What the heck are we watching?
The 2021 Eagles season is slipping away before Halloween, and head coach Nick Sirianni looks totally in over his head in every way. It’s too early to fire a coach after just seven games, but it’s not too early to wonder if that day is coming sooner than later.
That’s now how non-competitive the Eagles have been early in games. That’s how bad Sirianni’s offense looks at times. That’s how underwhelming his entire operation and coaching staff look on gameday, especially a 33-22 loss to the Las Vegas Raiders with 10 days to prepare. That’s how bad this football team currently is.
There’s a lot to unpack from the debacle in Vegas.
Let’s start with Sirianni’s pregame declaration to “be more aggressive,” per the FOX Sports broadcast team.
Smart coaches have an ethos they live by, not a game-to-game decision-making process that ignores context. If Sirianni’s fly-by-night decision to be aggressive was how he decided to put the Raiders back on the field and decline a penalty in the first quarter or onside kick coming out of the half, perhaps he should review who he wants to be as a head coach. Remember, this is the same head coach that went for a field goal after a timeout vs. the Kansas City Chiefs instead of a short fourth down in a game that touchdowns were necessary.
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Aggressive coaches are aggressive. It’s a philosophy, often backed up by analytics and trends, that wins out over time. Deciding particular games in which aggression is the strategy is foolish, and comes off as amatuer hour coaching.
Then, of course, there’s the product his team puts on the field.
Two moments stood out on Sunday, and made me truly wonder if Sirianni’s preparation and practice methods work.
With 7:17 left in the fourth quarter, the Eagles took the field down 33-14. They couldn’t even get a play off to start a series without Jalen Hurts having to call a timeout to avoid a delay of game. Think about that for a minute, and think about how disorganized that looks. There were seven minutes left in the game. The Eagles were down three scores. It’s literally the first play of the possession. If any play call or chatter about it among coaches took more than five seconds to relay into Hurts’ helmet, everyone on that staff should be embarrassed. I don’t want to hear the coach use the word “execute” once this week after watching the play caller and his staff botch the simplest thing.
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Then there’s the on-field nonsense that makes the Eagles look like a high school team on a weekly basis. Remember the shotgun snap Hurts couldn’t handle as the Eagles were on the doorstep of a touchdown, leading to a turnover? The FOX crew did a great job on a slow-motion replay showing how right guard Jack Driscoll tipped the snap as he tried to get behind center Jason Kelce on a pull block. Unfortunate? Perhaps. But I’ll point to a lack of detail. A lot of Sirianni’s offense seems to be timing plays, yet the offense doesn’t have it’s timing set. That needs to be hammered out in practice, otherwise the play call shouldn’t be on Sirianni’s sheet. And yes, lining Hurts under center for a running play there would be allowed.
The numbers (trailing by 12 points or more in six games this year, the most in the NFL) are bad. The optics (18 offensive touchdowns, and seven of which have been scored after trailing by 19 or more in the second half of games) are worse. The lack of counter punch (outscored 59-14 in the second quarter this season) is alarming.
Sirianni’s team looks unprepared, unable to adjust and out of answers when the first idea ultimately fails in games.
Every play caller has tough days and tough assignments, but let’s not pretend Sunday should have been one for Sirianni. Gus Bradley, Las Vegas’s defensive coordinator, is about as predictable as they come. On Sunday, the Raiders lined up in cover three nearly 90 percent of the time. The answers to the test were there, especially against a coach that Sirianni coached with in Las Vegas. No surprises were present. That makes it all even more tough to stomach.
The Eagles roster isn’t very good. Depth issues are present, which we all could have seen coming with so much dead cap money allocated to players not here. This was a retooling year in every sense. But it shouldn’t guarantee Sirianni his job for 2022. Perhaps it’s a knee-jerk reaction, but similar feelings in Cleveland and Arizona in recent years allowed those franchises to move on from Freddie Kitchens and Steve Wilks, respectively, after one failed season.
Unless something changes quickly with Sirianni’s Eagles, we’re trending toward that kind of reality in Philadelphia.