With Kevin Patullo in crosshairs and offense to blame in playoff loss to 49ers, Eagles’ title defense died as it lived

The intermittent thwack of handshakes between Eagles players saying their goodbyes in the aftermath of an abrupt playoff exit was the only thing to cut through the silence.

The Eagles 23-19 loss to the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday night made the setting one of the final spaces this year’s collection of players will occupy together, a reality illustrated by pained expressions and palpable disappointment across the room as it set in for a dispersing group talented enough to do something special but going home early nonetheless.

The performance was typical in all ways but one. The Eagles defense was dominant for most of the game, the offense grew dormant in the second half after a promising start and late-game decisions from Eagles coach Nick Sirianni wound up backfiring. But unlike the countless times the Eagles survived these circumstances in the weeks leading to the playoffs, they weren’t able to overcome against a 49ers team that withstood countless injuries and two second-half turnovers to play spoiler at Lincoln Financial Field.

“Winning is hard,” Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts said postgame. “Nothing about it is easy, especially when you’re trying to repeat. Everything was clear for us and what we wanted to accomplish this year and we came up short, and so you have no choice but to learn from it, especially if you have a great passion about it. And that’s my approach. That’s my approach with it all.”

It’s fair to say winning — at least not winning Sunday’s wildcard matchup — shouldn’t have been quite as hard for the 2025 Eagles as it looked for most of the season with consistently listless offensive performances weighing the team down throughout the regular season and again on Sunday. The Eagles managed just 114 net yards of offense across six second-half drives and came up just short late in the fourth quarter with a chance to win the game with a touchdown against a significantly depleted San Francisco defense.

As has been the case on several occasions this season, the Eagles went three-and-out on four of their five drives between the end of the second half and the start of the fourth quarter.

“Felt like that was kind of our story as the year progressed,” Sirianni said. “Good first half, didn’t do a good enough job coaching, didn’t do a good enough job executing in the second half, in that third quarter particularly.”

When asked why the offense wasn’t able to figure out the issues that persisted throughout the second half of the season, Sirianni somewhat unsurprisingly didn’t offer an answer.

“I don’t know. Obviously, those are things that– we always work our asses off to try to fix,” he said. “And you know what? At the end of the day, we didn’t do a good enough job of doing that and that starts with me.”

And on offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo’s performance this season, Sirianni deferred judgment.

“There will be time to evaluate everybody’s performance,” he said. “Right now, I feel for all our guys in the locker room, all the players, all the coaches, the front office, everybody that works so hard, the fans that come out and support us, Mr. Lurie. I feel for all of us, all of them, and there’ll be time to evaluate everything coming up.”

Hurts added, “I think it’s tough to single out one individual, especially in a moment like this. We all got to improve and that’s how I look at everything that we go through. … I take ownership for not being able to put points on the board. It all starts with me and ends with me. And so there’s a sense of a lot there that you can learn from. I think as a team, as a collective group and personally for me as a quarterback, how you see the game, how you feel the game, and ultimately just, ‘Okay, how can I find a way to win?’ We weren’t able to do that today.”

Individual miscues played a significant role in those second-half struggles — the Eagles had penalties contribute to three of their four stall outs over that stretch to go along with drops from A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith — but predictable, conservative play-calling from Patullo played a major part as well and should put the coach’s future with the team under intense scrutiny in the coming days.

The Eagles were notably run-heavy in second-and-long situations Sunday night. The offense faced second-and-10 or more nine times and ran designed runs on four of them. And while Saquon Barkley had 106 rushing yards on 26 carries largely thanks to a steady first half, the well eventually dried up as the Eagles posted a 33% success rate in the second half against the 49ers with a handful of negative runs.

Eagles offense finished the regular season with a 42% success rate in the second half of games, 28th in the league. CLE was worst in the league at 37%. Finished the season with a 33% banger against one of the worst Ds in football. Maybe they'll figure it out next week.

— (@bowulf.bsky.social) 2026-01-12T04:55:17.318Z

But even if Patullo isn’t back as the play-caller for the Eagles offense after this offseason, the team will likely have to dig deeper to find solutions for what ailed this year’s offense.

Inconsistent play from the Eagles offensive line was a constant this season and undoubtedly contributed to Barkley’s momentum slowing in the second half against the Niners as well. The Eagles ruled out right tackle Lane Johnson with a Lisfranc foot injury for an eighth consecutive game just before kickoff and, after the game, Eagles left guard Landon Dickerson conceded it was a “shitty” year for him playing through “a lot.”

Perhaps more concerning, Dickerson didn’t express confidence when asked if an offseason to heal would allow him to return to the player he was before suffering a torn meniscus in training camp and picking up back, ankle, and calf injuries during the year.

“If I had an answer for that,” he said. “I’d probably feel a lot better.”

In the passing game, the lasting images of Brown getting into a heated back-and-forth with Sirianni on the sideline, dropping a pass on the Eagles’ final drive and hastily exiting the Eagles locker room after hugging a handful of teammates that included Hurts beckon the question: Will this be the final time we see him in an Eagles jersey? Brown declined to speak to reporters after the game, but Sirianni said the heated exchange the two had was about the star wideout not getting off the field quickly enough on fourth down.

“I was trying to get him off the field because we were about to punt and that was really it,” Sirianni said. “I love A.J. I think he knows how I feel about him. I have a special relationship with him. We’ve probably [gone] through every emotion you can possibly have together. We’ve laughed together, we’ve cried together, we’ve yelled at each other. We’re both emotional.”

The same question about future prospects goes for Dallas Goedert. The tight end was emotional in the postgame locker room, conceding that he believed the Eagles were on track to win the game after he pulled off a 15-yard catch with the Eagles’ facing fourth-and-5 from midfield.

The 31-year-old is one of the few key contributors on this year’s offense not under contract for next season. Perhaps that’s why the inevitable change the group is now staring down was front of mind for him in particular, but the sentiment he shared as his teammates headed for the exits holds true nonetheless.

“Saying goodbye to this team, it’ll never be the same team again,” Goedert said. “It’s always tough. You just grow as a family. I’ve got a lot of love for the brothers on this team. It’s just a somber state.”