Will the Great Eagles Collapse of 2023 matter in 2024? A historical analysis.
How easy is it to bounce back from such an extreme disappointment? Here’s what we learned from 15 teams that entered a season in circumstances similar to the Eagles’.
You can drive yourself crazy with life’s great unknowns.
Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
If God created everything, then who created God?
When Marty McFly got back to the future, were his parents suddenly overcome with the realization that he looked exactly like their friend Calvin Klein from high school?
So it goes for the 2023 Eagles, may they forever rest in pieces. Speculation about the exact cause of their demise has bordered on the conspiratorial. The theories are the sorts of things you’d expect to find in a YouTube documentary that is nothing but four hours of PowerPoint slides backed by a Brian Eno instrumental.
It was Nick Sirianni on the sideline with his antics!
It was Jalen Hurts in the locker room with his ego!
It was Howie Roseman in the front office with his senior defensive assistant!
This wasn’t an offseason. It was the world’s worst game of Clue.
We may never know the exact reason the Eagles lost six of their last seven games after starting 10-1. That’s usually how it goes when there is no exact reason. There is a chicken-and-egg element to losing. Locker-room dysfunction can be a symptom as well as a cause. Losing streaks like the one the Eagles endured require a confluence of circumstances. Trying to pinpoint a cause is like digging out from an avalanche and asking who sneezed.
The Eagles spent the offseason doing everything in their power to break the feedback loop. They fired both coordinators, traded away their disgruntled defensive star, preempted any contract distractions with their two star wide receivers. In firing Brian Johnson and hiring Kellen Moore, they siphoned off some power from both the quarterback and the head coach.
Will all of that be enough? Was last year’s collapse mostly the result of a series of remediable circumstances, or was it an indication of structural flaws (the coach, the quarterback, the chemistry, the mix of talent, etc.)?
How easy is it to bounce back from such an extreme disappointment?
These are the big unknowns heading into Week 1.
There aren’t many historical comparisons on which to draw. The Eagles’ collapse was rare enough to thwart any attempt at empirical analysis. But there are a handful of cases to study.
After a semi-exhaustive search of the Pro-Football-Reference.com database, what follows is a list of nine teams that entered a season in circumstances that were at least vaguely similar to the Eagles’ situation heading into the 2024 season. That is, they were coming off a season in which they spent the first half as one of the best teams in the NFL and the second half collapsing into a black hole.
The teams I identified:
2013 Chiefs: Andy Reid’s first year in Kansas City saw the Chiefs enter the bye week at 9-0 only to lose five of their last seven, including an infamous playoff collapse against the Colts, who overcame a 28-point third-quarter deficit to win, 45-44.
2021 Cardinals: Started 8-1, entered the bye week 9-2, lost five of last seven, including a 34-11 wild-card loss to the Rams.
2006 Giants: Started 6-2, lost seven of nine, including by 23-20 to the Eagles in the wild-card round.
1999 Lions: Started 6-2, lost seven of nine, including the wild-card game to Washington.
1999 Dolphins: Lost five of six after starting 8-2, beat the Seahawks in a wild-card game, then lost, 62-7, to the Jaguars and fired Jimmy Johnson.
1981 Eagles: Started 9-2, lost five of six, including the wild-card game to the Giants.
1999 Seahawks: Started 8-2, then lost six of seven, including by 20-17 to Miami in the wild-card round.
1989 Bills: Started 6-2, lost six of nine, including a 34-30 divisional round loss to the Browns.
1997 Vikings: Lost five straight after an 8-2 start. Won their regular-season finale and a wild-card game, then lost in the divisional round.
I didn’t include teams that missed the playoffs (e.g. the 1994 Eagles). I also eliminated some teams that ended their seasons on a high note (e.g. the 1986 Jets, who lost their last five regular-season games but won a wild-card game and lost in overtime in the divisional round). I also did not include the 2022 Dolphins, who lost five of six after starting 8-3 but a) Had a three-game losing streak early in the season and, b) Nearly beat the Bills in the playoffs, scoring 31 points and driving to within 15 yards of a game-tying field goal attempt in the closing minutes.
So, what can we learn? Well, like I said, not much. Five of the nine teams missed the playoffs the following season, and three of them ended up looking for new coaches. But three of the nine teams made their conference championship, and two made the Super Bowl, with the Bills losing in 1990 and the Giants winning in 2007. In fact, the Chiefs, Bills, and Giants all went on to play in multiple Super Bowls under the same head coach who oversaw the initial collapse. The Giants and Bills did it with the same quarterback who was there at the beginning. The Chiefs did it after replacing Alex Smith with Patrick Mahomes.
Of course, none of those teams had already been to the Super Bowl, which is what makes the Eagles such a special case. Frankly, it’s the strongest argument in favor of extending the benefit of the doubt to this year’s team. Hurts, Sirianni, much of the roster on both sides of the ball — we’ve seen it work before. The only thing we know for sure is there was a blip on the radar.
Was it 2023, or 2022?