Murphy’s Law is about preparation, not some kind of bad omen. You prepare for problems that could happen so you are ready when it does. The crux of the Eagles problems this season is a failure to prepare on every level.
Injuries
Over the last few years, Eagles football has been relatively injury lucky. Whether that’s because of preparation or just random chance, the luck has run out. The offensive line is 60% new and chewing further into that depth with Jake Majors, and seemingly everyone on offense has missed time. This week, even though DeVonta Smith returned, another RB got hurt, Nolan Smith was concussed, and Jordan Davis went down. Combine that with Jalen Hurts’s uncertain health and you have a trying time for any team.
These things happen! The important thing is how you react to these problems and what you can do to mask them and recover. Unfortunately, there has been little to no adaptation at all. The injuries are there to set the scene for everything else.
Weekly Preparation
Any great team is prepared and I don’t just mean having backups ready to go. This is about making sure the players know their assignments and can run the plays. It’s about players having the discipline to not make mistakes. It’s about having a gameplan. You didn’t see ANY of that against the Panthers.
Yes, this was a terribly officiated game, but 11 penalties for 84 yards is a disaster, especially from a team that has such little margin forever. Time and time again, these penalties are away from the ball too, just unnecessary detriments to the team. Worse yet, Carolina was even worse! with 13 penalties for 149 yards, they practically gave the Eagles the game…and we still lost by 2 scores. We simply gave back everything they gave us.
The Eagles missed a ton of tackles, had a punt blocked, and had multiple bad snaps. Nick Sirianni looked completely dumbfounded on the sidelines. Gone is the coach who used to yell at the players, fire them up on the sideline, and have something to do with the team each week. If they aren’t concerned with him getting in their face on the sideline during the game, it is probably safe to assume that the CEO coach isn’t exactly cracking the whip in practice either. This team is going through the motions.
System
I was hyper critical of the Eagles bringing in Kevin Patullo last season because he had zero experience. You don’t give a kid the keys to your Ferrari to learn how to drive. After he crashed last season, what did the Eagles do? The same exact thing. Sean Mannion has never done this before.
After his unimpressive playing career ended, he was hired as a special assistant in Green Bay. A year of mediocre passing statistics and an unimproved Jordan Love, brought Mannion a promotion to QB coach because his boss Tom Clements retired. The Packers and Love were pretty mediocre again, and that was enough for the Eagles to bring him in. Just like Patullo, he has absolutely ZERO experience calling plays and running an offense AT ANY LEVEL!!!! The Eagles fell into the same trap twice.
What do we get for going back to the well? An offense that simply doesn’t work. Some examples:
- Other teams blitz constantly because they know the Eagles tendencies. Going under center means 100% either a hand off or play action. That’s bad because it will never be a quick pass, literally never a straight drop back under center.
- To deal with the regular blitz, do the Eagles have any hot routes designed to take advantage? Never. With less than 2 seconds to throw, Jalen Hurts has been running for his life because despite the blitz, some how literally no one is open.
- Why? Because all of the receivers are running late developing routes that seemed to have been designed in the vacuum of an office rather than in reaction to what is going on on the field.
- Another great move is having Hurts roll out right. Designing that is smart because it should give him more time and he’s good on the run. The problem is, no receivers follow him. Instead, he is staring at a route tree that isn’t in sync with anything he is doing.
- The second halves have been a total disaster this season. Why? Because we are incapable of making any adjustments. The defense already knows how to stop half of what we do in the first half and they close that gap even more in the 2nd half. The Eagles do nothing about it.
One of the problems with the CEO coach is that there is nothing he can do to stop a sinking ship. He has nothing productive to tell Mannion other than the same vanilla bullshit that everyone knows doesn’t work.
Roster and Staff
Howie Roseman doesn’t go blameless here. Maybe the hiring of Kevin Patullo was because Super Bowl winning Sirianni had the team by the balls and could make some decisions. Hiring Mannion though, why did everyone else turn him down? The reasons are twofold. Either those other guys didn’t want to work with Sirianni or they know Howie has a stranglehold on this organization. That’s not a knock on him, he deserves it. However, if a young coach is looking for eventual power in an organization, the Eagles are the wrong place to go. After wrestling the team back from Chip Kelly and winning 2 Super Bowls, no one in the NFL has more job security than Howie Roseman. You mess with the bull and you get the horns.
Then we have the last two drafts. Howie wasn’t always a great drafter. He used to outsmart himself by picking from small schools and avoiding the SEC, but he always drafted the trenches. Once he started going after the big programs, his draft world was a perfect union. The last two years though, he has gone away from the lines and it’s a problem.
You could always count on the Eagles not over-drafting from weak positions. Then they took a LB and S in the first two rounds in 2025 and a small WR and TE in the first two rounds in 2026. None of those 4 look like impact starters in the NFL. After years of drafting studs, we are looking at maybe 2 real starters from the last two full drafts: Drew Kendall and Markel Bell. That’s brutal.
Yikes
So, save your blame for the players. Save it for Sean Mannion too. It’s not all Nick Sirianni’s fault either. It’s not all on Howie’s shoulders. It’s all of them. It’s on all of them for letting it get this far. We constantly fight about who did what wrong and defend the ones we like. Don’t do that anymore this season. They all did it. We went from being way ahead of the NFL just 2 years ago to amazingly behind. Whatever could go wrong, did go wrong, and no one was even close to ready for it.
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