December 08, 2025
Jeffrey Becker/Imagn Images
Saquon Barkley and the Eagles' offense are hoping to turn a late corner Monday night against the Chargers.
The best time to fix the Eagles' offense was yesterday. The second-best time is now – Monday night against the Los Angeles Chargers, more specifically.
It's a take on an old saying, and definitely not one that is going to satisfy many Eagles fans right now, but it's the reality of the team's situation.
They completely stalled out and imploded against the rival Dallas Cowboys more than two weeks ago, then hardly ever got going against the Chicago Bears on Black Friday, which brought the frustrations with all of their long-lingering concerns to a boiling point while putting Nick Sirianni, Kevin Patullo, and even Jalen Hurts under that much harsher of a microscope.
And yet the Philadelphia Eagles are still 8-4, are still leading the NFC East, and are still in the hunt for the conference's top playoff seedings, as far-fetched as that might seem after their last two games.
Somehow, heading into Week 14 Monday night in Los Angeles, the Eagles' offense has been left with the wiggle room to still try and find a solution, and at this point, the players have to believe they still can.
"I feel like we're trending in the right direction from this week of practice," running back Saquon Barkley said from his locker at the NovaCare Complex earlier this past week. "But the crazy thing about the NFL, the vibes and the energies can be amazing, practice can be great, gameplan can be great, [but] you gotta go out there on Monday and do it. That's where we're at."
After weeks of not being able to, and at first getting away with it thanks to stellar defense, but then suddenly getting blown up by it once defensive coordinator Vic Fangio's personnel got too banged up and couldn't hold it together anymore.
Entering Monday night, the Eagles' offense averaged 22.5 points (19th) and 304.8 yards per game (24th), with a 34.5 percent third-down conversion rate (28th) that all ranked in the bottom half of the NFL.
Jalen Hurts said he's been using the Eagles' extra downtime to do a deeper dive into the offense's film.
At the root of it, their offensive line, which was the league's elite a year ago, just isn't as strong or as healthy as it used to be; Saquon Barkley, the league's rushing champ a year ago, has been getting punished almost as soon as he gets the handoff and isn't really hitting his holes with that same kind of burst from 2024 either; and the playcalling and overall execution has rapdily, painfully grown uninventive and highly predicatable, which has only brought greater heat upon Patullo as the inexperienced and easily blamable offensive coordinator, but then on to Sirianni and Hurts, too, as the worries and signs of another 2023-esque collapse got greater.
Barkley admitted that the locker room has felt the weight of that building pressure, but that, again, it's on the offense to find a fix for its problems, and the players have to believe that they still can come up with one.
For Barkley, it goes back to a line he heard from offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland.
"I mean, we haven't been playing well," Barkley said. "It's easy to come out on the sideline and have great energy when you rip off a 60-yard touchdown. It's just the truth. We know that, and execution fuels emotion. I can't believe I never heard of that until I came here, but I remember Stout saying that, and I was like, 'Wow, that makes so much sense.' I think that's in everything, not just in football, but in life."
But for right now, it has to apply toward finding some momentum against the Chargers.
The Eagles have had 10 days between their Black Friday loss to the Bears and Monday night at SoFi Stadium. Hurts, during a press conference with the local media on Thursday, said he used the extra time for a deep dive into past film to take a close look at the offense's rhythm, sequencing, and structure, not just from this season, but going back through the years since he took over as the starting QB.
From seeing all of what worked and what didn't on tape, Hurts believes the late fix for the Eagles' offense is somewhere in there.
But this late into the season, it has to be.
"I think we got a lot of opportunity in front of us," Hurts said. "But it takes a tight-knit group, it takes a collective, and all of those things are things that we can control in hindsight."
SIGN UP HERE to receive the PhillyVoice Sports newsletter
Follow Nick on Twitter: @itssnick
Follow Nick on Bluesky: @itssnick
Like us on Facebook: PhillyVoice Sports
