The Eagles’ arrogance caught up with them against the Seahawks. They’d better learn their lesson soon.

Well, that game’s not going to help Christmas album sales.

A cheap shot? Maybe. But maybe it’s time for the Eagles to stand still, let folks fire a few arrows at them, and grit their teeth in silence. Maybe it’s time for the Eagles to sit there and take it, because they’ve been dishing it out for a while now.

They like to think of themselves as underdogs, even if they don’t act or play like underdogs. Good for them. They got their wish. They are definitely dark horses now. Three straight losses, all within the NFC, all to teams that either will or could yet make the playoffs, and even if they close the regular season with three victories, even if they go into the postseason 13-4 and atop their division, they’ve already shown how vulnerable they are. The 49ers are better. The Cowboys routed them once and should have beaten them the first time the teams played, on the Eagles’ home turf. And now, based on that 20-17 loss to the Seahawks and their backup quarterback Monday night, even a wild-card game can’t be considered a gimme.

This has been a humbling three weeks for the Eagles, and they deserved to be humbled. The benefit of covering sports — or pretty much anything else for that matter — from a place of informed detachment, without an agenda or rooting interest, is that the approach is more likely to open your mind. It becomes easier to see things the way they are, not as you think they are or would like them to be. It becomes easier to understand how someone outside your tribe or bubble might have a different perspective and why that outsiders’ view might have merit and be widely shared. And from that perspective, the Eagles have had some comeuppance due to them for a while, and on Monday night, they got it, good and hard.

» READ MORE: Did Nick Sirianni rearrange the wrong set of deck chairs after Eagles offense fluttered in loss to Seahawks?

To the Eagles, it wasn’t enough that they had a play — the Tush Push, the Brotherly Shove, whatever snappy nickname you want to use for their version of a quarterback sneak — that was as unstoppable as any in the NFL. No, their head coach had to find the closest camera to dare opponents, and maybe even league officials, to stop it. “People can’t do it like we can do it,” Nick Sirianni said a month ago. “If everybody could do it, everybody would do it.” And there it was Monday: a false-start penalty by Jason Kelce, in a sneak situation, that prevented the Eagles from stretching a seven-point lead to 14. For once, they couldn’t do it, and they paid for it.

To the Eagles, it wasn’t enough to beat the Cowboys, the Kansas City Chiefs, and the Buffalo Bills in successive weeks. No, Sirianni couldn’t help but shout out some trash talk as he headed down an Arrowhead Stadium tunnel, the latest example of his compulsion to puff his chest and taunt and razz opposing coaches and fans when everything is going well for his team. Which is oh-so satisfying and emboldening … until everything isn’t.

To the Eagles, it wasn’t enough that security chief Dom DiSandro got caught up in a confrontation with 49ers linebacker Dre Greenlaw and that the upshot — both were thrown out of the game — actually benefited the Eagles by costing San Francisco a key player. No, the incident had to become a cause célèbre, turning DiSandro into a folk hero around here while those who aren’t kelly green-clad partisans wondered, Who is that guy, and does he even belong on the sideline at all?

To the Eagles, it wasn’t enough to commit to running the ball more effectively against Seattle, something they hadn’t done against San Francisco or Dallas. No, they relied on Jalen Hurts, whose status was uncertain until a couple of hours before kickoff because he was so sick, to carry the ball 13 times. They put their franchise quarterback, already at less than 100%, at risk, and the cumulative effect of those hits, of the demands placed on him, sure seemed to show itself in the fourth quarter.

To the Eagles, it wasn’t enough to stick to their time-honored philosophy on offense: Throw the ball to take the lead. Run the ball to protect it. No, on Monday night they threw the ball on first down to try to extend a four-point lead with 8 minutes, 15 seconds left in regulation. After the Eagles had moved the ball and melted away precious time for three plays, after two completions on intermediate routes to A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith and a 5-yard run by D’Andre Swift, Hurts chucked one deep. To Quez Watkins. Who has seven catches all season. Who is, if we’re being generous, the team’s fifth-best receiving option. Who didn’t outbox Julian Love for a pass that was little more than a jump ball and turned out to be a game-turning interception.

To the Eagles, it wasn’t enough to acknowledge that they had a tumultuous week, that the demotion of Sean Desai was an admission that all was not well within their film rooms or locker room, that they had allowed an important game to slip through their fingers Monday. No, Brandon Graham had to claim to The Inquirer that the decision to reassign Desai and promote Matt Patricia was “media-driven out here, man. It had to be a change [with] everybody calling for his head.” And Brown had to take to social media Tuesday, fighting his followers over whether Hurts could have checked the ball down to Smith, complaining about fans’ second-guessing.

There is a measure of arrogance inherent in each of those anecdotes, a presumption that the Eagles can play recklessly and carry themselves like they’re 10 feet tall and bulletproof and get away with it every time. If they haven’t figured out by now, after these last three weeks, that they can’t, just wait until mid-January. They’ll learn then, and the lesson will be quick and painful.