Is this a must win game for Eagles coach Nick Sirianni against the Cowboys?

A week ago, coming off a win over Pittsburgh, Nick Sirianni was riding as high as ever.

He’d escaped his shadows. The specter of 2023 was gone when he led a team that started 10-1 to a 1-5 finish and a first-round playoff embarrassment, then spent the summer mending fences with quarterback Jalen Hurts. He’d been forgiven for his outburst at Eagles fans after a Week 6 win over Cleveland. And he effectively managed a mini-crisis the week before, when receiver A.J. Brown correctly identified Hurts as the reason the Eagles’ passing game stunk.

The Eagles then beat the stout Steelers, Hurts threw for nearly 300 yards, and the Eagles won a franchise-record 10th game in a row. Two of those wins had come at Baltimore, where, with 17 seasons, John Harbaugh is the second-longest tenured coach, just behind the Steelers’ Mike Tomlin.

Sirianni seemed like a viable NFL Coach of the Year candidate and a shoo-in to get a contract extension — as his current deal expires at the end of the 2025 season.

» READ MORE: Eagles announce Jalen Hurts will miss Sunday’s game vs. Cowboys with a concussion

A week later, at Washington, in a game that would clinch the NFC East, Hurts suffered an early concussion. Backup Kenny Pickett looked overwhelmed. The defense looked disorganized and undisciplined: A late substitution glitch cost the Eagles a touchdown after safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson was ejected for two unsportsmanlike conduct penalties and defensive tackle Jalen Carter was flagged for a league-high fourth unnecessary roughness penalty. The Birds forced five turnovers and held a 13-point lead with less than 20 minutes to play, and they blew it.

After the Commanders game, Sirianni reportedly taunted former Eagles tight end Zach Ertz as the teams exchanged handshakes and, in their interaction, a high-five. This incident recalled Sirianni’s incident against the Steelers, when defensive line coach Clint Hurtt physically blocked Sirianni from approaching Carter on the bench after Carter had been penalized.

The Cowboys visit on Sunday for Game No. 16. The Eagles beat them by four touchdowns at Dallas in Week 10. Disqualified from the playoffs, the Cowboys shut down receiver CeeDee Lamb on Thursday for the rest of the season. He’d been playing with a painful shoulder injury. That makes him the fifth Pro Bowl player the Cowboys have lost for 2024, along with quarterback Dak Prescott, defensive end DeMarcus Lawrence, cornerback Trevon Diggs, and right guard Zack Martin.

Still, the Cowboys have won four of their last five games, including a win at Washington. Even without Lamb, they are respectable, prideful, and, mystifyingly, loyal and inspired by their coach.

» READ MORE: Kenny Pickett and the Eagles receivers are feeling ‘more comfortable’ after a week of reps together

If Sirianni loses at home to a Dallas team playing without Lamb, quarterbacked by Cooper Rush, and coached by Mike McCarthy, will it foretell certain disaster and disappointment? Would two divisional losses to inferior opponents down the stretch of what has been a magical season be sins too dire to forgive? Looking ahead, can the Eagles play poorly enough Sunday to cause worry over their season’s final game against the Giants, the NFL’s worst team?

It sounds impossible, but it’s not. Any combination of results that costs the Eagles the NFC East and puts them on the road heading into the playoffs for the second consecutive year must be seen as a coaching issue. This can only happen if the Eagles lose three games in a row and the Commanders win three in a row.

Stranger things have happened.

Nobody thought that losing five of six regular-season games at the end of last season was possible either, and that’s what put them on the road in Tampa, Fla., where they got blown out in the playoffs for the second time in three years.

It shouldn’t matter that Hurts is out. Sirianni cannot be graded on any sort of curve because he’ll be using a backup quarterback for at least one game. After all, if the Eagles collapsed, he would’ve been beaten by backups from the Cowboys and Giants — and a rookie in Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels.

It will be interesting to see what sort of hangover remains from the loss to the Commanders.

The Cowboys will be absolutely rabid if you take their temperature by the vows of feverish pass rusher Micah Parsons.

» READ MORE: If the Eagles lose against the Cowboys, blame the kelly green jerseys

He said this almost two weeks ago:

“At this point, it’s f— Philly, now. Even if we got eliminated, like, I gotta crush Philly. F— them. I hate them now. I be seeing them just talking so much on socials. I don’t know, my Twitter page got consumed by Philly [fans]. Man, ugh. They say don’t look forward to some things, but I’m excited about the matchup [next week], too.”

He didn’t back down this past week:

“Knowing how they’re trying to get the No. 1 seed. They are fighting for everything. They are fighting for where they wanna be in the playoffs. We are fighting to whoop them. That would be a great feeling right there.”

And while Pickett has a 14-10 record as a starter the past two seasons for Pittsburgh, he was generally healthy when he started those games. Now, he has banged up ribs. A couple of shots from Parsons will make it Tanner McKee time, who has yet to take a snap since he was drafted in the sixth round last year.

You have to be able to prepare your backup quarterback to win games. Sirianni’s backup quarterbacks are 1-3.

If they go 1-4, all bets are off.

The Eagles play in Week 17 against the Dallas Cowboys. Join Eagles beat reporters Olivia Reiner and EJ Smith as they dissect the hottest storylines surrounding the team on Gameday Central, live from Lincoln Financial Field.