The Burden of Expectations

The 2023 Eagles are a maddening team. We desperately want to define them with one word or a simple phrase. Each week they go out and remind us this is a very complicated team. The Eagles aren’t alone. The entire NFL is full of strange teams this year.

The Rams started off 3-6. They have gone 5-1 since then and the only loss came in overtime against the Ravens, who happen to be the best team in the league. The Browns are 10-5 despite having four QBs start at least two games for them. They signed Joe Flacco out of nowhere and he’s 3-1 for them. Baker Mayfield has thrown 26 TDs for the Bucs and Tampa has a terrific chance to win the NFC South. They were a mess just a month ago. The Raiders just beat Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs in a game where Las Vegas had 48 passing yards.

The 2023 football season is nuts. Certifiably insane.

A lot of people are down on the Eagles right now. That’s the 11-4 Eagles, who should win the NFC East and who still have a chance to be the #1 seed in the NFC playoffs. The Eagles have a strong record despite playing a brutal schedule. This team has beaten the Cowboys, Bills, Chiefs and Dolphins. They beat the Vikings with Kirk Cousins and Justin Jefferson. The Eagles wins over the Rams and Bucs look better each week.

Expectations have been a curse for this team. Super Bowl or bust. People want convincing wins. They want to see the 2022 Eagles, who made a ton of big plays on offense and defense. Things don’t always work that way. The Eagles are playing sloppy football and no one would deny that. But they are still winning most of those games.

Go back to 2018. The Eagles were coming off a Super Bowl win and had big time expectations. That team was 6-7 at one point. They had a pair of overtime losses and also blew a 17-6 lead in the fourth quarter to the Panthers. That team lost tight games.

The 2011 “Dream Team” had a ton of expectations. The Eagles had gone 10-6 the year before. People thought a full season of Michael Vick and the addition of some key free agents would be the recipe for the Eagles getting back to the Super Bowl. That team started 4-8 and had some absolutely torturous losses. They rallied to finish 8-8, but that was a team that struggled in close games. They blew multiple fourth quarter leads and just fell apart in crunch time. They lost a game to John Skelton for pete’s sake.

Those teams wouldn’t have held on for wins against the Bills, Chiefs and Cowboys. They would have found a way to lose those games. The current Eagles, flawed as they are, have found a way to win most of the tight games.

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We are frustrated because we want the comfortable wins of 2022 and those just aren’t happening.

It is absolutely fair to be hard on this team and critical of their performance. They are disappointed in themselves. No one is happy with the way this season has played out. But we don’t want to lose sight of the fact they are 11-4 despite playing a tough schedule. I think too often fans are glossing over that as if winning 11 games is easy or the Eagles just got lucky. Neither is the case.

The Eagles have a Top 10 offense in points and yards. They’re 8^th in DVOA. As much as the defense has struggled, it is 23^rd in DVOA. The special teams are ranked first in DVOA. There are times when people would have you believe this is a hopeless team. That’s just not the case.

This is an incredibly frustrating team. They make too many mistakes. A lot of people on Monday were letting me know just how poorly the Eagles are coached based on some of the mistakes in the game. That is a more complicated discussion than they understand. Jason Kelce was called for a false start and had a bad snap. Jordan Mailata had a dumb block in the back penalty. So is Jeff Stoutland now a bad coach? What OL coach would you like to replace him with?

You can’t complain about coaching and only mean Nick Sirianni and the assistants you don’t like.

Just because a guy makes a mental mistake doesn’t mean he’s poorly coached. There is something strange about this team. Maybe the pressure of trying to make it back to the Super Bowl has affected them. You see players doing things that are dumb, but these same players are generally considered to be smart.

Jalen Hurts didn’t run out of bounds late in the first half on Monday and that almost cost the Eagles three points. It did cost them a chance at seven points. Hurts isn’t dumb. He was desperate to make a big play. He wanted to score a TD. The Eagles were winning 17-3. Hurts wanted to go up 24-3. He wanted a blowout. He got greedy and it could have really hurt the team.

Kelce has had his share of brain farts this year. He’s still arguably the best center in the league and will likely be a Hall of Fame player, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t done some dumb things this season. He would be the first to tell you that.

James Bradberry has struggled all year. You can live with physical decline. That happens to everyone. His PI late in the first game against Dallas was a bonehead play that could have cost the Eagles that game. A smart, veteran DB should have known better. Bradberry just panicked.

I’m not trying to fully exonerate the coaches. Their job is to teach. Part of that is passing on the correct information, but part is also finding the right message so that the information sticks. Clearly that isn’t happening this year.

Trying to figure out why that isn’t happening is not an easy task. Coaching changes are part of the equation. Shane Steichen and Jonathan Gannon were each in Year 2 as coordinator last year. We’re judging new coordinators Brian Johnson and Sean Desai against that. It can take time to figure things out.

I don’t think we can stress the burden of expectations enough. Winning isn’t good enough. You need to win the right way. That puts tremendous pressure on players and coaches. Last year a lot of things went right for the Eagles. They didn’t have key injuries. The ball bounced their way a few times. That made it easier to perform at a high level.

This season is the opposite. Everything is a challenge. They have had 6 different off-ball linebackers start a game this year. 6!!! That is nuts. They have had 5 different safeties start a game. The middle of your defense is going to struggle when you have that many different players in spots where continuity, communication and chemistry are key.

Think about turnovers. We’ve seen numerous defenders drop INTs. Last year guys made some crazy catches as well as the easy ones. The offense is the opposite. They got lucky a lot last year. This year the Eagles have been way too generous with giving the ball away. Hurts and the offense racked up a lot of big plays in 2022. This season it feels like he is forcing things as he tries to create big plays. That has led to turnovers and some bad incompletions.

There is a chicken or the egg question in regard to this team. Last year’s team had great chemistry and culture. Was that because of the winning and so many things went right…or did they win and so many things went right because the team had great chemistry and culture? Which led to which?

This team hasn’t felt quite right all year. Earlier this season Sirianni had to deal with AJ Brown and DeVonta Smith both being visibly frustated during games because of lack of targets. Dallas Goedert was frustrated with his lack of touches earlier in the year. You know Quez Watkins and Rashaad Penny can’t be happy. They obviously aren’t key guys, but frustrated players aren’t going to help chemistry. Josh Sweat spoke out after a recent game to explain frustration with the pass rush. He made it sound like guys were being too selfish. Derek Barnett wasn’t happy with his lack of playing time before he got cut.

Things aren’t always going to be perfect, but this team has felt more selfish than last year’s group.

We’ll have to wait and see how things turn out for this team. They could have some postseason success. I do not see them making it to the Super Bowl without something crazy happening. Anything short of the SB will be disappointing because of the expectations this team had.

When the season is over, Jeff Lurie, Howie Roseman and Nick Sirianni need to have some long talks to try and figure out where things did go wrong. There won’t be a simple answer. They will need to find fixable issues. Some of the problems are too random to fix, but others can be addressed. We don’t know what the roster will look like completely, but there will be enough talent that there will be big expectations.

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