Inside the worst Eagles loss in a decade: What went wrong vs. Cardinals and what it means for the playoffs

There was no explanation in a stunned locker room for an afternoon that was inexplicable — and inexcusable. The Eagles’ 35-31 loss to the Arizona Cardinals was perhaps the worst loss of the past decade. There have been worse performances, but there’s never been this type of defeat with these types of implications. The Eagles were 13-point favorites at home against a three-win team. They only needed to win two games against opponents with losing records to clinch the NFC East and, at worst, the No. 2 seed. 

Now, they’ve lost four of five games and are likely on the road in the playoffs. To be sitting in this position on New Year’s Eve is a deflating feeling for a fan base that was offered little reason to believe in the Eagles during the past month despite ongoing bluster. To be outplayed — and outcoached – by the Cardinals under these circumstances speaks louder than any statement they could make. 

“We say it was ‘playoff mode’ and we come out and play like that?” Jordan Mailata said. “It looks like we don’t have any pride, but we do. It’s tough.”

This is one of those games that will be remembered for years to come as a disheartening New Year’s Eve loss. Here’s why it was so painful:

1. The defense 

If Sunday was Jonathan Gannon’s Super Bowl, the Eagles responded accordingly. In fact, the defense allowed more yards and offensive points scored than Gannon’s defense did in the Super Bowl. The Cardinals entered the game ranked No. 26 in offensive DVOA, yet they totaled 449 yards and possessed the ball for nearly 40 minutes. They rushed for 221 yards. They had seven drives of at least seven plays. They did not punt. The Eagles could have survived with the defense’s performance from the Super Bowl! 

This was a different low — against a far inferior team. 

“Obviously (the Cardinals) controlled the game by running the football,” Nick Sirianni said. “We weren’t good enough there stopping the run and they were able to take a lot of chunks off the clock. I think they did a good job executing. But we know we have to be better putting the guys in positions to succeed and also executing.”

This was three weeks after replacing Gannon’s replacement. It’s Week 17, the Eagles already changed coordinators, and this is still happening under Matt Patricia. It’s hard to imagine a large-scale fix. They are what they’ve shown themselves to be. They’re showing that Sean Desai might not have been the problem, and his demotion was a reaction to the problem. 

“I still believe in the guys in that locker room, the players. I still believe in the coaches,” Sirianni said. “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? 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.”

 One fact worth noting: this was the first of Patricia’s three games in which the Eagles faced a team’s starting quarterback. Desai was demoted following games against Dak Prescott, Brock Purdy, Josh Allen, and Patrick Mahomes. The spurts Sirianni referred to came against Tommy DeVito and Drew Lock — and still included Lock’s game-winning touchdown drive two weeks ago.

What was once one of the NFL’s stingiest run defenses allowed a season-high 5.5 yards per carry. They had a defensive rush success rate of 46.2 percent — their second-worst of the season. They allowed a season-high 14 first downs on the ground. In the locker room, they spoke about gap responsibilities. That was clearly an issue. So was tackling. Some of that goes back to roster construction — the Eagles are undermanned at linebacker — but the defensive line must be better. That’s where the Eagles invest their resources. They’re not stopping the run and they’re not pressuring the quarterback. The Eagles had one sack against Arizona and have four sacks in three games under Patricia. This was after 70 sacks last season and 2.8 sacks per game during the 13 games under Desai. 

Perhaps in related news, Haason Reddick dropped into coverage a season-high seven times on Sunday. 

“Just not good enough,” Reddick told reporters of the performance. “No way to put it. We weren’t good enough today.”

2. The late-game play-calling

The Eagles moved the ball effectively throughout most of the game, but when they needed a touchdown with a short field while the game was tied at 28 points, they leaned toward conservative play-calling.

After a penalty pushed the Eagles back to a 1st-and-20 on at the 30-yard line with 4:13 remaining, the Eagles called two runs for Jalen Hurts — the first gained four yards, the next lost three yards — and a short screen to Kenny Gainwell. The play-calling was met with audible disgust from the crowd. It’s hard to blame them.

“I don’t think that’s conservative there if they are blitzing a bunch of gaps there, you’re running a gap scheme that has a chance to hit for big yards that we needed to get back into it,” Sirianni said. “We could have thrown it there, too. We chose to go there. Hey, it didn’t hit. But I think that sometimes with the gap scheme stuff that you do, it’s more of, you’ve got to do some different things to cancel out gaps if they are bringing everything out. So that’s why we went that way. It didn’t work. 

“The screen, we were third and (19), that’s tough, you’re going to have a hard time converting. We’ve got to get ourselves into range. The wind was blowing into our face a little bit on that side earlier in the game, so we needed to get into better range to make sure we took a three-point lead there.”

There’s so much to unpack here. First, it’s hard to fathom how an offense that has A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, and Dallas Goedert would not try to involve them in that situation. The Eagles were efficient through the air all afternoon, so the back-to-back Hurts runs seemed unimaginative. As the coaches are wont to tell you, those can be packaged plays and Hurts is reading the defense. 

But mind you, Gannon also knows the Eagles and their tendencies — especially with the quarterback-run game.

“He sat there in those meetings with us. He’s been in those meetings,” Hurts said. “He’s heard kind of what we’re thinking in certain situations and we practiced against them every day for the last two years.”

