Matt Patricia made Haason Reddick disappear. Nick Sirianni and Howie Roseman let it happen. What a waste.

TAMPA, Fla. — The symbol of the Eagles’ catastrophic decline on defense, of Matt Patricia’s perfect melding of bad planning with worse player performance, stood near the entrance of the visitors’ locker room late Monday night at Raymond James Stadium and tried to make sense of it all.

Haason Reddick had his hands on his hips and a hold of his tongue. He had recorded 11 quarterback sacks through the Eagles’ first 13 games this season, before Patricia was handed control of the defensive calls and started dropping him into coverage. Sacking quarterbacks is what Reddick does. He had 16 during the 2022 regular season, another 3½ in that postseason. But over the five games that Patricia was in charge of the Eagles defense, Reddick did not have a single sack. In four of those games, he didn’t even register a quarterback hit. And for all the times that Patricia asked him to try to cover an opposing tight end or slot receiver or running back — seven times, for instance, in that ugly New Year’s Eve loss to the Arizona Cardinals — Reddick did not record an official “pass defended,” either.

You have to hand it to the Eagles: They managed to take one of the NFL’s elite pass-rushers, maybe the most feared force on their entire defense, and make him disappear. Patricia showed up here this season with that Bill Belichick pedigree, with the experience of working under the coach who, more than any other, knew how to maximize a player’s strengths and minimize his weaknesses. Yet Patricia never managed to slide that pencil from his ear and scratch out some schemes that might free Reddick from his outside-linebacker spot for a few clear shots at opposing quarterbacks, and Howie Roseman and Nick Sirianni kept letting Patricia get away with that coaching malpractice.

It had to frustrate the hell out of Reddick, and it damn sure didn’t help the Eagles. If anything, it was this approach and others like it that turned them into a laughingstock.

“As challenging as it may be, as tough as it may be, at the end of the day, I pride myself on not making any excuses,” Reddick, a Camden native and Temple alumnus, said after the Eagles’ 32-9 wild-card loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, another night when, aside from one tackle, he might as well have not bothered suiting up. “I’m not going to do that, and I’ll just leave it at that.”

» READ MORE: Nick Sirianni’s future is in doubt. The Eagles are at a crossroads. And Jeffrey Lurie faces the biggest choice of his tenure.

How often had he dropped into pass coverage before this season?

He weighed his answer for six seconds.

“Off the top of my head, I don’t really know.”

A lot? A little? None at all?

“I’ve dropped in coverage in the past,” he said, “mostly while playing inside linebacker.” He was talking about his first three years in the NFL, all with the Cardinals, when they had him playing out of position.

“I just go out and play what’s called,” he said. “At least, I try to. I try to give what I can give on that play. Being in pass coverage, it is what it is. It’s something that needs to be done. You’re trying to give the offense something different. I do understand that.”

But his career took off when the Cardinals moved him outside — four straight seasons of double-digit sacks, the three-year contract worth as much as $45 million that he signed with the Eagles in March 2022, his assertion during the last training camp that, given his production, he was underpaid relative to other elite edge rushers.

“Right.”

So it seems hard to believe that it was a good decision, for you or the Eagles, to have you covering anyone.

“Uh … like I said … uh … like I said … I understand,” he said. “I know. I understand. There are edge rushers across the league who have to drop into coverage as well. With what frequency, I don’t know. But like I said, whatever is called, I’m going to go out there and give the team what I have.”

Give Reddick credit for playing the good soldier, but there’s no defending the way the Eagles deployed him during those final five games. None. Everyone knows it, and he said it without saying it. This isn’t about him getting a new contract and more money. This is about Patricia and Sirianni and Roseman’s refusal to follow the most tiresome cliché in the NFL: their failure to put a player in the best position to make plays. Now Reddick is scheduled to count nearly $22 million against the Eagles’ salary cap next season, which means they might have to restructure his deal or swallow the cap hit and cut him, which means they pretty much wasted him for nearly a third of this season before they’re likely to bid him farewell.

All that so Baker Mayfield could pick them apart. All that so James Conner could bulldoze them. All that so Drew Lock could drive 92 yards on them in less than two minutes. Well done, guys. Hope it was worth it.