January 05, 2026
Eric Hartline/Imagn Images
The Eagles just needed to jam the ball forward here for a first down. They did not do that.
The Eagles were at a 3rd and 2 within the Washington 10-yard line, and with plenty of time.
A couple plays earlier, Tank Bigsby caught a play-action checkdown, ducked underneath his first tackler, and cut around the edge down the right sideline for a 31-yard gain that put the Birds in a good spot with the game tied.
They just needed a quick few steps to reset the downs and keep the drive alive, with just under five minutes left in the first half and two tries to jam the ball forward with a running back in Bigsby who is capable and willing to.
But that's too straightforward. So in came two straight passing calls on third and fourth down that flushed Tanner McKee out of the pocket and led him to tossing the ball away to turn it over.
That outcome didn't hurt the Eagles immediately, but eventually, after trading off interceptions, it did lead to them being down a field goal to the Commanders going into the intermission, all after points were right there on the table for them.
It's just the combo of Kevin Patullo's playcalling and Nick Sirianni's approach at this point. Queue up an unoriginal, predictable, and/or needlessly long-developing play, and keep the pace and control of the football ultra conservative until picking a random, nonsensical spot to suddenly get aggressive.
In fairness, these kinds of gambles have worked out plenty for Sirianni before, but not here, and not this year.
The Eagles lost Sunday to the Commanders, 24-17, to close out the regular season at 11-6. Yeah, they were resting their starters ahead of the playoffs, but even so, the backups had a shot to win with the 2-seed right there for the taking and couldn't.
Tanner McKee had a rough day, the secondary depth had a way rougher one, and collectively, the Eagles' reserves couldn't find a way by the ever-present and increasingly worrying systemic issues like the starters just barely have for most of the year.
When it comes to the offense's problems, the root of them isn't the quarterback, it isn't a weaker O-line, and it isn't the rest of the personnel, regardless of where a given player is on the depth chart.
It's the playcalling, it's the philosophy, it's the preparation and strategy in the days leading up, and after 18 weeks, it isn't better.
And that falls to Sirianni and Patullo, but the playoffs are here now. They're not fixing an offense in a week. It was too late months ago.
"Obviously, we didn't finish a couple times in the red zone for different reasons," Sirianni acknowledged postgame while talking about McKee's day on starting duty. "Gotta look through that and see exactly why that happened, but yeah, I thought we moved the ball up and down the field, again, against a well-respected opponent.
"We just gotta finish down there."
Try taking those two yards right there to reset first.
A few other thoughts on the Eagles a day after the regular season wrapped...
Bigsby had that big 31-yard catch and run, but that play wasn't made in isolation.
He was juking and barreling through Washington's defense all day, and if you had any doubt that the 5'11", 215-pound running back plays a game much bigger than his size, there he went taking Bobby Wagner on as his blocking assignment and lifting the veteran linebacker up off the ground.
TANK BIGSBY 🤯 pic.twitter.com/vkJk4DSkko
— Top Tier Auburn (@TopTierAuburn) January 5, 2026
And then the Eagles – mind you, with the game still tied going in – just decided they didn't need any of that in the fourth quarter. Bigsby never saw the ball once in the last frame as the Eagles fell behind to eventually lose.
In the narrow win against Buffalo the week before, Bigsby was also left largely out of the gameplan with just two carries and a reception for nine total yards.
What's pretty plain to see as he runs, though, is that at this point, with where the Eagles' rushing attack is, he's plenty useful to them.
The offensive line has been banged up all season and isn't as strong as it used to be, which has led to Saquon Barkley getting hit often as the lead back before he even gets to the line of scrimmage.
But Bigsby has been stronger at bouncing off or even straight-up powering through contact, which plays better behind a line that hasn't dependably cleared traffic away to the degree it had before.
This isn't saying make Bigsby the lead running back. This is to say – much in line with our own Jimmy Kempski in his 10 awards from Sunday – to at least give Bigsby a few more carries to vary up the look and better manage Barkley's workload ahead of what could be another long postseason if the stars align.
Plus, he'd let the defenses on deck – the 49ers for this week – know that there's someone back there ready to run right through them.
The Sirianni-Hurts era of the Eagles has long held up turnover differential with extreme value, and to a heavy degree, the rationale does make sense. You protect the football, more often than not, you win the game.
The problem with this season, though, is that the level of protection has been taken to an absurd degree, which paired with Patullo and Sirianni's slow and uninventive playcalling, has made for sloppy, incoherent, and just generally infuriating to watch football, whether the starters are in or not – the middle of the field might as well be lava.
On Sunday, the Eagles did win the turnover battle once again, as McKee's second-quarter interception was outmatched by Josh Johnson's picked throw by Jalyx Hunt and a fumbled third-quarter snap that was also recovered by Hunt.
The Eagles lost anyway because they couldn't consistently move the ball and got outpossessed on the game clock, 34:09-25:51.
The Eagles did punch in a touchdown off the fumble recovery for a temporary lead, but let the earlier interception go when McKee tossed his own right after, which the Commanders then flipped into a field goal.
So it isn't necessarily the turnovers, it's how you capitalize on them. And again, starters or backups, the Eagles' offense has struggled to make teams pay for putting the ball in danger.
I've been watching Kelee Ringo turn away from Josh Johnson, a 39-year-old, third-string quarterback, on loop for hours since Sunday night.
I still don't know what happened here:
GIVE US THE LEAD, 14!!!
— Washington Commanders (@Commanders) January 5, 2026
📺 #WASvsPHI CBS pic.twitter.com/Cg7s1m9Q2G
It was just a brutal look for the Eagles' defensive backfield depth in general, to the point where the fear is there now that if any of the starters get hurt in the playoffs between Quinyon Mitchell, Adoree' Jackson, Cooper DeJean, Reed Blankenship, and Marcus Epps (who's trying to make his way back from a concussion), that defense is suddenly in trouble.
Frame it. pic.twitter.com/a6XIw3IXOQ
— Victor Williams (@ThePhillyPod) January 5, 2026
This was a game where the reserves played. Why am I this mad?
Alright, happy thoughts to wrap up...
• DeVonta Smith played the first quarter and crossed 1,000 receiving yards for the season to join A.J. Brown. That they were both able to get there despite how weird the offense has been is a testament to how good they really are. For a lot of generations of Eagles fans, this is the best receiving duo we've ever seen.
• No one in the Eagles locker room seemed like they were about to lose sleep over getting stuck with the 3-seed postgame. They'll face the 49ers next week, and as the Seahawks showed on Saturday, you put a good defense in front of San Francisco, they shut down. Vic Fangio has a pretty good defense he's working with. That seems like a favorable matchup for the Eagles. Their offense just has to score points.
• The silver throwback end zones for the Kelly Greens were pretty sick.
They do look pretty great 😉 https://t.co/DUCNEQNSbN pic.twitter.com/nXGFmC5AWn
— Philadelphia Eagles (@Eagles) January 3, 2026
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