Bad Ending

Posted October 5th, 2025

The Eagles led 10-3 at halftime. They led 17-3 after three quarters. They lost 21-17. Ugh. What a frustrating loss. The Eagles aren’t a team that generally blows leads. They let Tampa come back part of the way last week, but the Eagles made the critical plays and won. On Sunday the Eagles made critical mistakes and lost.

Ugh.

Let’s start with a big picture view for a minute. The Eagles just went through a really challenging start to the season. I hoped they would come out at least 3-2. The Eagles get out with a record of 4-1. That’s good and keeps them atop the NFC East and at the top of the NFC. The glass half-empty take is that the Eagles are lucky to be 4-1 and have yet to play a complete game.

There is no question that the Eagles are not playing to the level anyone expected (fans, media, or themselves). Everyone is frustrated. The talent is there, the execution is not. There are certainly times when the coaching needs to be better. You are foolish if you think Kevin Patullo is the reason for the inconsistent start. There are a lot of people to blame. It is convenient to choose the new OC to focus on, but if you are watching the games closely you can see a variety of mistakes.

An illegal shift penalty wiped out a big gain that could have set up the Eagles to re-take the lead. Zack Baun was called for unnecessary roughness when he dove on a player who had just gone down. That came on third down and moved the sticks. There was RPO confusion and Tyler Steen went downfield on a pass and that drew a flag. Quinyon Mitchell gave up several completions to Courtland Sutton, many coming in the fourth quarter. Jalen Hurts and AJ Brown failed to connect on what should have been a long TD. That would have put the Eagles up 21. STs failed to help with field position for most of the game.

Some fans will say to forget all that and focus on Saquon Barkley only having six carries. The Eagles led the NFL in percentage of rushing plays coming in. They tried to be more aggressive with passing today. Clearly Barkley needs more carries. But you aren’t going to have perfect balance very often. Penalties put the offense in some passing situations. When the coaches run the ball in those situations people complain that’s too conservative.

If the Eagles got a PI call on the next-to-last play, this could be a very different story. Dallas Goedert was interfered with inside the 5-yard line. No call. The Eagles almost completed the final pass, but it fell to the ground. It would have been very different if the final play was a closer situation where you could run an actualy play. The Eagles didn’t get the call and did get the loss.

Denver is a good team. They have a really good defense. You have to keep that in mind when evaluating this game. That doesn’t excuse the Eagles mistakes, but it helps to understand some of what happened.

Nick Sirianni said after the game that pre-snap penalties are on him. He’s not doing a good enough job preparing his players and getting them to focus on details. I totally agree. Something is off with the Eagles. Maybe there is a Super Bowl hangover. Maybe they are struggling with having every opponent live and die against them. Whatever it is, Sirianni needs to figure out the problem and find a solution.

Losing is going to happen. The NFL has too much talent for teams to go undefeated. It is concerning that this team has played five games and continues to make sloppy mistakes. That will cost them long term if not fixed.

This is a short week, with a game against the Giants on Thursday night. I like this scenario. You need to learn from a loss like this, but dwelling on it wouldn’t be good. And it would be tough to get past the loss in a town like Philly with so much Eagles coverage.

You never want to lose, but that stat is interesting. The Eagles goals are still right in front of them. They need to learn from this game. Then it is onto the Giants.

https://igglesblitz.com/2025/10/bad-ending/

Got to get right against NY on Thursday night. We have an opportunity to win the next 3 with 2 games against NY and a game against a not very good Minnesota team. Got to get right and got to put in better performances. If we do that the next 3 weeks and use this loss to get things right then as a fan base we will feel very differently.

That said I recall 2023 where we lost to SF and had 2 games in quick suggestion against NY… We won the first but it was ugly and didn’t do much to help our mood… And then I believe we lost the next game against them.