And the idea that third-and-19 is difficult to convert so they should go with a screen is an easy excuse. The biggest play in last week’s game was a third-and-20 conversion. 

The Eagles have had third downs with 15-plus yards to go 19 times this season. They’ve attempted a pass with air yards of greater than seven yards five times. They converted on three of those plays. They’ve had nine passes of seven yards or fewer. They’ve converted once on those plays and had gains of more than 10 yards twice. Expecting to break one those plays for a big gain seems like wishful thinking. And positioning the Eagles for a first down or a potential conversion might have been a better strategy than turning a 47-yard field goal for Jake Elliott into a 43-yarder. The very reason that the Cardinals went for an onside kick was to ensure Kyler Murray got the ball back (and Eagles fans likely wish this was the approach in the Super Bowl last year!). 

“It worked,” Gannon said. “The reason for that is you don’t want to get bled out. That team is too good. I trust the defense to get a stop right there and make them kick a field goal, which is what they did, but with five minutes left, what they’ve shown is they’re not going to give you the ball back. And I wanted to make sure at all costs Kyler had the ball in his hand.”

The Eagles bled fewer than three minutes off the clock. (They also burned a timeout they could have used late in the game.) Of course, it’s easy to write this after the fact. Perhaps those quarterback runs might have been incompletions, and less time would have come off the clock. Or maybe Hurts would have busted one for a 15-yard gain to get them into third-and-manageable. But wouldn’t you rather be aggressive than conservative in that situation — especially when your defense has shown little reason for confidence?

“I would like to do whatever works,” Hurts said. “I think, again, it is result based. We live and die on whatever we go out there and do. That particular opportunity, it didn’t get us where we want it in the end, but it’s tough to be in that situation. You get the holding call. I don’t remember the sequence, but you get the holding call and you kind of go backwards and they get enough yardage in those first two downs to put ourselves in a good situation. So you know, they give us the ball inside of the 50 and we just have to handle and execute and manage that situation a lot better.”

To add injury to insult: Smith was injured blocking on the screen pass. He wore a walking boot and was on crutches after the game. 

3. The playoff picture

After the Cowboys escaped on Saturday against the Lions, the Eagles were in pristine position for at least the No. 2 seed with the tiebreaker over the Cowboys for the NFC East. All they needed to do was beat the Cardinals and the Giants — two games in which they’re heavy favorites. And it would have put pressure on the 49ers next week against the Rams, who have won six of seven games. So the No. 1 seed would have been in play.

With the loss, the Eagles are likely to be the No. 5 seed (unless Dallas loses to Washington and the Eagles beat New York). So instead of at least two home games, any hope of a return to the Super Bowl would require them to go on the road. The likely opening-round opponent would be Tampa Bay, with New Orleans and Atlanta also possibilities if the Bucs lose. 

“Obviously, you always want to play at home,” Sirianni said. “You always want to win the division. You always want to play at home. Path might be harder but shoot, our goals are ahead of us. We have to get things fixed and we have to get them fixed fast. We are not where we want to be right yet as far as how we are playing right now and how we are coaching right now but we’ve got time to get it fixed and we’ll get back to work tonight and tomorrow.”

The Eagles’ reason for optimism in the locker room was that they’re in the playoffs, and everything resets in the postseason. But there’s no doubt that the path is more difficult. Plus, instead of going into the postseason with the momentum of a three-game winning streak, they’re now a team that seems susceptible to anyone after losing to a three-loss team at home (not to mention the three-game losing streak earlier in the month).

“We’ve got to make it through this little storm right now. But we believe in us,” Brandon Graham said. “So at the end of the day, I know we’re going to get right. And I feel so good because we’re going to go out next week, take care of our business, and then it’s 0-0 at that point.”

4. The big picture

The book on this season is not finished, so the Eagles could still rewrite the ending. But the arc is worrisome. They were 10-1 after Thanksgiving weekend with a collection of high-profile wins, an MVP favorite at quarterback, and the resume of a strong contender to return to the Super Bowl. They’ve now lost four of five games, have already made the biggest staff change in the Sirianni Era, and they’re likely to be on the road in the playoffs. 

This is all moot if they go on a postseason run, although after losing to Arizona at home, it’s reasonable to think there’s a possibility to be one-and-done in the playoffs. 

And if that happens? One would expect changes in Philadelphia, both with members of the coaching staff and on the roster. It’s still premature to speculate what those changes would be, but it’s hard to imagine Jeffrey Lurie would accept a “run it back” approach on the staff if there proves to be a late-season collapse.

With the roster, the Eagles already saw in 2018 what happens when the roster gets older quickly. They made some short-term moves this season, although they have far more young talent than they had after the Super Bowl in 2017. But there are certain positions for which they’ll need to take a closer look at roster construction, and there could be retirements from some of the great players in Eagles history.

That’s the other big-picture part of Sunday’s game that makes the result even sadder for the franchise. This might have been the final home game in the stories careers of Jason Kelce, Brandon Graham, and Fletcher Cox. A win would have made the path to home playoff games more likely. Unless those players return in 2024 or the Cowboys stumble against Washington, their final home game might be remembered as the worst loss in a decade for the Eagles.