Last year the Philadelphia Eagles narrowly lost the Super Bowl to the Kansas City Chiefs. While it was a devastating loss people had good reason to be very optimistic for the future of this team. But fast forward to now and the Eagles’ future is a lot murkier than anyone would’ve thought. The Eagles got off to a hot 10-1 start to this season but then went 1-6 for the rest of the way including an embarrassing 32-9 loss in the Wild Card to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. This team looked entirely different than they did in week 10 and regressed by an absurd amount. So how did this happen? To get to 10-1 the Eagles beat great teams like the Dolphins, Chiefs, Cowboys, and Bills. So how did they get so bad so fast?
Well to me the Eagles got extremely lucky to win those games mentioned above. I’m not saying the Eagles were bad in those games, in fact they played incredibly to come back and win those games, but I’m saying that the Eagles were getting bailed out by talent in those games. And eventually that talent can’t bail you out all the time and they ended up losing in the games where their talent couldn’t bail them out. San Francisco and Dallas in a rematch embarrassed Philly in back to back weeks and that really broke the Eagles.
Now the biggest change from last year’s team to this year’s to me is the coaching. While head coach Nick Sirianni stayed, both the offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator left for head coaching jobs. Shane Steichen, the offensive coordinator, left for Indianapolis and Jonathon Gannon, the defensive coordinator, left for Arizona. Replacing them were Brian Johnson on the offensive side and Sean Desai and Matt Pratica on the defensive side. And good lord were these guys awful at their job.
On the defensive side, the pass rush decreased significantly but the linebacker corps and the secondary were borderline unplayable. Too many times there were wide open gaps in the middle of the secondary and the linebackers and secondary could not tackle anything. Giving up 35 to a struggling Cardinals team was a very bad look. The Eagles were first in allowing 3rd down conversions and these were mostly 3rd and longs they were giving up. Sean Desai and Matt Pratica could not figure anything out to fix these problems. But worse was Brian Johnson. Last year Shane Steichen orchestrated one of the best offenses in the league focused on running the ball and deep balls. Brian Johnson on the other hand orchestrated one of the most clunky, predictable, and god awful offenses I’ve seen. Greatly under utilizing the run game even though they have a 1,000 yard rusher in De’Andre Swift and for some reason spamming QB draws with Jalen Hurts.
Yes, Jalen Hurts is an electric runner but QB draws are only good in moderation as if it becomes too predictable the QB draw is one of the easier plays to stop. And they ran it way too many times and teams were stopping it over and over. Also, Brian Johnson called an absurd amount of screen passes specifically on long yardage downs. These rarely worked and just dug a deeper hole for the offense. The route combos on plays were also very questionable with bad spacing and often taking way too long to develop. In their Wild Card game against Tampa they were getting blitzed incredibly often. And Brian Johnson kept calling long developing routes which gave no help for Jalen Hurts to get any pass off. So it is absolutely a necessity that the Eagles fire their coordinators, which thankfully it looks like they are.
Now of course some players had a down year. James Bradberry after his Super Bowl costing penalty has been one of the worst corners in the league and has done nothing all year. The loss of C.J. Gardner Johnson in the offseason clearly hurt. But more concerningly Jalen Hurts had a down year. He threw 15 interceptions and his decision making looked considerably worse. But I have confidence that with a competent play caller he will pick it up again next year to MVP form. A.J. Brown and Devonta Smith are still dangerous weapons that will be here next year so with someone who knows how to utilize their talents this offense will be back to being incredibly lethal. It’s a shame that Jason Kelce’s last year was this shameful but this team is not going anywhere and don’t be surprised to see the Eagles play in February next year.
