Now, there can be no false hope.
After their 27-10 defeat at the hands of the Commanders in Maryland on Sunday Night Football, their second prime-time humiliation against a divisional opponent in six days, there can be no rationalizing making a push for a sixth straight postseason appearance.
At 2-6 and languishing at the bottom of a laughably bad NFC East, the Eagles’ 2026 season is done.
We should be thankful for the closure.
Over the next two weeks, general manager Howie Roseman will work to sell
off starters on expiring contracts. Those of you with Dallas Goedert, Riq Woolen and/or Hollywood Brown jerseys, tough luck there. He’ll certainly listen to offers on everyone else. Yes, even Saquon Barkley, who it was reported on Sunday the Eagles would not trade as they look to contend in 2027. It’s hard to believe Roseman would shoot down an obscene offer for anyone on his roster at this point, although it’s highly unlikely Barkley wears another uniform this season.
The big question left after another dreadfully sloppy performance on Sunday night is whether Nick Sirianni, Sean Mannion, Vic Fangio and the rest of the current coaching staff will be around to coach Barkley and his teammates on next year’s Eagles squad.
It’s no surprise the Eagles are losing right now, and Roseman deserves as much of the blame for what’s happened this year as any of his coaches. Roseman and Lurie, after all, are the ones who hired Sirianni’s offensive coaching staff. But mirrors can be difficult to look into, and Roseman and Lurie aren’t firing themselves.
Injuries cannot be helped. If Jalen Hurts had been on the field last night instead of overmatched back-up QB Tanner McKee, it’s likely the Eagles would have won. That he was lost for the season with blood clots is an unfortunate bit of bad luck, as are the injuries to DeVonta Smith and Tay Wicks, the retirement of Lane Johnson, and Barkley’s inability to stay 100% healthy this year.
But it’s possible to play a cleaner brand of football with mediocre talent than what we’re seeing out of the Birds over the last few weeks. The highly-paid and supposedly talented defense knows the offense has no chance and appears to have given up. Vic Fangio was reportedly thinking about retiring this past off-season, and one has to wonder if this nightmare won’t accelerate those plans. But there’s no excuse for the kinds of mistakes (off-sides penalties, personal fouls), and inability to generate splash plays that we’ve seen from the defense this year.
That side of the ball is relatively healthy.
After Sunday’s night’s debacle just outside the nation’s capital, Sirianni shouldered the blame for his team’s brutal display.
“I know I’ve said this: Until we coach better, until we have better detail as coaches, until our players play with better detail, then we’re gonna see the same results,” he said. “And that falls on me. I feel like with all the detail that’s not happening right now, I got to try a different approach. And so that’s 100 percent on me. With how many of those issues are happening right now, I’ll do everything I can to try different things to make sure that we’re getting that point across.”
There is little doubt Sirianni is preaching the right messages to his players. They just may not be listening. And that is usually the death knell of a coaching tenure.
Sirianni’s message has helped compile one of the most impressive resumes of any head coach in the history of the NFL. In his sixth year with the team, he entered 2026 with a 59-26 record, the third-highest career winning percentage (.694) in the Super Bowl Era (min. 50 games). Among Super Bowl-winning head coaches, only John Madden (.759, 1969-78) and Vince Lombardi (.738, 1959-67 and 1969) have a better winning percentage. He’s also the first coach to reach the playoffs in each of his first five seasons, with three division titles, two trips to the Super Bowl and one Super Bowl victory.
But every coach has a lifecycle, and most don’t last as long as Andy Reid’s did at the beginning of Lurie’s tenure, or Mike Tomlin’s in Pittsburgh. Despite preaching the mantra “tough, detailed, together” ad nauseum to his players, these Eagles are none of those things.
They are getting bullied. They are exceedingly sloppy. They do not communicate or function well as a unit in any phase of the game.
It’s not necessarily his fault when Markel Bell commits a false start on a 4th-and-4 with the game on the line in the 4th quarter, nor is it his fault when former All-Pro offensive tackle Jordan Mailata lines up wrong on a late game field goal that is negated and then subsequently missed. But when you have a string of incidents like this, game after game, that’s less about talent and more about competency of coaching.
While the Eagles are much less talented than they have been over the course of Sirianni’s tenure, there are enough good players on the roster that they should not be embarrassed by the likes of the Cowboys and Commanders. They should not be a bottom-feeder.
Andy Reid went 5-11 in his first season with the Eagles. It was exceedingly ugly early on, but it was clear he was building something. The team had a young quarterback in Donovan McNabb they were excited about, and pieces were being put in place. The team looked more cohesive than they had in Ray Rhodes’ disastrous 3-13 disaster in 1998. Despite having an awful record, the difference in play between the two regimes was obvious.
So, what are we witnessing here? Are we watching a Rhodes’ 1998 season, or will Sirianni’s group get it together over the second half and at least put on a good show, like the ‘99 Reid squad did?
Obituaries for Sirianni have been written before. There are probably a number of Eagles beat reporters that had one ready to go in the can in the middle of the 2021 season, following the 2023 season, or at the bye week in 2024. Every time Sirianni has been written off for dead, he’s resurrected the team and his job security.
And maybe that will happen again this off-season. He can fairly point to injuries on offense, specifically the loss of his star quarterback, and the growing pains of an offensive coordinator that he did not hire. He can point to a defense that has not played anywhere close to its potential. He can point to bad luck, bad bounces, and the realities of the cyclical life of the NFL.
But one has to wonder if Sirianni has the skills to actually turn things around this time.
He doesn’t have an offensive scheme that works anymore. He doesn’t call plays. He’s not an offensive mastermind. He’s completely uninvolved with the defense. He doesn’t have the power to hire his own coaching staff, and the player/personnel decisions are all handled by his bosses, albeit with his input I’m sure.
Sirianni’s lone job is to rally the troops, keep the messaging going, and get his players to buy in and believe they can overcome the many obstacles put in front of them. That may not mean making the playoffs or winning a lot of games this year, but it would mean being competitive, avoiding stupid penalties at inopportune times, and other unforced errors that give off the appearance the team is badly coached.
If you’re Roseman and Lurie, what makes more sense to you?
Would it make more sense to give this current group another season as Jalen Hurts, Saquon Barkley and everyone on defense loses another year of their prime? Or should they wipe the slate clean and hand an offensive-minded guru the keys, let him call plays and hire his own staff?
There comes a time when every head coach’s message loses resonance. Players hear it, but tune it out come game day. Players start to play for themselves and their numbers, and aren’t willing to sacrifice for a team that may only win five games.
That appears to be what we’re witnessing here as the 2026 season develops. And if it persists, it’s hard to see how Roseman and Lurie decide to give this coaching staff another bite at the apple next year.
