Instant observations from Bears 24, Eagles 15: Eagles dominated in all phases in Black Friday stinker

Well, it was not a particularly fun Black Friday for Philadelphia Eagles fans. You know, unless they got some good discount deals before the game started.

The 8-3 Eagles entered the game against the 8-3 Chicago Bears as seven-point favorites. But throughout Friday’s game, the visiting Bears were the better team for two main reasons: Chicago dominated the Eagles on the ground to an alarming degree and the Eagles offense continued its season-long, staggering ineptitude against a banged-up Bears defense that came into the game as a below-average unit.

The Bears ran 47 times for a staggering 281 yards, as they came into Lincoln Financial Field and beat the Eagles, 24-15. The Eagles are now 8-4 and the NFC’s No. 3 seed behind Los Angeles and Chicago.

It will be curious to see where the Eagles go from here, as the Dallas Cowboys are now above .500 and playing better football than them. The Eagles still have the inside track at the NFC East title, but are clearly trending in the wrong direction. This team is going to hear about it all week, and you know what, Al Michaels? They deserve it.

Here are the PHLY Eagles staff’s observations from the Eagles’ loss.

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EJ Smith

Eagles fans flocked toward the exits midway through the fourth quarter a few hours after Nick Sirianni ran down the first-half game clock for the same reason.

The futility of the Eagles offense has become a foregone conclusion.

Alarm bells will ring throughout the holiday weekend and well into the long week to follow the Eagles’ 24-15 loss to the Chicago Bears on Friday evening. This team won’t play again until next Monday night, but they’ll have plenty to unpack from an embarrassing display in which both the offensive and defensive lines were overmatched by their Chicago counterparts. Chicago’s 281 rushing yards were the most the Eagles have allowed since 2015. The Eagles offense went six consecutive drives without managing more than one first down.

The loss places the Eagles further into the crowded pack of NFC playoff hopefuls and behind in the race for the No. 1 seed. If the offense remains as lost as it was on Friday night, none of it will matter, anyway.

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Fran Duffy

Whether or not you think the Eagles suffered through a hangover from last week’s come-from-behind loss on the road in Dallas on a short week … this is a bad loss.

Juxtaposing this Bears offense with this Eagles offense? It was like one team was playing a different sport run by a different set of rules.

One team couldn’t move the chains on third down. The other kept the defense on the field. One run game was explosive and efficient. The other failed to get much of anything rolling.

The Bears owned the line of scrimmage on both sides.

The offense was listless, with long stretches of futility once again. The defense looked uninspired, particularly early and late.

The vibes are bad. Can this team turn them around?

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Bo Wulf

I’m so tired of national announcers treating Philadelphians booing as some sort of sociological curiosity, as if watching a team with Jalen Hurts, A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, Saquon Barkley, Dallas Goedert, Jordan Mailata, Landon Dickerson, Cam Jurgens and Darius Cooper looking like one of the worst offenses in football should elicit anything else from the crowd beyond a unified chant of “That’s OK!” How about 70,000 fans throwing paper airplanes onto the field that are just hand-written notes saying “We’re glad you surrendered over 250 yards rushing! Thank you!”

As if it would be better instead not to care at all.

Boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

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Jamie Lynch

That first quarter SUCKEDDDDDD. Pre-snap penalties, defense getting torched, just an awful way to start the game. Offense shows some signs of life early in the 2nd quarter with a nice play action DeVonta pick up, only for the drive to be wasted on a horrendous Hurts missed pass to DeVonta for a possible TD and the Eagles having to settle for 3 points. Too many missed tackles, just had a bad vibe to them throughout the first half.

No reassurances before the half when it comes to the offense as Nick let 20 seconds run off the clock to get down to the 2 minute warning. It received some boos, as it should have. That was a soft mentality. In hindsight, it should’ve been booed louder & harder.

Them getting gashed on the ground today for over 200 yards might’ve been the worst part of the game. The most rushing yards allowed since Vic Fangio has been the Eagles DC.

The Jalen Hurts fumble on the tush push effectively ended the game. The Birds had a chance to steal the game right then and there after a spectacular Jaylx Hunt INT & just gave it right back. A truly disappointing performance on Black Friday. This could be the game we look at as having ended the good times in Philadelphia.

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Rich Hofmann

It was pretty crazy to watch the Bears run the ball down the Eagles’ throats the entire afternoon. That was disappointing, and reminded me of what the Eagles did to teams all of last season. Oh, how much can change a year.

But it’s the offense, it’s always the offense. The idea that the defense that plays with the offense who is going three-and-out at the highest rate in a decade is gassed? That makes sense to me.

I thought Jalen Hurts was bad in this game, and that his final stat line is misleading. It’s been interesting watching him at times this year, as the offense has been poor almost in spite of him. But Hurts is the quarterback for the most disappointing offense in all of football. He owns that, despite the clear issues with the scheme, play-calling and offensive line. And in this game, Hurts missed DeVonta Smith on what should have been a walk-in touchdown. You just can’t have those types of misses.

I know it was a Xavier Worthy-type of garbage time production for A.J. Brown, but seriously, why is throwing him the ball so hard? Why can you not do just try that instead of not playing offense for an hour?

Last thing: In 2023, the Eagles completely folded down the stretch. There is a lot of wiggle room between winning a Super Bowl and whatever 2023 was. Even if this is not trending like a defending champion, I would like to see the defending champs show some more backbone than they did two years ago.