Everyone who follows the Eagles knew way back in October this was how the season would end. Everyone except the three guys in charge.
The Eagles disappointing season boils down to failure at three different levels.
The first failure was on the field, and that falls on head coach Nick Sirianni. At no point in the season did the NFL’s most expensive offense perform as a top ten… or even top fifteen… offense. There were a handful of flashes (the 2nd half against the Rams, 1st half against Tampa Bay and Dallas, the 2nd Giants game), but no sustained run of potency. Such inconsistency could be accepted if it were a new group of players trying to gel, but that was hardly the case here. The Eagles returned the same exact offense minus one right guard. Even the new Offensive Coordinator came from within the offense, so while some minor kinks could be understood, there should not have been an extended period of disfunction. Well, there was, and it never ended.
Disfunction lasted the whole season. The running game never made it out of 3rd gear. The offense was bland, predictable and worst of all, unproductive. Three-and-outs were at an all-time high and output across the board was way down from 2024. No major changes were made. Sirianni… an offensive coach… never demanded change in philosophy or strategy. He just let it continue. He saw the leak in the boat and sat there with his life vest buckled tight.
Sure, the Eagles flirted with Jalen Hurts under center, and it worked, but then they just inexplicably wouldn’t run plays from under center. Even in their Wildcard round loss, they didn’t put Hurts under center until they trailed in the 4th quarter. While they ran the football with success under center, the Eagles never once threw from under center against San Francisco. The Eagles also lined DeVonta Smith up in the backfield and threw the ball to him all four times. What a bold and inept strategy. Kevin Patullo was a master at telling the opposing defense exactly what the offense was going to do. AJ Brown is the strongest slant receiver in the NFL. He was not targeted on a single slant Sunday. The Eagles threw a 3rd and long underneath slant to their 3rd string running back. They ran the ball on 1st and 20. At no point were the 49ers confused or challenged by the Eagles offense. Yes, the players made mistakes, but those don’t excuse the ineptitude in strategy.
I may even argue those mistakes saved the Eagles from another season of Patullo. Had Saquon Barkley, Brown or Smith made those catches, had Dallas Goedert not missed those blocks… we could be subjected to another season with Patullo calling the offense. Sunday was a mercy kill.
Sirianni’s failures were critical to the demise of the offense, but it was GM Howie Roseman that failed both sides of the football. The Eagles are renowned for offensive line depth. There was no depth this season. Landon Dickerson and Cam Jurgens struggled mightily this year – perhaps due to injuries – and there were no options to spell them or give them time to heal. The Eagles simply don’t win without Lane Johnson, but Fred Johnson was adequate at best and often bad in the all-pro’s stead. The 2024 title came as the result of a dominant ground game. That ground game never materialized because the offensive line was as bad as the offensive strategy.
On the defensive side, the Eagles entered the 2025 season with big question marks in the secondary. Who would be the second corner and who would provide depth? Though it took half the season, Adoree’ Jackson finally settled in at the corner position opposite Quinyon Mitchell, but the depth behind those two and Cooper DeJean never materialized. All of Roseman’s picks from previous seasons flopped. Kelee Ringo is now a disaster. Sydney Brown can’t play without being out of position or penalized. The two corners Roseman brought in via trade were flops. Though Roseman deserves credit for addressing and improving the pass rush midseason via the Jaelan Phillips trade, that pass rush no showed the 49ers game and was, in my opinion, the second biggest reason the Eagles lost. Roseman is a great GM, but his misses outpaced his hits this past season and the Eagles paid dearly for those failures.
Neither Roseman’s nor Sirianni’s failures were as significant as Jeffrey Lurie’s failure to act. That may sound irrational and extreme, but Lurie did not understand the landscape of the NFL and the opportunity in front of the franchise.
The NFL was down this season. There were no great teams. The Chiefs and Ravens collapsed. The Bills lacked weapons and a defense. The NFC was decimated by injuries. The Eagles had the best roster in the NFL and the most expensive offense and put a first-time play-caller at the helm.
Repeating as champions is hard. It’s rare due to the salary cap and coaching overhauls to even have a realistic opportunity. The Eagles and Lurie already wrote the blueprint for success from their own failure. Promoting an offensive coordinator from within failed in 2023. Hiring an outside, independent voice in 2024 produced resounding success. Which route did Lurie and the Eagles go in 2025? You guessed it… from within.
Lurie and the Eagles even doubled down on their mistake by not fixing it when it was clear to every Eagles fan the offense would not succeed under Patullo. There were no signs of growth. There were only signs of frustration and incompetence. Patullo should have been replaced after the pathetic Week 6 loss to the lowly Giants. Instead, the franchise convinced itself wins over the quarterback-less Vikings and Giants were signs of growth heading into the bye. Following the bye, the Eagles scored more than 21 points only twice – against the Raiders and Commanders – and failed to even crack 20 points in seven of their ten games to close the season.
Lurie is the head of the franchise. If everyone who follows the team saw the need for change, I can’t imagine he missed it. He simply chose to do nothing and hoped for the best. Hope isn’t a strategy when you have a chance to repeat with the most talented roster in the league. It’s failure. It’s dereliction of duty.
The 2025 Eagles failed because leadership failed.