All was well with the Philadelphia Eagles in the first half of Sunday's game. The defense looked dominant again. The offense, which had struggled in low-scoring wins the past two weeks, was churning again. The Dallas Cowboys’ first drive of the game ended on downs. Another stalled with a lost fumble. In the first half, Jalen Hurts was 12-of-17 with two TD runs and a touchdown pass to A.J. Brown. Philly led at halftime, 21-7. The broadcast showed Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, and he looked miserable. Every Eagles fan was having a good time.
Well, the second half changed things. The defense gave up more and more yards on each drive. The Cowboys got back into the game, then snatched it at the end. Brandon Aubrey’s 42-yard field goal as time expired gave the Cowboys a shocking 24-21 win over the Eagles. Dallas won, despite turning over the ball twice and going 0-for-2 on fourth down. The Cowboys hadn’t won back-to-back games all year; they hadn’t beaten a team with a winning record. Now they have. This Cowboys victory had Dallas Morning News columnist Tim Cowlishaw referencing Winston Churchill in his postgame story.
Yesterday's comeback was not some fluke. After digging themselves a three-touchdown hole, the Cowboys dominated the Eagles. Philadelphia had plenty of chances to pull away for good, and Dallas wouldn’t let them. When Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott threw an end-zone pick in the second quarter, that could have been one chance to salt it away. Instead the Eagles went backward on a penalty-prolonged three-and-out, and Prescott’s 48-yard pass to KaVontae Turpin got Dallas moving on a drive that concluded with their first touchdown. Prescott ended the game with 354 passing yards, and a season high 9.8 yards per pass attempt.
The Eagles defense had chances to make sure Dallas never got back into it. Still, the offense was the main culprit, committing seven penalties of a season-high 14 penalties, and failing to reach the red zone after their first three drives. Saquon Barkley rushed for just 22 yards, and fumbled on the Dallas 36 in the fourth quarter. The Eagles fumbled on an ensuing punt, but managed to stop the Cowboys on fourth-and-goal with four minutes left. On Philly’s final drive of the game, Jalen Hurts was sacked for a 13-yard loss on third-and-2. Dallas drove 49 yards to set up Aubrey’s game-winner. The Eagles had a lot of chances to cancel out their offensive ineptitude. They didn’t take advantage.
“We’re going to have a shitty plane ride home,” Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni said afterward. Eagles fans, less than a year after a blowout win in the Super Bowl, are apoplectic. Sports talk radio is afire—but it’s not just Harold from Swedesboro who wants heads. Reuben Frank, the dean of the Eagles’ beat corps, is calling for the Eagles to fire offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo:
They can’t run the ball. They can’t consistently get the ball to their elite receivers. They’re among the worst in the league on third down, first downs per game, yards per play, sacks per pass play.
You name the category, they’re near the bottom.
The Inquirer’s Jeff McLane says the blame should actually fall on Sirianni for orchestrating the whole thing. “He’s the driver of the Eagles’ conservatism this season and it finally caught up to his team,” he wrote. “Sirianni and Patullo turtled up when they should have pounced on the Cowboys’ sloppiness.” Whoever the culprit, the offense shut themselves down in the second half. Hurts was under pressure more, and he went deep less.
The last time the Eagles blew a lead this large, it was the worst collapse in team history, in 1985: The Eagles led 23-0 against the Minnesota Vikings going into the fourth quarter, and lost, 28-23. The 1985 Eagles started 1-4 but were poking around the playoff race after a few fourth-quarter comebacks, and sat at 6-6. A win against Minnesota would have gotten them above .500 for the first time all season. The home game was “do or die," but the Eagles had a good chance of avoiding rigor mortis. The game was in Philly, and the Vikings started backup QB Wade Wilson. The franchise honored the 1960 title team at halftime. “This is another chance to prove ourselves,” WR Mike Quick said before the game.
They did just that for about 50 minutes. Wilson got benched at halftime for Steve Bono, who went 1-for-10 for five passing yards in his NFL debut (the Daily News noted he’s from Norristown). Wilson returned for the fourth. The game was so out of hand that his pep talk to the team upon returning to the game was literally, “Hey, we're out of the ball game. Let’s just go down, get a touchdown, and say we were able to score.” What happened next is proof that inspirational speeches are overrated. There were nine minutes left when the Vikings had third-and-13 in Eagles territory, but Wilson got his wish: Two plays later, the Vikings were able to say they’d scored.
Then they kept scoring. Eagles QB Ron Jaworski fumbled on a botched bootleg run, and Vikings DB Willie Teal ran it back for a touchdown. Three snaps later, John Spagnola lost a fumble. It continued to unravel. The Vikings scored in three plays. The Eagles went three-and-out. Wilson tossed his third touchdown on a desperation heave to Anthony Carter on fourth down. The Vikings won, 28-23.
“It was like falling down the stairs in a dream,” Spagnola said, via the Daily News. “It was like a grenade went off in that fourth quarter and the only things left were the fragments,” Eagles linebacker Anthony Griggs said. “Where’s the defense?” yelled Tommy McDonald, star receiver on the 1960 team. “What the heck’s going on?” Jaworski called it the worst loss of his career—worse than losing the Super Bowl.
There’s a reason I share all of this: The 1985 collapse against Minnesota basically ended the team’s playoff hopes. The Eagles finished that season with a 7-9 record. Members of the last Eagles’ championship team were in shock as they witnessed a nightmare. Yesterday’s loss was arguably worse. Fans were upbeat most of the game that Sunday in 1985. Fans were not as happy for most of yesterday’s game. I was 2 when the Eagles lost that game to the Vikings, so I do not remember how I felt about it. Maybe I pooped my diaper. But at least it was quick. The score went from 23-0 to 28-23 in about eight minutes of game time. Yesterday's loss to the Cowboys dragged on for much longer. The Eagles offense stopped moving the ball in the second quarter.
Last week it felt silly, perhaps even ridiculous, to fret over the Eagles’ offense when the team was 8-2 and the defense had just made two of the top quarterbacks in the NFC look like 1985 Steve Bono in consecutive weeks. It does not seem quite as silly now. Teams are successfully adjusting against the Eagles most weeks: Philly has scored 10 or fewer second-half points in eight of its 11 games.
The Eagles seemed incapable of adjustments yesterday. PHLY’s Deniz Selman, a Wharton professor and one of my favorite Eagles Sickos, noted the Cowboys were playing five-man fronts against the Raiders last week. One Eagles player said postgame that he was surprised by that defensive strategy. “We went in, they gave us a defense that they rarely run,” offensive lineman Landon Dickerson said, “and we just didn’t execute the game plan that we had.” If a defense that was dialed up to stop the Raiders can also stop the Eagles, Philly is in trouble.
The 1985 Eagles were unlikely to rally for a playoff berth. The 2025 Eagles are the defending Super Bowl champs, and continue to hold a healthy lead in the NFC East. Still, the 2023 late-season collapse remains fresh in fans’ minds. “The Eagles are going to be fine” has been the refrain after each close win this season. Despite the gaudy 8-3 mark, that’s starting to feel like a wish more than anything else.
