January 07, 2024
The Philadelphia Eagles entered their regular season finale against the dreadful New York Giants in need of showing anything positive in advance of the playoffs. Instead, they got blown out 27-10 in a game that wasn't nearly that close. As always, win, lose, or tie, we hand out 10 awards.
For the second straight week, the Eagles got their asses handed to them by an irrelevant team whose season ended months ago. Here's what the team stats looked like after the first half:
| Ā Team stats | PHIĀ | NYGĀ |
| ScoreĀ | 0Ā | 24Ā |
| First downsĀ | 5Ā | 14Ā |
| Total yardsĀ | 102Ā | 272Ā |
| Rushing yardsĀ | 73Ā | 43Ā |
| Passing yardsĀ | 29Ā | 229Ā |
| TurnoversĀ | 3Ā | 1Ā |
| Time of possessionĀ | 13:05Ā | 16:55Ā |
Coming into this matchup, the Giants were the 31st-ranked team in the NFL by DVOA, ahead of only the 2-15 Carolina Panthers. They had a point differential of -158 and were missing their starting QB, RT, backup RT, C, and CB. They had their bags packed for Cabo, and they absolutely wrecked the Eagles.
The Eagles' offense sucked. The defense sucked. The coaching sucked. In chart form:
| OffenseĀ | DefenseĀ | CoachingĀ |
| SuckedĀ | SuckedĀ | SuckedĀ |
But more on all of that in a bit.
Near the end of the aforementioned first half,Ā Nick Sirianni replaced Jalen Hurts with Marcus Mariota, while also pulling Lane Johnson and Jason Kelce. Sirianni was certain enough that he was going to lose to this abysmal Giants team that he decided to tap out.
(It's worth noting that the Eagles needed to win and have the Cowboys lose to the Commanders in order to win the NFC East. Absent those two things, this game was otherwise irrelevant in terms of playoff seeding. The Cowboys blew out the Commanders, but they were only winning by 4 when Sirianni pulled Hurts, Johnson, and Kelce.)
"When we went down 24-0, I thought that it wasn't going the way we wanted it to go, and we had a chance to rest some guys," Sirianni said. "Like I told you guys [earlier in the week], we went out there to play and to try to get ourselves going and also not knowing what was going to happen in the other game. So obviously I was doing a little bit of scoreboard watching. I think at that time the Dallas game was close, but our game was a three-score game and we hadn't moved it very well and they were up 24-0 and that's why I made that decision at that point."
Interestingly, Sirianni made the move with a little more than a minute left in the first half, when the Eagles had the ball at their own 20 and could have theoretically scored some points before heading into the half. But nope, he had seen enough and didn't bother waiting until halftime to give it more thought.
There was no mystery to what the Giants were going to try to do to the Eagles defensively. They were going to blitz Jalen Hurts, early and often. I mean, the Eagles just faced this team two weeks ago.
And yet, you'd have thought they'd never seen a blitz before. As we have seen so frequently this season, Hurts looked to extend the play by running out of the pocket and away from blitzes, trying to buy time for vertical routes to develop down the field before eventually throwing the ball away. As usual, there were no hot routes or other mechanisms to allow Hurts to beat the blitz by getting the ball out quickly.
"I think it was a little bit of everything," Jason Kelce said of the Eagles' inability to handle the Giants' blitzes. "Sometimes we weren't pointing right, and that's my job. I have to put us in a better situation. Sometimes we just didn't pick it up, guys missed blocks or whatever. They just had our number. They got us into some protections where the blitz kind of breaks your rules. If we check the protection, get to a max protection, and they only rush four, then you only have three guys running routes. They did a phenomenal job, credit to them, and we didn't do a good job of handling it."
Hurts finished his disappointing 2023 regular season by completing 7 of 16 passes for 55 yards, 0 TDs, and 1 INT. He obviously played badly, but his coaching staff and this overmatched scheme also failed him.
The Eagles' defense wasn't very good under defensive coordinator Sean Desai. It's been a disorganized mess under Matt Patricia, as Giants receivers consistently ran through the Philly secondary uncovered.
For example, on the first drive of the game, Wan'Dale Robinson didn't have a defender within like 10 yards of him right in the middle of the field.
Tyrod Taylor to WanāDale Robinson for 33 yards pic.twitter.com/5k7fXjruOn
— Bobby Skinner (@BobbySkinner_) January 7, 2024
How is he that wide open?!?
Or this pass play down the left sideline to Saquon Barkley.Ā
Saquon having a DAY. 46-yard catch down the sideline.
— NFL (@NFL) January 7, 2024
šŗ: #PHIvsNYG on CBS
š±: Stream on #NFLPlus https://t.co/X0vcyHUoyR pic.twitter.com/AxAVsctnse
When the All-22 of that play comes out, you'll see the Eagles' confusion pre-snap.
And then on the next play, Darius Slayton was in his own zip code on this TD reception.
Darius Slayton touchdown from Tyrod Taylor and the Giants go up 24-0 pic.twitter.com/mtRWlBgDQ1
— Bobby Skinner (@BobbySkinner_) January 7, 2024
Sirianni has a career regular season record of 34-17. He has won double the number of games that he has lost. He led the Eagles to the Super Bowl about 11 months ago and the Eagles have gone to the playoffs all three years under his watch.
It would be unprecedented for a team to fire a head coach with that kind of rƩsumƩ. And yet, if the Eagles are one-and-done in the playoffs and Sirianni doesn't have good answers for how to get the team headed back in the right direction for 2024 and beyond, there's an argument for him to be let go.
Even if Sirianni keeps his job, there's little doubt at this point that other heads will roll.
ā¢ Hurts' finger got jacked up.
ā¢ A.J. Brown hurt his right knee, left the field, and never returned. DeVonta Smith was already out with an ankle injury.
ā¢ Blankenship injured his groin and didn't return.
ā¢ It is feared that Sydney Brown tore an ACL.
ā¢ Cam Jurgens suffered an eye injury and didn't return.
So there's that.
The Eagles faced virtually no adversity in 2022 during their run to the Super Bowl, so we never got to see how they would react to it when it would inevitably come. They did handle some adversity when they got out to a 2-5 start in 2021, but expectations were low that season. It's a lot different when the city of Philadelphia is thinking Super Bowl or bust, like they were in 2023.
The degree to which they have folded when faced with adversity this season has been shocking, especially since it's such a veteran-laden locker room.
They get to play the Eagles in the first round of the playoffs.
They have one last beatdown to endure before this season comes to an end.
They have to watch it.
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