The NFL has never seen anything quite like the Eagles’ warp-speed collapse
Two months ago, the defending NFC champions were the toast of football with the inside track on a repeat Super Bowl appearance. Then came the wildest in-season unravelling in NFL history
It’s long been said the NFL stands for Not For Long. Change comes quickly in a copycat league where winning strategies are examined, analyzed and imitated and constant innovation is central to continued success. But even by that standard, it’s difficult to recall a more rapid fall from grace than what’s gone down with the Philadelphia Eagles over the past two months.
The Eagles were the envy of the league as recently as seven weeks ago, a winning machine fronted by an energetic young coach, ascendant franchise quarterback and one of football’s most talented rosters from top to bottom. After romping to last year’s NFC championship and coming up three points short of winning the Super Bowl, they’d raced out to the NFL’s best record at Thanksgiving and appeared on course for a return trip to the sport’s biggest stage.
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But from that 10-1 start, the Eagles came undone and limped into Monday night’s NFC wildcard playoff having dropped five of six games – a death spiral punctuated by blowout losses to the 3-12 Cardinals and 5-11 Giants.
All of it came to a merciful, predictable end on a muggy Monday night at Raymond James Stadium, where they were dog-walked 32-9 by a mediocre Tampa Bay team they’d dominated in October – a horror-show scoreline that could have been far worse had the mistake-prone Buccaneers not dropped about a half-dozen passes. The Eagles couldn’t block. They couldn’t catch. They certainly couldn’t tackle.
They were unprepared, unmotivated and uninterested. In a key sequence freighted with unmistakable metaphor, the Tush Push – their trademark short-yardage play once hailed as unstoppable – was stuffed at the goalline.
The Eagles have experienced their share of home-stretch faceplants in a nine-decade history filled with far more heartbreak than glory – 2014 under Chip Kelly, 1994 under Rich Kotite, 1981 under Dick Vermeil and 1961 under Nick Skorich – but none of those collapses can compare to the warp-speed regression of the past seven weeks. This year’s side became only the second team in NFL history to fail to win 12 games after a 10-1 start, joining the 1986 New York Jets. But even those Jets conjured enough pride while in freefall to squeeze out a playoff win. Not these Eagles, who suffered their second-biggest postseason loss ever, against a bottom-10 offense helmed by a journeyman quarterback.
Two months ago, it would have been unfathomable to imagine the Eagles parting ways with Nick Sirianni, the 42-year-old wunderkind who in two and a half seasons had amassed the best win-loss percentage of any current NFL head coach and appeared on deck for a fat contract extension. After the most spectacular in-season unraveling in NFL history, it’s almost harder to imagine the alternative.
So what happened? Let’s start with the obvious. After last year’s Super Bowl run, Philadelphia saw both of their coordinators poached for head coaching jobs: OC Shane Steichen to the Indianapolis Colts, DC Jonathan Gannon to the Arizona Cardinals. Those vacancies were filled by Brian Johnson and Sean Desai, respectively, and it was clear that the replacements were in over their heads from early on.
The once-formidable pass rush that flirted with the NFL all-time sacks record last year – and which lost key players Javon Hargave, CJ Gardner-Johnson and TJ Edwards to free agency – regressed badly despite general manager Howie Roseman’s investment of more capital space and draft resources on the defensive line than anywhere else. That spending was intended to conceal deficiencies at linebacker, cornerback and safety, holes that proved too big to patch schematically, especially when the secondary was hit by injury early in the season.
The Eagles’ stunning defensive collapse reached its nadir with Monday night’s NFC wildcard loss to the Buccaneers.
The Eagles’ stunning defensive collapse reached its nadir with Monday night’s NFC wildcard loss to the Buccaneers.
Hurts, the MVP runner-up a year ago who played through a dislocated finger on Monday night, injured his knee in October and never fully recovered. Johnson’s maddening refusal to run the ball, despite an offensive line tricked out with future Hall of Famers and a Pro Bowl-caliber running back in D’Andre Swift, persisted all season.
