A.J. Brown and Jalen Hurts were injured in a meaningless Eagles game. It was sickening.
They lost the game. They lost top players, and maybe lost their best player. With it, they lost their best chance to win their playoff game in Tampa on Monday.
There was so little to gain and so much to lose. The Eagles lost it all. It was sickening.
They lost the game. They lost top players, and maybe lost their best player, receiver A.J. Brown. They lost their best chance to win their playoff game in Tampa on Monday night. It made me a bit sick to watch it.
It sickened me to see Brown’s right knee bend sideways under Nick McCloud’s tackle, then to see Brown, the most valiant of the team’s young warriors, lying in the rain, in pain and in despair.
It sickened me to see Jalen Hurts’ dislocated right middle finger unnaturally raised, like a camel’s neck, after he hit Bobby Okereke’s helmet as he followed through with a pass.
Brown is the best — and, at $100 million, the highest-paid — receiver in Eagles history. Hurts has a chance to be the best quarterback, and he’s making $255 million. Neither should have played a snap in those conditions. Not with such slim a chance at any real payoff. Hurts returned to the game and played, though poorly. Brown did not return, and while fears of an ACL tear reportedly have been allayed, Brown still might be done for the season.
The Eagles’ best chance was to rest their best players, many of whom are over 30. They did that with one player, defensive tackle Fletcher Cox, and, of course, he emerged unscathed. Five frontline teammates were not as fortunate. Safeties Sydney Brown and Reed Blankenship as well as guard Cam Jurgens left the game.
I begged Eagles coach Nick Sirianni to rest and protect his most important players against the Giants. A rested, healthy Eagles team traveling in the first round was always more likely to win a playoff game than a team with another grueling wintertime contest under its sagging belt playing at home. The Eagles haven’t played well at home, anyway; they were blown out by the 49ers and nearly lost to the Commanders and Giants.
As for “momentum,” after the Eagles beat those same Giants two weeks earlier, they immediately lost to a pathetic Cardinals team. Where was the “momentum” from that win? Beating a lousy team, even blowing it out, doesn’t give you “momentum.” That’s like saying you gained “momentum” by beating up your little brother for the hundredth time. On the other hand, losing to a lousy team, or even playing poorly against a lousy team, erodes confidence.
These Eagles haven’t been this unconfident since Sirianni’s first season, when they lost Game 7 in Las Vegas in 2021. That day, trailing by 10, Sirianni called an onside kick to start the second half, which, of course, failed, and quickly led to a 17-point deficit. Sirianni suddenly wasn’t calling plays anymore.
He’s had a pretty good run since that day, but Sunday against the Giants was his low-water mark.
The only way the Eagles would’ve gained anything in their season finale was if the Cowboys lost at Washington to a team that had lost seven games in a row with a dead-duck coach. The Cowboys were favored to win by two touchdowns. They won by four touchdowns.
Analytics told you that you had a better chance to win a playoff game if it was a home game, and so analytics told you that a home playoff game was worth the gamble. Except analytics ignores the human element. It ignores fatigue and age and psychology and rain and cold and heart. Analytics said the Eagles should play their best players and chase the slim chance to win.
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Tell that to A.J. Brown’s right knee.
Sirianni ignored common sense.
He had a slim chance to earn the No. 2 seed, went for broke, and broke the team. Long after their 27-10 humiliation, players sat in their uniforms, subdued, quiet, knowing that, unless Baker Mayfield gives the game away next week, their 10-1 start will be a 1-6 swoon. With due respect to the 1964 Phillies “Phold,” these Eagles, defending NFC champions who once held the No. 1 seed in the conference, will be cast as the greatest disappointment in Philadelphia sports history.
They will have gone from Super Bowl runners-up, with the best record in the NFL through 11 games, with signature wins over the Dolphins, Cowboys, Chiefs, and Bills, to a wild-card afterthought with massive coaching and personnel changes looming. It will be the biggest Philly collapse ever, and, for a city that just saw the Sixers and Phillies give away playoff series within five months of each other, that’s saying something.
This was inevitable, and everyone except Sirianni seemed to know it.
The Eagles players knew they were playing in a game almost certainly to be meaningless. You could tell they didn’t want to play tackle football in 36-degree temperatures in rainy North Jersey on some of the worst artificial turf in the NFL. Their heads weren’t in it. Their hearts weren’t in it. After playing 16 games and losing four of their last five, you could hardly blame them. It’s human nature.
That’s the main reason they fell behind, 24-0, after 28 minutes, waved the white flag, and finally put in the subs.
There are other reasons.
They had been fortunate to beat the Giants in Philly two weeks before, so beating them at MetLife Stadium two weeks later, more tired and more worn out and more predictable, was never a good bet.
Standout wideout DeVonta Smith and Pro Bowl corner Darius Slay each missed the game with injuries. Cox didn’t play.
Then again, neither did anyone else.