Nick Sirianni lays the blame for Eagles struggles squarely on Nick Sirianni
Nick Sirianni lays the blame for Eagles struggles squarely on Nick Sirianni originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia
It's easy to blame Kevin Patullo. It's easy to blame the offensive line or Jalen Hurts or the edge rushers.
Nick Sirianni has a reminder to everyone looking for someone responsible for this recent stretch of ugly Eagles football. And that's Sirianni himself.
Of course, none of us are doing a good enough job right now," he said Monday. We all have to look internally and get better. When I say that, hopefully you guys always understand that I'm looking at myself first.
I'm looking at the coaches to do the same thing, and obviously the players to do the same thing."
The Eagles are 8-4 and lead the NFC East, but it's been a largely ugly season. They've only won one game by more than a touchdown, and that was over a last-place Giants team that fired its coach two weeks later.
Since a 4-0 start, they're 4-4 with each of those losses coming in some sort of horrifying fashion. They blew a 17-3 4th-quarter lead at home against the Broncos. They lost to the Giants by 18 points as seven-point favorites. They blew a 21-0 lead and lost in Dallas. And they lost at home as a seven-point favorite to the Bears, allowing the 3rd-most rushing yards in the last 60 years.
Along with the Dolphins, Titans and Steelers out of the AFC, they're one of only four NFL teams ranked in the bottom 10 in the NFL in both offense and defense.
Patullo is an easy target and has not been effective as a play caller. But when a team keeps losing games in such spectacular fashion, it's on the head coach as much as anybody.
It isn't just one person, it's the ultimate team game," Sirianni said. We're working through everything. I have a lot of faith in all the players. I have a lot of faith in all the coaches. We've just got to execute it better and scheme it better and (those can both) be true. We've got to call it better.
It's every area that we need to improve on. That's why we always say we look internally through all these things. If all that's not gelling, to me, that's on me first. It's my job to do whatever I need to do to help get it fixed and that's what we're working on right now.
When you get into these adversities that you're in, you can band together as a football team or you can get into a blame world. If we're all looking internally, that's what it's all about. We've all got to do better, and that's everybody."
As we wrote earlier this week, the Eagles' struggles are starting to be reminiscent of the 2023 collapse, which saw the Eagles go from 10-1 to 11-6 with a series of catastrophic losses and then a wild-card blowout in Tampa.
Sirianni said he'll draw on the lessons he learned two years ago as the Eagles try to snap out of their current slump.
The Eagles finish the season in L.A. Monday against the 8-4 Chargers, at home vs. the 2-10 Raiders, at 3-9 Washington and 8-4 Buffalo and then home against the Commanders.
I think you saw ... the lessons we learned in 23 resulted in what happened last year," Sirianni said, referring to a Super Bowl championship.
You always take lessons in everything, win, lose or draw. You're always constantly trying to learn and get better. Sometimes that sting of the loss or the 2023 season has even more impact, which is why I'm grateful for adversity and looking for an opportunity to get better from the adversity.
I think that most definitely those have lasting lessons. I won't be specific about it, but I have very specific thoughts ... written down exactly what we learned and how we learned it and what we did for that.
Obviously, those lumps that you take, if you allow them to, can knock you down and keep you down or those lumps that you take can let you rise up above everything."