The Philadelphia Eagles made a lot of changes over the past offseason. But through two weeks, the results haven’t been very different. After blowing three fourth-quarter leads in 2023, the Eagles gave up another one in the final minute of their Week 2 loss to the Atlanta Falcons.
With the loss, it’s safe to say former Eagles wide receiver DeSean Jackson has had enough. On the September 19 episode of his podcast, “25/10 Show,” he strongly criticized the Eagles for how they work together.
“They’re like the in-between. Like they’re great players, but they haven’t learned how to win great,” Jackson said. “You can’t be up two or three touchdowns, you let teams come back and win.
“Right now, we’re a mediocre team with great players.”
To be fair to the Eagles, they haven’t blown any multiple-touchdown leads in the fourth quarter since the start of the 2023 season. But they have allowed opponents to score the game-winning touchdown in the final minute in four of their past 15 games.
During that stretch, the Eagles own a 7-8 record, including the postseason.
DeSean Jackson Points Out Super Bowl Appearance Raised Expectations
Behind a strange argument, Jackson suggested the Eagles hurt themselves with an appearance in the Super Bowl during the 2022-23 season. The former receiver, who played eight years in Philadelphia, implied the NFC championship raised expectations considerably.
“This Eagles team, it’s like a heartache, and the reason why I say this is because we’re going off a team that went to the Super Bowl, made it to the Super Bowl,” Jackson said. “Jalen [Hurts, quarterback] brought us there, we paid him all this money. If we go back to that Super Bowl, yes, we played against Patrick Mahomes. Yes, we should have won.
“But you can’t live off of should have, would have, could have. We was up in that game, so now it’s like, we’re trying to live up to that hype.”
The Eagles followed up their Super Bowl appearance with a 10-1 start to the 2023 season. It looked like the NFC championship was not a fluke.
But the narrative has changed since the team’s collapse last season. The Eagles lost seven of their last eight games, including the postseason, to end the 2023-24 campaign with an 11-6 record. In two of those defeats — against the Seattle Seahawks on December 18 and against the Arizona Cardinals on December 31 — they blew a lead in the final minute.
To Jackson’s point, the Eagles now seem to be struggling to rediscover what made them so successful in 2022.
An Aerial View of the Nick Sirianni Era in Philadelphia
While the Eagles made changes at both offensive and defensive coordinator this offseason, one thing they didn’t do was fire head coach Nick Sirianni. With his .667 win percentage in the regular season, that made sense.
But taking an aerial view of the Sirianni era in Philadelphia, the Eagles have been wildly inconsistent.
During the first half of his first season in 2021, the Eagles went 3-6. They then turned it around, going 6-2 in the second half to make the postseason.
From the second half of 2021 to Thanksgiving weekend last year, the Eagles posted a 30-6 record in the regular season. During that stretch, they went an incredible 29-3 when quarterback Jalen Hurts started.
But since that streak ended, the Eagles are 2-6.
Sirianni doesn’t need to post an .800 win percentage the rest of the season to save his job. But the criticism around the head coach and the team will only grow louder from former players such as Jackson if the Eagles don’t begin trending in the right direction again soon.
