A.J. Brown ‘wasn’t great when it mattered’ as key drops doomed the Eagles in loss to Chargers

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — A.J. Brown believes he has the “best hands in the world.”

The Eagles’ star receiver, who has been open about the need for the passing game and the offense as a whole to meet its potential, and for the team to take advantage of his abilities, reached 100 yards for the third consecutive game.

He had six catches for 100 yards and made a few key plays. But late Monday night inside the visitors’ locker room at SoFi Stadium, it was the passes that hit his hands and landed elsewhere that stood out the most and had Brown looking inward.

» READ MORE: Eagles grades: Jalen Hurts turns it over five times in yet another poor offensive display

The Eagles lost for a variety of reasons to extend their slump to three games. Jalen Hurts was nowhere near good enough. They had untimely penalties. Jake Elliott missed a field goal that proved pivotal. But Brown knows his three drops changed the game.

Each one in isolation could have produced a different result Monday night. He wanted all of them back, he said, and probably was going to spend the cross-country flight home thinking about them before he planned to “flush” the game when the plane touched down in Philadelphia.

Brown touched on all three drops.

There was the first play from scrimmage of the game, a broken play that resulted in Hurts launching a deep ball up the left sideline. “I wish I could have somehow found a way to make that one,” Brown said.

The second came four minutes into the fourth quarter with the Eagles leading, 16-13. One play earlier, Hurts scrambled to his right and connected with Darius Cooper for a 19-yard gain that moved the Eagles to near midfield. The Eagles were on the move and looking to add to their lead and put what had earlier looked like a sure loss to bed. Hurts took a shotgun snap, faked a handoff to Saquon Barkley, and fired a pass over the middle to a crossing Brown near the Chargers’ 40-yard line. The throw was high, and Chargers linebacker Denzel Perryman was closing in, but Brown couldn’t haul in the pass as it tipped off his fingertips and into the hands of cornerback Cam Hart.

Los Angeles drove down the field and tied the score with a field goal.

“The ball over the middle, I know it wasn’t perfect, but I’m more than capable of making that catch,” Brown said.

“That was just going to be another tough one. I’m more than capable of making that grab for [Hurts]. He stepped up in the pocket, he’s under pressure.”

The third one hurt the most, though.

On a second-and-11 from the Chargers’ 26-yard line with less than three minutes to play and the score tied at 16, the Eagles got Brown in one-on-one coverage with Hart. Hurts struggled for most of the night, but this throw was one of his best. He dropped a deep pass into a perfect spot for Brown to catch it. Hart made a decent play at the point of attack, but the 28-year-old receiver has made many similar and more difficult plays, and this one probably would have given the Eagles a needed victory.

» READ MORE: Forget 2023. The Eagles are in bigger trouble now after their loss to the Chargers.

“He just made a play,” Brown said. “That one hurt the most because we’ve been setting things up all game, and he made a play. That one hurt me. I’m more than capable of making those plays. Jalen trusts me in any situation. I made some plays, but I wasn’t great when it mattered.”

And so the Eagles, and Brown, are going “back to the drawing board,” Brown said.

They have now gone five consecutive games without topping 21 points. It is the first time in the Nick Sirianni era that has happened and a first for any Eagles team since 2005. An impotent offense has been the story of the season, and while there were small flashes Monday, it was more of the same.

“It’s the same thing every week,” DeVonta Smith said. “Do something good, shoot ourselves in the foot. Nobody is doing nothing to stop us. We’re stopping ourselves every time, putting ourselves back behind the sticks. We get something going, and we just do some dumb s—.”

Like turn the ball over. Hurts threw a career-high four interceptions, but Smith said the receivers were responsible for two of them. Smith blamed himself for the second interception, saying he fell. The other, Smith said, was on Brown.

“S— happens,” he said.

Said Brown: “You always have to look inward and be honest with yourself first and foremost. Take accountability and find a way to fix it as quickly as possible.

“As soon as I get off the plane, it’s going to be flushed because you have to. It’s a part of the game, it’s a part of playing at a high level. I’m catching like 500 balls a day. I pride myself on making those catches.

“I could go out there and drop 100 balls, but I’m still going to believe in me, believe in my hands. I believe that I got the best hands in the world. But sometimes it don’t go your way, and that’s a part of it. You got to have thick skin and go back to work.”

That work begins right away. The Eagles were due to land Tuesday morning and will be back on the practice field Wednesday in a short week with the Las Vegas Raiders coming to town Sunday.

The Eagles still have a 1½-game lead in the NFC East, and they finish the season with a game against the two-win Raiders before playing two of their final three against the three-win Washington Commanders.

“Everything is still right in front of us,” Brown said. “There’s still so much to be optimistic about. These tough losses, tough little stretch, I’m not going to say it’s humbling us, but we are doing what we need to do, going back to work and taking pride into that and [getting] this thing turned around at the right time. It’s one week at a time.”

It gets late early, though, and the Eagles are running out of weeks to make their necessary fixes.