Point the blame for latest Eagles meltdown straight at Nick Sirianni originally appeared on 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 bunch of ‘em. Twenty-two guys who started a game last year are gone.
The coaches have changed. Both coordinators and half a dozen position coaches are new this year.
The one thing that hasn’t changed, the biggest common denominator, is Sirianni, and when we start to assign blame for yet another preposterous nightmare Eagles loss, that’s where we have to start.
Because his job right now is setting the culture, preparing the football team, making the big decisions that set the tone for what we see on the field.
And what we’ve seen on the field way 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 get beat. Like the 49ers and Cowboys blowouts late last year. Those are almost easier to take than these. Because few things are worse than giving a game away in the final seconds, and the Eagles have now done that four times in less than a year.
These type of losses cut your heart out.
In four of their last seven losses the Eagles have led with under two minutes left.
Their previous 144 games, it didn’t happen once.
So when it keeps happening, you have to look straight at the head coach and wonder why.
He’s still got that gaudy won-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 can become that NFL rarity – a head coach who takes his first four teams to the postseason. Still early and all that.
But the Eagles are also 2-7 in their last nine games and every one has either been a 4th-quarter meltdown or a lop-sided embarrassment.
It’s easy to blame Saquon Barkley for the dropped pass on the late 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 difficult questions about the coach and his ability to maintain a winning culture, instill confidence in his team and make the pivotal calls late in games that give the Eagles a chance.
Because what we saw Monday night looked so 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 changes to the roster and the staff, but the last two minutes of that game were right out of the 2023 Eagles Highlight Film.
Who’s to blame?
I don’t know where else to look.
As soon as Barkley dropped that pass and before the Falcons even got the ball back, I told the other guys on the NBC Sports Philadelphia postgame set – Ron Jaworski, Barrett Brooks and Michael Barkann – that the Eagles were going to lose. I was convinced of it. Didn’t matter that the Falcons had to go 70 yards in a minute and a half with a barely ambulatory 36-year-old quarterback.
When you’ve already seen the same movie a bunch of times, you know it’s going to have the same ending.
Yeah, it’s only one game and, yeah, at 1-1 they still have a chance to achieve all their preseason goals. And it looks like the rest of the division might not be any good. But for all of Sirianni’s talk about core values and connecting and fundamentals and competing, the one thing this team is best at lately is giving games away.
For me, it’s really not even about the questionable decisions — when to go for it, when to kick a field goal, when to throw, when to run. Those are fair questions, but this goes so far beyond that.
Really, it’s about whether Sirianni still has what it takes to get this team mentally and physically prepared 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’s had so much success, but there’s a growing body of evidence that he doesn’t.
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