Finding Positives

The Eagles lost their third straight game when they fell to the Chargers on Monday night. The season is not over. Both things are true and don’t contradict one another.

The loss in LA was tough. The Eagles had chance after chance to win the game. It was incredibly frustrating. But there were some positives. Let’s not lose sight of some good things that came out of the game.

DEFENSE

Vic Fangio’s unit was outstanding. The Chargers ran 71 plays, but only gained 275 yards. The Eagles were good at the line of scrimmage and equally as good in coverage. RBs had 27 carries for 100 yards. Justin Herbert threw for 139 yards. LA had five drives that went for 10 yards or less. The Eagles finished with 3 takeaways. That’s a season high in turnovers for the Chargers. Anyway you slice it, the defense was excellent in that game.

It took an incredible effort from Herbert for the Chargers to score 22 points and win the game. He showed just how special he is physically. Herbert is big and strong. He’s fast and mobile. He’s also tough.

PASS RUSH

There have been times this year when the pass rush struggled. That wasn’t the case on Monday night.

Justin Herbert was pressured on 68.3% of his dropbacks per @NextGenStats (6/14 for 112 with an INT) and only saw a blitz on 12.2% of his dropbacks (obv Fangio doesn’t like to blitz if he can get base pressure).

To win a game despite that % is…breaking my brain.

— Jourdan Rodrigue (@JourdanRodrigue) December 9, 2025

The Eagles finished with 7 sacks and 11 QB hits. The pass rush was relentless in going after Herbert. If he wasn’t so hard to bring down, the Eagles could have easily finished with 10 sacks. It was so much fun to was the rush get home time after time and control much of the game.

RUNNING

Saquon Barkley finished 20-122-1. He had a 52-yard TD run. He also had runs of 19 and 10 yards. The Eagles were able to get some chunk plays that had been missing for much of the year. The Chargers shut Barkley down on a lot of plays so it wasn’t all good, but it was encouraging to see him get out into space and use his speed to deliver big plays. The offense just feels different when he’s running like that.

DRIVES

The Eagles only had two 3 & out drives in the game. They had 6 drives with six or more plays. That wasn’t great by any stretch, but doing a better job of staying on the field did help the defense. Those guys weren’t dying by the end of the game.

RETURN GAME

Britain Covey averaged 18 yards on three punt returns. A couple of those kept the Eagles from being pinned deep. Good returns mean improved field position. Better field position generally leads to more offensive success. The Eagles were great at complementary football last year. The offense, defense and special teams would help each other. They’ve struggled in this area in 2025. Maybe that will turn around over the final month.

CB2

Adoree Jackson played really well in LA. He had 2 PDs and an INT. He tackled well and was active (5 tackles). His play got someone’s attention.

Adoree been playing damn good lately!

— Darius Slay (@bigplay24slay) December 9, 2025

*****

Just to be clear, I’m not delusional. The Eagles turned the ball over 5 times, missed a FG and had some costly penalties. There were dropped passes and even some mistakes on defense. The Eagles played well enough to lose a close game. That’s not the goal for anyone.

I understand people who want to vent and rant, but you have to get past that. Yelling doesn’t solve problems. If the Eagles could clean up a handful of plays, they win that game. The team has now been sloppy for three straight weeks. Nick Sirianni has got to keep searching for the right message that will get them to relax and play good football. Smart football.

The schedule lightens up for the next couple of weeks, but the team has used up their margin for error so they can’t afford to overlook anyone or be overconfident.

As to my comment about the season not being over, we don’t know how things will turn out. This clearly doesn’t look like a Super Bowl team. But you can’t obsess on that. Focus on winning some games. Then think about winning the division. Worry about the playoffs when January gets here.

Right now all the focus should be on beating the Raiders on Sunday.

Just win baby.

_