The hurdle only gained the Eagles five more yards, on a drive that ended with a field goal. But it was one of the weirder things you could ever see on a football field; until it happened, it wouldn't have even seemed to be on the menu. It will be in Eagles highlight packages forever. Early in the second quarter on Sunday, Saquon Barkley took a pass from Jalen Hurts in the flat. He juked one defender to pick up a first down, then spun away from another. Now with his back to the end zone, Barkley jumped into the air and over Jacksonville Jaguars cornerback Jarrian Jones and landed on his feet. It was a play that had Eagles color commentator Mike Quick screaming. “It was the best play I’ve ever seen,” head coach Nick Sirianni said.
Eagles beat reporter Zach Berman wrote that down the line, this is the play you will first remember from this game. That makes sense, and not just because the play was unique and incredible. When the Eagles honored LeSean McCoy at halftime yesterday, they showed some of his runs in the Blizzard Bowl. Nobody remembered that the Eagles trailed 14-0 in that game, or that they gave up punt and kickoff return touchdowns. They only cared that the Eagles came back to win 34-20, with McCoy rushing for a franchise-record 217 yards. (People tailgating yesterday will probably also remember that Robert De Niro and John Kerry were there.) The Eagles beat the Jaguars on Sunday, although what was once a laugher came down to the wire. Barkley's hurdle will be remembered a lot longer than that, and deservingly so.
Right now, though, the attention is on Sirianni. I’ve written before about the idea of a perfect Eagles game: One where the Eagles win in a thrilling victory over a hated opponent, but play poorly enough that fans still get to complain all week. The Jaguars aren’t a hated opponent, but no Eagles fans wanted to lose to ex-head coach Doug Pederson. They definitely didn’t want to lose after going up 22-0 early in the third quarter. And yet the Jaguars had first and 10 at the Eagles’ 13 with 1:42 to play, and were down just 28-23. The Eagles won because Nakobe Dean intercepted Trevor Lawrence in the end zone, but the Jaguars very nearly stole this one.
And what makes this game so perfect, for Eagles fans, is that they get to complain about the coach they complained about all offseason and have been complaining about since early this season. Sirianni even argued with fans in the stands after a win that opened the team’s current four-game winning streak. (Oh, yeah: the Eagles are 6-2.)
Yesterday’s ire with Sirianni has to do with his decision-making. Marcus Hayes, last seen getting shoved by Joel Embiid, accused Sirianni of committing “the second deadly coaching sin: greed.” It’s unclear if there are seven deadly coaching sins, or why greed is second on the list—Christianity's seven deadly sins are generally ordered in terms of seriousness—or if committing these sins will lead to eternal damnation or simply a normal end-of-year firing.
I’m not quite sure Sirianni actually got greedy in this one, though. One could even spin it as this: He simply made a bunch of non-traditional coaching decisions yesterday, and fans did not agree with them. In large part that is because, incredibly, all of those decisions failed. Let’s list ’em.
- Up 10-0 in the second quarter, the Eagles went for it on a fourth-and-3 at the Jacksonville 22. A Jalen Hurts pass to A.J. Brown was incomplete.
- Up 16-0 after a Saquon Barkley touchdown on a coward’s draw late in the first half, the Jaguars went offsides on the successful extra point. Sirianni attempted to go for two instead. Jacksonville stopped it.
- Up 22-0 after a Jalen Hurts rushing touchdown early in the third quarter, the Eagles attempted to go for another tush push from the 1. (The Jaguars were flagged on the score.) Jacksonville stopped it again.
- Up 22-16 late in the third quarter, the Eagles went for it on third-and-1 from the Jacksonville 25. The Eagles did not tush push, nobody was open, and Hurts ended up basically throwing it away.
- Up 28-23 with 2:16 left in the fourth—the Eagles had missed another two-pointer in the interim, but this one was simply an attempt to go up 14 instead of 13—the Eagles passed on a fourth-and-4 and had Jake Elliott attempt a 57-yard field goal. It hit the upright.
“We’ve done pretty good at those in the past,” Sirianni said postgame. “You think about who you have. You think about your past experiences with it. You always look at the analytics of it. We’ve been pretty good on those. Today, [the Jaguars] did a good job. I’ll look at everything. Everything in the moment I’m always doing what I think is best for the football team. … When we get a fourth down, and we convert a fourth down, nothing’s really said. When we don’t, I understand there’s going to be questions.”
The Eagles made both of their two-point conversions before Sunday’s game and are now 2-5. They are now 11-for-17 on fourth-down conversions, seventh in the league at 65 percent. The Eagles have been aggressive on fourth down under Sirianni, just as they were under Pederson, and that’s fine. Some people (me) think you should go for two after almost every touchdown. Some people (also me) think that going for it on fourth down is fun, and like when the Eagles do it.
But there were mitigating factors to Sirianni’s choices yesterday that, beyond baseline Eagles fan mindset, easily explain why people are mad at him. That extra point before half would’ve made it a three-score game. A field goal late in the third would’ve made it a two-score game. A two-point conversion from the 1 is still a full yard; the tush push has been incredibly successful, but that is one of the harder attempts at it. (For instance, the Buccaneers stopped a tush push two-point attempt in last year’s win over the Eagles in the playoffs; defensive players actually grabbed Hurts’s face mask to help stop the play, but that’s a pretty good strategy at the 1 as a penalty would just move it forward a half-yard.)
Of course, the main issue on Sunday is that all of these plays failed. If you’re going to make that many unconventional coaching decisions, at least one of them ought to pay off. The second fourth-down play, especially, was terrible! The third two-point conversion attempt was possibly even worse. The Jaguars managed to make both their two-pointers, to boot. Even to an observer who thinks every decision Sirianni made was defensible, the fact that every single one failed would be blood-boiling.
The Nick Sirianni era has included three playoff appearances, including a Super Bowl, and has also been one where fans have been furious with the coach for various stretches. The Eagles have six wins in eight games, and still get to play the Cowboys twice, the Giants again, and the Panthers. It is going to be fun to see how Sirianni continues to piss off the fans, even if the Eagles keep winning.
