The Philadelphia Eagles are trending in the wrong direction during the stretch run of the regular season and their defense has been the main culprit in their collapse. Despite the unit’s poor play on the field, head coach Nick Sirianni is trying to keep the faith.
His defense had another miserable showing on Sunday as they allowed 35 points to the Arizona Cardinals in a stunning 35-31 loss, dropping the Eagles back down into a wild-card spot in the NFC and handing them their fourth loss in five games for the month of December.
After Sunday’s performance, the Eagles are allowing 25 points per game and rank among the bottom 10 in the league in points against. They have also allowed more than 30 points six times this season, including three times in December.
It is a huge fall for a unit that finished eighth in the NFL in points against just one year ago on their way to the Super Bowl.
“I do believe. I still believe in the guys in that locker room, the players. I still believe in the coaches. I think we’ve got the guys in this place to get turned in the right direction. We don’t have much time, obviously, right,” Sirianni said. “We’ve got one more game before playoffs starts, and we’ve got to do everything we can do to get back on track this upcoming week. I think there’s been spurts, obviously, the last couple games where we played good ball on defense. Tonight wasn’t one of those times.”
The Eagles lost defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon this past offseason when he took over the head-coaching job for the Cardinals. There have been major issues since his departure and it has left the Eagles scrambling for in-season answers.
The biggest change involved stripping defensive coordinator Sean Desai of his play-calling responsibilities and giving them to Matt Patricia. That has not come close to solving the problems as the Eagles defense has repeatedly been beaten in the weeks since that change.
Of course Sirianni is going to say he still believes in everybody because no coach – especially a coach of a playoff team – is going to say anything else at this point in the season. What he says and what he actually believes deep down, however, might be two very different things.
The Eagles are still heading to the playoffs, but they are now in a position where they might let home-field advantage, a bye week and perhaps even a single home game all slip away. Nobody in Philadelphia should be optimistic about this team going into the playoffs.
