Not Dead Yet

Mark Twain is famous for saying “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” That came he apparently read his own obituary. Leave it to him to turn an awkward moment into an all-time great line. Maybe, just maybe, the reports of the Eagles 2023 season dying are a bit exaggerated.

One of the key talking points for some people recently has been that Nick Sirianni lost the team. The players don’t care for him. They don’t have his back. That was speculation and it appears to be wrong.

AJ Brown says he is not mad at Nick Sirianni. Says Sirianni took the blame in the Seattle game on the "drawing the penalty quote" Says Nick fell on the sword for them #Eagles pic.twitter.com/xHSdsHHULU

— Chris Franklin (@cfranklinnews) January 3, 2024

Always look forward to Fletcher Cox's perspective, who was honest about the embarrassing performance against Arizona, discussed what's ahead for the Eagles, and defended Nick Sirianni: https://t.co/qhg3J43ep1

— Zach Berman (@ZBerm) January 3, 2024

We know accountability is a huge part of the Eagles culture. AJ Brown going public to talk about the end of the Seattle game is interesting. He and Jalen ad-libbed. That didn’t work and Sirianni covered for him. In another clip AJ talked about one of the QB runs from Sunday. With one better block, it could have been a big play. We can debate whether it was a good call, but the execution wasn’t good enough.

AJ apologized to the team for not speaking to the media and how that affected them. That became a distraction for other players. I think AJ speaking to his teammates can have a effect on them.

If the players start to hold each other accountable, that can make a real difference. The last two losses came down to a handful of plays. Clean those up and you get back to winning games. I’m not telling you to start making Super Bowl plans, but hitting rock bottom may have gotten some guys to wake up. Maybe that will get players to have more of a sense of urgency and will lead to some good things.

The 2012 Ravens went 10-6 in the regular season. They won the Super Bowl despite losing 4 of the final 5 regular season games. I wouldn’t count on the Eagles repeating that performance, but it has been done.

The Eagles need to focus on playing good football. Live in the moment. Play to play, drive to drive, half to half. Let us on the outside think big picture. It is important for the players to be positive. They aren’t going to accomplish anything if they don’t believe in themselves. AJ still believes.

Keep pushin' through pic.twitter.com/rDUd45m9Gu

— Philadelphia Eagles (@Eagles) January 3, 2024

The vibe around this team feels better. That doesn’t guarantee anything, but I think AJ speaking did a lot of good.

Florida State had an amazing run under Bobby Bowden. They had 14 straight seasons where they finished in the Top 5 in the AP poll. Bowden talked about one of the downfalls of the program being that too many players started to believe putting on the jersey made them good and not the other way around. They expected to be good rather than working to be good.

I wonder if a lesser version of that happened to the Eagles. Players lost the edge they had last year. They expected to be good.

Maybe the Arizona loss will really wake up the players and help them to get back the edge they need.

I am really interested to see how things turn out. It will be a lot easier to go into the offseason if the team shows some life against the Giants and in the playoffs. A bad couple of games would lead to a long, tough offseason.

*****

We do know the Eagles have talent.

https://twitter.com/Eagles/status/1742713915627172215

They had 6 Pro Bowl players and multiple alternates. I’ll save you the suspense…James Bradberry didn’t make it this year.

https://twitter.com/RoobNBCS/status/1742723106731385314

That Stoutland guy is pretty good. It is amazing to see how the OL has been a strength of the team since Andy Reid came to town in 1999. Juan Castillo was a good coach and then Howard Mudd put together some good lines. Stoutland has done an amazing job in his 11 years with the Eagles.

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Who’s To Blame

Nick Sirianni has talked about what a big sports fan he is over the years. That love of sports caused him to give me a call last summer to talk about Eagles fans and the upcoming season.

Sirianni was concerned that getting to the Super Bowl so quickly would bring on a lot of bandwagon fans. Part of what makes Eagles fans so special is that they are 100 percent dedicated. They follow the team win, lose or draw. Sirianni worried that too many bandwagon fans could make all Eagles fans look soft and ruin the reputation they’ve built for decades. Soft is only good in Philly when we’re talking about pretzels.

So I got a call from Sirianni asking what he could do that would drive away some of the bandwagon fans. I took a sip of my PBR and looked over the schedule, hoping to come up with a good idea for the Eagles coach. The team could start 0-4. That would bring a lot of misery. But it would also suck right from the beginning. Nothing would build.

Then it hit me.

“Nick, you need to get off to a really good start. You could go into the bye week undefeated, but that might be too much. Lose a game to some AFC team nobody cares about. Lose to the Jets.”

“Okay, we can do that. I’ll have Jalen throw some picks and we can write that off as a bad game. What then?”

“This could be amazing. Start 10-1. You’ll have wins over Dallas, KC and Buffalo. It will be hype city. Jalen will be getting MVP talk. The Eagles will be favored to get back to the Super Bowl. Fans will be on cloud nine. Then you drop the hammer. Lose to the Niners and Cowboys. Even better, make those blowouts. Fans will be pissed. But they will rationalize the losses because those teams are so good.”

“I like where your head’s at.”

“Then we’ll really get weird. Blow the game in Seattle at the very end. Fans will start to get really despondent. That will put them on the edge. They’ll rationalize the loss because winning in that crappy stadium is so hard.”

“So that puts us at 10-4. What next?”

“Beat the Giants. We don’t want to start losing to them. That would be a dead giveaway that all of this is scripted. We don’t want that. Make the game closer than it should be to keep fans uncomfortable.”

“We can definitely do that. I’m sensing a fluky pick-six and some other weird plays.”

“Nick, you’re speaking my language. We are on the same page here. Now we come to the Arizona game.”

“Wait, you don’t want me to lose to Gannon do you?”

“I know that is asking a lot, but it would be perfect. Everyone will go nuts if you lose to the Cardinals. They’re going to be one of the worst teams in the league. Make it another late game loss and bandwagon fans will be buying Christian McCaffrey jerseys faster than you can call a wide receiver screen on third-and-long.”

“Damn, Lawlor. That’s asking a lot.”

“I know, but think about it. You’ll go from 10-1 to dropping 4 of 5 and losing late leads to bad teams. This will crush the souls of all Eagles fans. Only the truly fanatic people will stick around. You’ll be scraping barnacles off a sinking ship.”

“This really is some devious stuff.”

“It won’t be easy, Nick. People will be ripping you relentlessly. They’ll want to fire you.”

“If that is what it takes, I’ll do it.”

“You’re going to need to do some weird stuff to really sell this. Demote Sean Desai in the middle of the season. The fans like him. Promote Matt Patricia and that will be another thing that has the fans wondering what’s going on.”

“Sean’s a good dude, but he’s been in Philly. He’ll understand why this has to happen.”

“This is all well and good, but how should we close the season out?”

“I’m glad you asked. Here’s what we’re going to do…”

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