The Philadelphia Eagles were going to fix their offense.

They were going to get it fixed after Week 4 in Tampa Bay, when all it could do in the second half was take a three-and-out and give the ball back to Baker Mayfield to try and gunsling the Bucs' way back in. 

They were going to get it fixed after Weeks 5 and 6 against the Broncos and Giants, when it seized up late against Denver at home, then didn't even show up at the Meadowlands a few days later to yield consecutive losses. 

They were going to get it fixed after Weeks 10 and 11 against Green Bay and Detroit, which were both big wins at the time, but both on the back of Vic Fangio's defense making stop after stop because the offense couldn't be trusted to hold the ball for more than 4-5 snaps.

They were going to get it fixed after that three-game slide from Weeks 12-14, when they let Dallas come back with 24 unanswered points, when they showed up as a total mess against the Bears on Black Friday, and when they tried to stumble their way to an OT win before a Jalen Hurts interception put them flat on their face.

And they were going to fix it after Week 17, when they hung their defense out to dry, once again, in a rainy Buffalo, but got saved by a bad Josh Allen throw on the game-deciding two-point try.

They were going to figure this out. 

They had the time and the confidence, the players would echo in the locker room every week postgame, while head coach Nick Sirianni would ramble on about similar sentiments as he backed up an increasingly unpopular and overwhelmed offensive coordinator in Kevin Patullo, and about how hard it is to win in the NFL, but how this team just finds a way anyway.

Then they got to the last drive of Sunday's Wild Card game at Lincoln Financial Field, and a corner they backed themselves into.

The offense stalled out, again, let a battered San Francisco 49ers team hang around and pull ahead, and left themselves in a situation where they were forced to march downfield and score a touchdown or else their season – their hopes of a repeat Super Bowl bid – would be over. 

They couldn't. Deep down, everyone watching knew they wouldn't. Most key players had clearly regressed by this point, and Sirianni, Patullo, and the rest of the offensive coaching staff dragged their feet all season putting together any semblance of a competent, coherent scheme. 

In need of their best play on fourth down to keep the season alive, the Eagles called a timeout to take an extra few seconds to talk the plan over and think it through.

A camera from the FOX broadcast hovered over Hurts, Sirianni, and Patullo, who was scrolling down his playsheet to decide on a call. The expressions of the former two said everything.

Their best play was four verts and trying to jam a pass to Goedert in triple coverage. 

San Francisco easily broke it up, and that was it.

The Eagles will certainly have the time to fix their offense now, though, just while they're watching the rest of the playoffs at home. 

Their immediate priority should be clear: Find a competent offensive playcaller. 

Beyond that, there's a whole list of issues to address and decisions to make now, including Sirianni's standing and how valuable it really is.

A few more postmortem thoughts on the Eagles...

So about Sirianni...

Patullo is the immediate whipping boy in all of this, and he has no way of escaping blame for anything, nor should he.

He was the new play caller of a Super Bowl-winning offense that had a wealth of star playmakers between Hurts, Goedert, A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, and Saquon Barkley, with an offensive line that, going into 2025, was still seen as one of the NFL's best. 

Under his watch, they regressed into a slow-moving, painfully predictable, and quite frankly, scared unit that avoided the middle of the field like the plague and dressed that fear up as a priority on ball security. 

Down the stretch, and against competent opponents – sorry, not sorry to Washington and Vegas – the Eagles were lucky if they could even put 20 points up on the board.

In six of their last nine games after Sunday's Wild Card loss, and given the grace of not including Week 18 when they rested the starters, they didn't. 

That's unacceptable. That is on Patullo at the end of the day, but just as much, and for letting it go as long as it has to the point of the team's demise, that's on Sirianni, too, especially since there's a trend here.

When Shane Steichen was the offensive playcaller in the back half of 2021 and all of 2022, the Eagles' offense found its identity and either had its ways of moving the ball at will or outright dominated. 

