Welcome to Stage 6 of the Eagles’ grieving process. Time for desperate solutions to save the season.

Usually, it would seem a bit overwrought to compare a football team’s losing streak to the kinds of trauma that afflict people in their everyday lives. But this is Philadelphia, and we’re talking about the Eagles here — the Eagles, who have lost four of their last five games and are free-fallin’ like Tom Petty — so the normal standards of perspective and measured discourse don’t apply.

By my guessing and gauging, Eagles fans have already progressed to the sixth of what psychologists and psychiatrists call the seven stages of grief. They went from Stage 1 (shock) to Stage 2 (denial) right after those back-to-back blowouts by the 49ers and Cowboys. Hey, the Eagles were tired. Their recent schedule had been a gauntlet. (Remember how often that word got thrown around in November?) They’d pull out of it. Lots of season left. They’d be fine.

But that last-minute collapse in Seattle to Drew Lock and the Seahawks, just after the demotion of defensive coordinator Sean Desai, brought on Stages 3 (anger) and 4 (bargaining) in short order. Anger … yeah, no one was hiding that. The bargaining/rationalizing was subtler. Hey, the defense did hold the Seahawks to 20 points. Maybe Matt Patricia can help. I mean, what’s he gonna do? Start dropping the team’s best pass rusher into coverage more often? Wait, don’t answer that.

Needless to say, Stage 5 (depression) fell over the region like a black blanket late Sunday afternoon once the Cardinals finished off their 35-31 victory at Lincoln Financial Field. I suspect most people are still stuck in Stage 5, but come this Sunday at MetLife Stadium, at least a few fans are likely to move right into Stage 6: hope.

As bad as the Eagles have been lately, the Giants are still worse. So if we assume the Eagles win Sunday and finish the regular season 12-5 (a big assumption at the moment, I know), they’ll still be in the playoffs as, in all probability, the NFC’s No. 5 seed. They’d face an underwhelming team from the NFC South in the wild-card round, and you only have to look back to the 2012 Baltimore Ravens, who lost four of their final five regular-season games, to find a team that shook off a late slump and went on a surprising run to a Super Bowl victory. Granted, that Ravens team had a functional defense, and the Cleveland Browns already have signed Joe Flacco. But hey, Stage 6!

» READ MORE: Forget it: The Eagles and their defense aren’t good enough

So in the spirit of that irrational optimism, here are three measures the Eagles could try to get themselves turned around. Are they extreme? Yep. Will they work? Got me. But the bottom line is that the Eagles are past the point of staying the course.

I’m only half-kidding here. Brown is the best player on the Eagles’ offense, and the gap between him and his teammates is wider than it has been at any time during his two seasons here. The offensive line is very good but not the dominant force it once was. Jalen Hurts either cannot or is choosing not to run the ball as frequently and effectively as he did in 2021 or 2022. DeVonta Smith reportedly has a mild ankle sprain, but it was serious and painful enough that he left the locker room Sunday on crutches and in a walking boot. Brian Johnson hasn’t been outguessing many defensive coordinators.

» READ MORE: A.J. Brown isn’t a selfish diva. He’s trying to handle social media and mind his mental health.

Given all those factors, the Eagles should lean into the reality that they have one of the three or four best wide receivers in the NFL. They didn’t against the Cardinals — Johnson and Hurts targeted Brown just five times — and it cost them. This is not about appeasing Brown, who has declined to speak to reporters over the last week-plus and done little to hide his exasperation with the direction of the offense. The Eagles don’t need to feed him the ball to get him happy again. They need to feed him the ball because he and the Tush Push are the two surest things they have going for them.

I’m not really kidding here at all. Reddick has 27 sacks over his last 33 regular-season games. Yet Patricia dropped him into pass coverage seven times Sunday, the most that Reddick ever has with the Eagles, and Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray went 7-for-7 in those instances. Nick Sirianni justified this odd strategy by claiming that the Eagles like to be unpredictable, to keep an opposing offense off balance. But there isn’t an offensive play-caller in the NFL who wouldn’t settle for being surprised that Reddick was attempting to cover a tight end.

From Sirianni’s struggles to control his emotions to Johnson’s spotty play-calling to the communication breakdowns that marred the Eagles’ next-to-last possession against Arizona, the offense’s entire operation seems to be missing a sense of calm oversight. Putting Johnson high above the action might provide more of it. He isn’t necessarily opposed to calling plays from up there. “I’ve done it both ways, and I don’t know that one way is necessarily better than the other,” he told reporters during training camp. He just prefers to interact with players face-to-face during a game.

Sorry. No more time for preferences, not unless the Eagles themselves are resigned to the inevitability of Stage 7: Acceptance of their loss.