Nick Sirianni’s Eagles remain undisciplined, unacceptable, and unwatchable. Should he be fired?
No. But Sirianni's Eagles never had a chance against Todd Bowles’ perennial overachievers from Tampa Bay. Nick Watch is officially on.
TAMPA, Fla. — In 1998, Ray Rhodes coached an Eagles team that went 3-13. It wasn’t a horrible roster: Brian Dawkins, Troy Vincent, Hugh Douglas, and William Thomas were featured on defense, and Duce Staley, Tra Thomas, Kevin Turner, and Irving Fryar led the offense. But that team could not overcome the quarterbacking of Rodney Peete, Koy Detmer, and Bobby Hoying, and Rhodes and his coaching staff were overmatched with the task at hand, and got fired.
No team since 1998 has looked that bad.
Until now.
Nick Sirianni fielded a team Sunday so lacking in discipline, so fundamentally unsound, so clumsily directed on both sides of the ball, that it never had a chance against Todd Bowles’ perennial overachievers. Jalen Hurts, Sirianni’s former Pro Bowl quarterback, took another step backward, dumping a killer second-half fumble that squashed any chance of a comeback. He was, for the third time in four games against the Bucs, thoroughly flummoxed by the disguised defense he faced. It was an all-around embarrassing display.
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Rhodes’ team started ‘98 0-5, and these Eagles are 2-2, but they’re 3-8 in their last 11 games. It might not be fair, and it might not be feasible, but Nick Watch is officially on.
Should he be fired in order to save the 2024 season?
Probably not. The Birds have a bye week to get healthy. And if owner Jeffrey Lurie was going to fire Sirianni, he′d have done so after last year’s late-season implosion.
And yes, after taking the team to the Super Bowl two years ago, Sirianni still deserves the benefit of the doubt.
But the doubt is growing.
Asterisk Sunday’s loss in Tampa if you like, since the Eagles played without star receivers A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, and right tackle Lane Johnson, then lost center Cam Jurgens. But the defense was mostly intact, and it surrendered points on four of its first five series. Baker Mayfield finished 30-for-47 for 347 yards with two touchdowns and no interceptions, and only took two sacks.
”Their game plan was to keep the D-line off him,“ said defensive lineman Milton Williams. “Quick passes. Screens. A lot of [stuff] to the outside. And we didn’t tackle well. We didn’t have it today.”
Indeed, whiffed tackles from the cornerbacks and horrid angles by the linebackers earmarked the Bucs’ charge to a 24-0 lead in a game that ended 33-16.
There is no asterisk that accounts for Hurts’ 27 turnovers since the start of the 2023 season, which are the most in football. He fumbled again Sunday. And no asterisk explains why the Eagles haven’t scored on any of their four opening possessions this season.
Also, the absence of offensive starters didn’t excuse the Eagles from forcing collisions with their own punt returner. Twice.
And those guys absent Sunday were mostly present during the Eagles’ 1-6 meltdown at the end of the 2023 season.
It was hard to watch.
“Our fundamentals weren’t what they needed to be. We’ve got to make some changes as to what’s going on, fundamentally,“ Sirianni said. “Early on in the game we had some missed tackles. We had a couple of drops. Those are going to stop drives, and those are going to extend drives.“
There is time to get right and get healthy, he said:
“The bye week is coming at the right time.”
So are the baseball playoffs. By the time the Eagles reconvene next week, Red October will have again consumed Philadelphia as the Phillies make another playoff run.
On the other hand, the Phillies earned a first-round bye, so the next six days will be excruciating for the Birds, if they listen to the critics.
Because there is lots to criticize in the first four games. They’re 2-2, and while they’re two plays from being 3-1, they’re two plays from being 0-4.
Sunday, they had no chance. They were exquisitely buffoonish.
Late in the game, the Eagles defense committed an offsides penalty on third-and-15, which wasn’t so bad. But then they committed a defensive holding penalty on the same play, which came with an automatic first down, which was devastating.
With just under five minutes to play, during what everyone thought was a Bucs interception runback, the Bucs and Eagles committed penalties; Kenneth Gainwell’s was late and retaliatory. Since the interception was ruled an incompletion, the penalties offset. Had Gainwell not committed his, the Eagles would have had a first down. Instead, they had third-and-15, which became fourth-and-11, which saw Hurts take his sixth sack, and that was that.
This awful loss sets up two weeks of unrest for Sirianni’s team.
This awful loss follows two weeks in which Sirianni’s poor decisions either cost his team a win, against Atlanta, or nearly did so, in New Orleans.
Against the Falcons, they went for it early, failed, and it cost them three points. They passed on third-and-3 late in the game and stopped the clock, then kicked on fourth down, which made no sense after passing on third down.
In the first half against the Saints, they tried a fake Tush Push and failed, then got sacked on fourth down instead of kicking a field goal.
Fourth down didn’t play into Sunday’s bad joke. The two biggest punch lines:
Isaiah Rodgers blocked a Bucs gunner into punt returner Cooper DeJean on a fair catch, then teammate Kelee Ringo ran into DeJean.
Sigh.
To be fair, the Eagles were undermanned.
Bowles owns Hurts, who has a 74.7 passer rating in five games against Bowles as a head coach and defensive coordinator, with five passing touchdowns, six turnovers, and 14 sacks.
Finally, despite a heat index that rose to 110 degrees on the field at Raymond James Stadium and felled two of the Eagles’ starters, the Eagles didn’t quit on Nick like they quit on Ray.
So no, Nick Watch is only a watch. It’s not a crisis.
Not like 1998.
But we’re getting closer.