Eagles bottom out in humiliating postseason loss to Bucs. Will the finger point at Nick Sirianni?

TAMPA, Fla. — Howie Roseman stood outside the locker room and greeted every player walking through the entrance following the Eagles’ 32-9 postseason loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, with most interactions carrying the weight of an epic collapse that left the organization in a tailspin. He shared an emotional hug with Jason Kelce after what might have been Kelce’s final game of a storied career. Jalen Hurts was one of the first players Roseman encountered, and they shared an embrace and a quick word. Brandon Graham, who vows to play one more season, was among those who received the biggest greetings.

Nick Sirianni was not part of the receiving line. He entered through a side door that led to the coach’s quarters in the locker room. 

There was nothing sinister about the sequence. But it might have been symbolic. 

Because the unavoidable question after losing six of seven games and appearing overmatched and outcoached as road favorites in the positions is whether Sirianni will keep walking through the door as the Eagles’ head coach.

“I’m not thinking about that,” Sirianni said. “As the head coach, trying to be there for our guys and our staff right now.”

“I didn’t know he was going anywhere,” Hurts said when asked if he wants Sirianni to stay. “I have a ton of confidence in everyone in this building.”

“I’m just sitting and watching,” Lane Johnson said. “I really don’t know what it’s going to happen. It’s very frustrating. You see what this team was and you see how the team ended and the slide that we had. …It’s a wild business we’re in. Nobody’s safe. We’ll see what happens.”

The speculation has grown throughout the slide, although the Eagles had a chance to at least quiet much of the chatter with a win in Tampa Bay. Instead, it looked even worse. If the loss to Arizona wasn’t rock bottom, and the scoreless first half against the Giants in the season finale wasn’t the wake-up call, then the performance on Monday would suffice as the worst it could get. The defense couldn’t tackle. The offense couldn’t convert a first down. After a week of answering questions about the blitz, they appeared flummoxed. Hurts made a foolish play that resulted in a safety to turn a one-possession game into a two-possession game in the second half. 

The Eagles didn’t just look inferior; they lacked any apparent urgency or desire to fix the problems that have been so evident through the collapse. 

The simplest question is how did they get to this point. The answer is much more complicated — and one that comes with major reverberations.

“Obviously we were in a big slide,” Sirianni said. “Any time that’s the case, I always look at myself first. And I didn’t do a good enough job. Obviously, we lost five in the last six and lost today. And it was almost like you couldn’t get out of the rut. …And that’s all of us. We’ll have to look ourselves in the mirror and accept that and find and find answers, find solutions. But obviously, when you start 10-1 and you get into what will happen for us and obviously that the expectations were high. Expectations were even higher when we started off 10-1 we fell into a skid. So I’ll look at everything. I’ll obviously look at the play calling, I’ll look at the scheme, I’ll look at practices. I’ll look at everything.”

So will Jeffrey Lurie. Sirianni did not have any word on when he’ll meet with the Eagles’ owner. He said he didn’t plan on losing, so he didn’t have the end-of-season schedule completed. That was set to be sorted through on the flight home.  

The players will come to the facility this week for exit meetings and to clean out their lockers, although the finality of the season already left for a melancholy locker room. There was embarrassment, but it didn’t seem as if there was shock. It was more resignation. Because they’ve played like this before. They’ve tried to answer for it before. 

Earlier in the week, Graham explained the pride that the team maintains and how it will show in the playoffs. When told that he shared a similar sentiment after other losses, he didn’t disagree. What made this one different was that it was win-or-go home.

The Eagles are going home.

“The effort wasn’t the problem,” Johnson said. “We all had great relationships. It’s just, we have a slide going and you can’t stop it. Losing the last — whatever we did, probably the first fucking team to end like this after starting the season the way you did… It’s frustrating. We offered plenty of explanations, but at the end of day, we never did get the result we wanted to do. So shit’s got to change.”

And what exactly must change? Johnson said, simply, winning. 

That hasn’t happened enough during the past month. DeVonta Smith, who had eight catches for 148 yards, pinned the problems on execution. He said the Eagles had the answers for what to do on Monday, but they didn’t execute well enough. That would shift the blame to the players from the coaches, although it’s difficult to watch the product and think the game plan or the adjustments were sufficient. The Eagles did not score in the second half. They allowed a 56-yard touchdown in the third quarter. That doesn’t absolve the players, although the proof was on the field. They were either unprepared or unable to follow through on the plan. Either way, it’s happened too often during this slide. The truth is everybody has a part of this — Roseman’s roster construction, Sirianni and his staff’s coaching, the players’ underachievement. If praise was easy to accept during the Eagles’ march to the Super Bowl, then responsibility must not be shunned after a downfall.

The answers seemed to be wrong during the past two months, with the most high-profile example proving to be the ill-fated decision to change from Sean Desai to Matt Patricia. That will assuredly be part of the postmortem in the coming days. Even if Sirianni stays, the bare minimum expectation would be staff upheaval. 

Hurts pointed out that when the Eagles last lost a postseason game in Tampa, they returned the next year and went to the Super Bowl. It’s his way of emphasizing the importance of learning from this moment.

“It wasn’t our turn,” he said. “And I can accept that, knowing that the sun will rise tomorrow and there will be another opportunity to attack it. …We’ll learn from it. I know I’ll learn from it.”

But the Eagles seemed to be on the rise after that game two years ago. It’s different now. As Sirianni said, the expectations have been raised. Hurts likes to suggest the standard remains the same, although even he acknowledged the standard can shift from year to year. The Eagles fell below the standard this season — or perhaps their problems suggest that’s their standard. 

It’s still startling to think they’re in this position when they were atop the league at 10-1. It seems ridiculous to imagine dismissing Sirianni after he brought the Eagles to the postseason for three consecutive seasons. But no resume gloating or November memories can erase the way this season ended. It does not overshadow how humiliating their performance appearance appeared on Monday.

The door slammed shut on the Eagles’ season. And the question now becomes who will still walk through the door.