what happened in the first Dallas game)? If you only need to gain 15 yards to attempt a game-tying FG, why aim a pass to a double-covered AJ Brown (the goof that ended the Seattle game)? Why are all the screen passes either bubble screens (which this team can't do and couldn't do even last year) or out-of-rhythm dumpoffs when the deep shot isn't open? Why, for the love of all that's holy, was 160 pound DeVonta Smith blocking on multiple screen passes each game? Where was the dynamic screen game to Swift that we had been hearing about since April? Why did Dallas Goedert regress from being one of the most efficient pass catchers in the league to being little more than average that way? This is not an exhaustive list, and all of these questions need to be answered.
Julio Jones didn't have much to offer any more, and Quez Watkins never really had much to offer at all; why did both receive more targets per game than OZ, who made more big plays than either of them?
At some point during the meltdown in December, it was obvious to even the most casual observer that Jalen was struggling to see the blitz. Was adjusting to account for that so hard? It seems the answer is "yes", because the blitz rocked Hurts in every game from SF on.
If Rashaad Penny was untrustworthy or washed up, why did he take up a roster spot all season when the back seven was in such rough shape? Why did Boston Scott, a jolt of instant offense throughout his career, play less than 6% of available offensive snaps?
Other than the Brotherly Shove, the QB run game largely disappeared for significant chunks of the season. Perhaps that's injury related (again, more to come on that), but if not, where did it go?
Personnel wise, Philly should always be a top five offense in the red zone. They were still good there this year (60%, 9th in the NFL) but that's a regression from the 67.8% rate they achieved last year. That missing 7.8% represents four or five missing touchdowns this season, scores they probably could have used.
I likely could go on but that's a long enough list and probably as depressing for you to read as it was to write. The good news is that more intelligent and thoughtful game planning and play calling should fix most of this. The bad news is that it's too late for this season, and a prime year of health for all the young stars on offense has been squandered.
As feared in the preseason, Philly's brutal midyear stretch crushed them. Really, the thirteen games from week 2 through 15 were almost all difficult:
Minnesota is definitely a playoff team if Kirk Cousins and Justin Jefferson don't both miss most of the season; the Vikings had them both for the Eagles game.
Tampa Bay was tougher than almost anyone expected this year and made it to the divisional round.
Washington wasn't very good this year but this is a divisional opponent that always plays Philly tough.
The LA Rams turned around quickly and made the playoffs.
The Jets weren't good thanks to having the worst QB in the league, but their defense was brutal and pretty much singlehandedly beat the Eagles.
Miami was a playoff team with the NFL's best offense.
Dallas has been consistently one of the league's better teams for a few years now.
Ditto Kansas City.
Ditto Buffalo.
Ditto San Francisco.
Seattle has always been competitive under Pete Carroll and when they play at home.
Fatigue does not account for the entire collapse after Thanksgiving, but it should not be completely discounted either.
Did the 49ers break the Eagles? Their fans certainly seem to think so, based on their consistent commentary since that date (one of their blogs recently picked up that narrative). Of course, the team was running away with the league's best record going into that game and finished 1-6 from that point on. This forces us to ask the question; did SF in fact break the Birds?
In a word, no. I wrote after that game that SF had their best game and Philly their worst one in the same game, which would produce an Eagle loss every time, but there were all kinds of reasons to think that a potential rematch would be much more competitive. If in fact the Eagles' spirit was broken somehow, that would represent a narrative failure in the Novacare Complex for which I would 100% fault the coaches. The messaging should have gone something like "We played poorly and lost deservedly, but we're much better than that, we had some bad luck against them, we stomped these guys just last January, and we can absolutely do it again if we want to." I'm sure the coaches attempted to get that message across, but the fact that it didn't seem to land is on them.
This brings us to the final point:
Nick Sirianni loses the locker room. In 2012, a talented Eagles team that should have been a playoff team slogged their way to four wins (and even those were difficult, coming by a total of six points). Longtime legendary coach Andy Reid was canned. In 2015, Chip Kelly's Eagles were 4-4 midseason (and 24-16 for his career) with three games against bottom feeders on deck. A run to the playoffs seemed imminent, until Philly blew all three games as part of an ugly 2-5 streak that saw Philly lose by nearly 13 PPG. Kelly was fired before the season's final game. In 2020, the Eagles looked like they might be in for a tough year, but no one saw a four win season coming (three of those four wins came against backup QBs). Doug Pederson, the only Super Bowl winning coach in team history, was fired after the season. In all three cases, the team unaccountably seemed to quit on the coach midseason, and it was apparently before November ended that the guys just wanted to go home. I had hoped (and written) otherwise, but in hindsight it's clear that this team arrived at that point just before or after the Dallas game. As I said above, I don't think it was because the 49ers took the heart from this team (same goes for the Cowboys), it just seemed that the drama of all these close games plus the struggles of the new coordinators finally got the players to stop listening to whatever Sirianni was preaching. Losing to SF and Dallas is one thing; even having bad games against those guys is somewhat understandable. But barely bothering to show up for the last four games against clearly inferior opposition is such bad form that defies explanation, other than the assume that Nick lost the messaging and therefore the locker room. Historically that means the coach will get fired, but it appears that Nick will have a fix-it year to prove he's not at fault. For his sake, I hope he gets the coordinator choices right this time because he wont survive another stretch like this.
Having said all of this negative stuff, I actually hold more hope for next season than most observers seem to. The general consensus of the Philly beat seems to be that this is a bad team that will require multiple years of rebuilding, which is a really bad prisoner-of-the-moment take. I plan to expand on this idea in a coming piece, but there are plenty of building blocks on this team that should keep this team in the playoff picture. There's reason to think that much of what's described above can be corrected with better coaching and better luck. Remember that the Eagles did beat six playoff-bound teams, which is almost impossible to do for a trash team. The Birds finished badly, but let's not mistake this situation for the Giants or Patriots; I expect the Eagles to be back in the playoffs next season.
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