The blame for the Eagles’ latest collapse falls squarely on Nick Sirianni Originally appeared in NBC Sports Philadelphia
The unthinkable has become the norm. Nightmare endings have become inevitable.
It keeps happening and there doesn’t seem to be anything Nick Sirianni can do to stop it.
The players have changed. A lot of them. Twenty-two players who were starters last year have left.
The coaches have changed. This year, both the coordinators and half a dozen position coaches are new.
The one thing that hasn’t changed, the biggest common denominator, is Sirianni, and when we start assigning blame for yet another absurd, nightmarish Eagles loss, that’s where we have to start.
Because his job right now is to set the culture, to prepare the football team, to make the big decisions that set the tone for what we see on the field.
And what we’ve seen on the field all too often lately is disastrous.
They lost to the Jets after leading with 46 seconds left. They lost to the Seahawks after leading with 28 seconds left. They lost to the Cards after leading with 32 seconds left. And now they’ve lost to the Falcons after leading with 38 seconds left.
Sometimes, you just lose. Like the blowouts by the 49ers and Cowboys late last year. Those are almost easier to accept than these. Because few things are worse than losing a game in the final seconds, and the Eagles have already done it four times in less than a year.
These kinds of losses break your heart.
In four of their last seven losses, the Eagles have been ahead with less than two minutes remaining.
In their previous 144 games, this has not happened even once.
So when this keeps happening, you have to look directly at the head coach and ask why.
He still has that gaudy win-loss record, one of the best in NFL history, and he’s done some really good things since he’s been here. This team played in a Super Bowl just 19 months ago, and there’s still a chance he becomes that NFL rarity: a head coach who takes his first four teams to the postseason. It’s still early and all that.
But the Eagles are also 2-7 in their last nine games and each has been a 4He-collapse of a room or an unbalanced shame.
It’s easy to blame Saquon Barkley for the dropped pass on third down that could have put the game away or Darius Slay for the blown coverage on the Falcons’ game-winning touchdown. But in the bigger picture, this loss raises some tough questions about the coach and his ability to maintain a winning culture, instill confidence in his team and make the crucial decisions late in games that give the Eagles a chance.
Because what we saw on Monday night looked very similar to what we saw late last season, and the Eagles were supposed to have gotten that out of their system because of all the roster and personnel changes, but the final two minutes of that game were lifted from the 2023 Eagles’ highlight video.
Who is to blame?
I don’t know where else to look.
As soon as Barkley dropped that pass and before the Falcons got the ball back, I told the other guys on the NBC Sports Philadelphia set after the game — Ron Jaworski, Barrett Brooks and Michael Barkann — that the Eagles were going to lose. I was convinced of it. It didn’t matter that the Falcons had to march 70 yards in a minute and a half with a 36-year-old quarterback who could barely walk.
When you’ve seen the same movie several times, you know it’s going to have the same ending.
Yes, it’s just one game, and yes, at 1-1 they still have a chance to achieve all their preseason goals. And it seems like the rest of the division might not be as good. But for all Sirianni’s talk about core values, connection, fundamentals and competition, what this team is best at lately is giving away games.
For me, it’s not even about questionable decisions: when to go for it, when to kick a field goal, when to throw, when to run. Those are valid questions, but this goes way beyond that.
It’s really a question of whether Sirianni still has what it takes to mentally and physically prepare this team to play football.
Not for 58 or 59 minutes but for 60 minutes.
And it seems crazy to ask this question about a coach who has had so much success, but there is growing evidence that this is not the case.