In 2023, after Steichen left to take the Colts head coaching job, in came Brian Johnson as the internal hire to take the reins. They got by for a while, mostly on sheer talent, but there were obvious cracks, and outside of the Tush Push, it was hard to pinpoint what that season's offense was really about. Then the Eagles spiraled, on both sides of the ball, and got trounced by Tampa Bay in the Wild Card.

Kellen Moore came in as the established name from the outside in 2024, and there were a rough first few weeks, and even after, but everyone knew what that Eagles' offense was about. They had an elite O-line, they had Saquon Barkley in a generational year, and they had the ever-present threat of Hurts keeping the ball and running it himself. They were going to jam the ball down your throat and there was nothing you could do about it, and that took them all the way to the Super Bowl. 

Moore moves on to New Orleans, Patullo takes over in 2025 as another internal promotion, and the Eagles' offense was left looking a lot like 2023's. What were they good at? What was their identity? Hitch routes and verts with a crippling fear of throwing an interception between the hashmarks?

They never figured it out, they never fixed it, Sirianni seemingly didn't do anything to help, and now everyone's at NovaCare cleaning out their lockers. 

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Sirianni has been propped up a lot for his, by all accounts, impressive coaching record and the indisputable fact that he has seen his teams to two Super Bowls and still recently just won the latter one.

But both of those appearances came when there was someone more capable calling the offensive plays. 

In between, when someone from his staff has been internally promoted and he gets left to his own devices, are two miserable and highly telegraphed implosions. 

And somehow, those two bad years might say more about Sirianni as a coach than either of the two Super Bowl years, for as crazy as that sounds at face value, and considering that both still resulted in playoff appearances.

But when the leading playcaller inevitably gets poached by another team with an opening, the Eagles' offense can't survive it, and he can't carry that torch. 

So what good is he really at the end of the day? For chirping about Bills fans after a game the Eagles nearly gave away?

And about that O-line...

Lane Johnson couldn't make it back in time from his Lisfranc injury. He was inactive against the 49ers. 

Cam Jurgens, who had struggled all season at center after getting back surgery following last year's Super Bowl, didn't suddenly look like himself again in Sunday's loss. 

And postgame, Landon Dickerson, who had also been battling injury all year, said something as blunt as it was sobering...

"Shitty," the left guard told AllPHLY's EJ Smith about what it was like to fight through injury this year compared to seasons past.

And on the follow-up of making a full recovery in the offseason: "If I had that answer, I’d feel a lot better.”

For the first time in a long time, the Eagles might be going into an offseason actively having to address the immediate future of their depth in the trenches.

Tough goodbyes coming?

Jake Elliott missed what ended up being a crucial extra point kick early into Sunday, and had been struggling to a career-worst degree already, while his position suddenly took a massive evolutionary leap around him. He may have played his last game in Philadelphia.

A.J. Brown dropped a few crucial passes, looked withdrawn from everything – not for the first time in the past couple of years either – and may have just ran out his time with the Eagles, too. 

Then there was Goedert, who was always here for just one more year; Reed Blankenship, who had a brutal day at safety; and Nakobe Dean, who broke out into a controlling and calculated linebacker but with his heir apparent in Jihaad Campbell right behind him.

All three's contracts are up, free agency is on the near horizon, and postgame, they didn't seem to know what would happen next as far as it concerns any of them continuing to wear Midnight Green.

"I was emotional coming in here just knowing that the guys I came in with, like, it's not gonna be the same," Blankenship said at his locker, via 6ABC's Jason Dumas. "Who knows where we all end up? That's just part of the business side of it. They can't keep us all. Wish they could. But at the end of the day, I love them to death. Love the guys I came in with, and I know we all wish each other the best through it all."

The Eagles feel destined to be a different looking team moving forward from this.

Voice of the people

The season's end was bitter, and we could all see it coming. But if there was any reason to smile or crack a laugh after, it was this kid interviewed by 6ABC leaving the stadium:

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