October 05, 2026
Bill Streicher/IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect
Another year, another season of asking what exactly Nick Sirianni does?
Nick Sirianni sat and spoke in generalities.
The Eagles had just lost to the Los Angeles Rams, 24-20, and if you ask any fan across the Delaware Valley who watched on Sunday, whether on TV or within a rainy and dreary Lincoln Financial Field, it's because they blew it.
They had a 10-point lead on L.A. at halftime, but then came back with an offense that near entirely ceased to function – again.
Jalen Hurts only completed two more passes for 10 more yards, and the Eagles only had one more drive that went beyond four plays and with more than two minutes taken up on the game clock, which ultimately left the result in the hands of a Philadelphia defense that, while looking a lot better on Sunday, just ran out of gas after getting asked to make one stop too many.
Oh, and they went an abysmal 0-for-12 on third downs, and 1-for-4 on increasingly urgent fourth downs, all with play calls that looked as ineffective as they were predictable.
It was an infuriating effort to watch fall apart, knowing by a certain point that it would. And in isolation, everyone on the offense had to own a part in that.
"Obviously, everybody contributed to that. Everybody, right?" Sirianni told the media during a postgame press conference that had its lineup of loaded questions at the ready. "So there's execution errors, there's coaching errors, everybody contributes to it. It's an ultimate team game."
"But I know when you're 0-for-whatever we were today, right, everybody has a hand in that," Sirianni later added. "Our job is to figure out what happened and get better from it, not assign blame. That's what we'll be doing."
But that's an answer of little solace.
The thing is, Sunday's royal slip-up doesn't exist in isolation. It's a trend and growing concern dating back to last season, and really, a persistent issue that has shown itself throughout Sirianni's now six years as the Eagles head coach, yet has managed to get consistently compensated for through elite advantages in talent (see an all-time O-line and A.J. Brown in 2022, then a generational run from Saquon Barkley in 2024), a handing over of the playcalling to sharper minds (Shane Steichen and Kellen Moore), and some all-time luck (like Jordan Davis' block of what would've been the winning kick for the Rams last year).
But very arguably, the Eagles don't have any of those aforementioned three anymore, and don't have the means to outscheme it, at least not through what these first four weeks have shown.
And yeah, Hurts is going to take some flak for that. That 2-for-9 second-half passing line is brutal, he did miss some open reads that sure didn't help, and just by the nature of the modern NFL, the QB is always at the center of both the successes and the disasters.
But he also hasn't gotten the benefit of consistent protection up front, and to his credit, he did roll out and improvise the critical scoring plays that got the Eagles past the Commanders in Week 1, the Titans in Week 2, and to that 10-point cushion against the Rams in Week 4.
What has the offensive playcalling offered so far?
Outside runs that launch Saquon Barkley and then Tank Bigsby straight into walls? Screens and short-yardage throws that lead rookie Makai Lemon right into a tackler? A haphazard Tush Push attempt on fourth down and still within the Eagles' own territory, knowing that the team really didn't have the personnel in the trenches at that point to confidently pull it off? (To which they didn't.)
Jalen Hurts and the Eagles' offense exhibited all the stagnation and lack of creativity that fans hoped they would've left behind after last season.
The thought, execution, and humility and awareness to adjust to something else on Sunday never looked like it was there. It was a constant in jamming a square peg into a round hole, while just looking for something to bail the team out, which going back through the past several years, is a notorious trademark of when Sirianni tries to go beyond the already polarizing "CEO coach" label whenever he's assigned to a first-year and thus inexperienced offensive coordinator.
And at this point, Eagles fans know exactly what it looks like when they see it, through Brian Johnson, Kevin Patullo, and now Sean Mannion – who carried all the promise of bringing the team up to the modernized West Coast offense, but now leaves you wondering after Sunday what exactly changed after another several hours of blocks getting missed, routes crossing into one another, and play designs that were left dead on arrival without seemingly any intention behind them.
It's ugly, and almost has no other choice but to be. And it's not fun to watch, even when they somehow win after all of it, because it almost entirely depends on talent and luck winning out.
But the Eagles might've just run out of both, somehow after years of regular playoff appearances, two NFC titles, and a Lombardi Trophy.
It was never a strategy, though. Just something this era of the Eagles indefinitely got away with.
Now they can't, and while Sunday's loss can have the blame shared by everyone, those same enduring offensive shortcomings that seem to re-appear every other year can only be brought down to one constant: the head coach.
The same guy who, despite all the success, still regularly leaves fans scratching their heads and wondering what he even does or what he's actually good at.
That Philadelphia is still asking these kinds of questions after five years and a meltdown on Sunday that was entirely avoidable — that's on Sirianni.
There really isn't anywhere or anyone else to take that to.
"It's never... I know you guys are looking for answers," Sirianni told the press of Sunday's third-down failures. "I respect the job you guys have to do. [But] it's never just 'Hey, it's this!'... I wouldn't say never, sometimes it is. But in my opinion of what has happened in that situation on third down, it wasn't good enough, obviously, but it wasn't just one thing that accounted for it."
But it is a failure he has to own, because he's let it happen right in front of him too many other times before.
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