Winners and losers: 7 takeaways from Eagles loss in Week 2

Everything sucks. The Philadelphia Eagles fell to 1-1 after a pitiful, miserable, grievous, and downright sorry loss to the Atlanta Falcons on Monday Night Football. In totality, the team consists of nothing but losers. For the most part, everything looked terrible. 

It’s disheartening and it’s a week ruiner. There’s nothing to look forward to and everything deservedly feels bad. The Eagles were big favorites in this game and hopes were high, only for a harrowing defensive showing to tear our hearts out. Everything truly and absolutely sucks.

The Eagles show that 2023-type meltdowns are not a thing of the past

A wounded Kirk Cousins was easily able to march down the field when it mattered. The offense failed in a clutch moment. The Eagles have a defensive line that deserves to be unemployed. Everyone was set up for success and laid the biggest of turds when they had an opportunity to change the outlook of the franchise, let alone the season. It was an indictment on the entire team… the whole team.

Loser: Scripted plays on the opening drive

The Eagles started this game on a truly baffling front. It’s common knowledge that a team’s first drive consists of scripted plays, meaning those are the plays the team decided and practiced running to start on the right foot. The Eagles' first drive consisted of a pass to Grant Calcaterra (TE2), a pass to Britain Covey (WR3) that was called back due to a penalty, a quarterback run, another pass to Covey, and then another quarterback run on a third-and-nine. 

They must have known that that combination of plays was going to result in a punt. If they didn’t, everyone should be fired. 

It was incredibly stupid and equally frustrating to watch. If you thought that maybe Nick Sirianni and Brian Johnson had somehow decided to build an initial offensive game plan, just know that you weren’t alone. It was a very dumb personnel usage for a planned drive.

If there was a red flag that ultimately predicted how this game would go, then that drive raised it. It was as abysmal as it was infuriating. DeVonta Smith’s first catch didn’t come until there was 1:17 left in the first quarter. That’s a plan that is not only unsuccessful but is rage-inducing. 

The Eagles choosing to neglect DeVonta for 14 minutes when their dominant WR1 is injured should spark a level of emotion deep inside your heart. If that feeling is despair and hatred, you’re right. Your emotions are justified.

Ultra-loser: Nick Sirianni

Nick Sirianni was hired as an offensive head coach for the Philadelphia Eagles in 2021. He ultimately and spectacularly failed at that. Now he’s been entirely neutered of all of his power with his designation/demotion to CEO head coach and he still manages to make entirely baffling and mind-boggling decisions that hurt the team and lose games.

This is a man who knew the struggles of his defense throughout the entirety of the game. This is a man who knew the success of Saquon Barkley who ran the ball to the tune of 4.3 yards per carry through the game. This is a man who, while knowing that, decided to pass the ball on a crucial third-and-three when there was 1:40 left in the game when the Falcon had no timeouts left. 

This is a man who handed the Falcons a win by allowing them to play for a touchdown rather than a just field goal.

In his post-game press conference, Sirianni said that the third down play was designed to go one of two ways: Jalen Hurts hits a wide-open receiver or he takes a sack. That is a ludicrous thought process/justification for that play call and given the timeout before the play and his comments in the post-game press conference (1:13 in the video below), Sirianni is guilty of a crime against the humanity that is football.

If you hand the ball off to your elite running back, you give yourself an incredibly high chance to get the first down in one play or an even higher chance to Brotherly Shove it for the first down the next play.

Now, maybe you disagree. Maybe you think the pass play was fine because it was a high-percentage throw that Saquon catches 90 percent of the time. Okay, sure. Maybe you’re right, but to kick a field goal instead of going for it? Dude … come on … what are we doing here?

Nick’s abhorrent decision crossed the line of ‘borderline coaching malpractice’ and went to ‘fireable offense.’ He went from winning the game to kicking a field goal to turn a one-score game into a one-score game. If Sirianni was on a hot seat before, this game is giving him rectal third-degree burns.

Mega-Ultra Loser: The defensive line

It would be very very easy to give each and every defensive lineman their own specific ‘loser’ section. You wouldn’t read it because that’d be too many words and no one wants that, so let’s be succinct. The Eagles’ defensive line is criminally terrible.

The Eagles' defensive line is, plainly, disgusting. They do nothing. Aside from Brandon Graham, they don’t make plays. They don’t bother quarterbacks. They don’t stop the run. They do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING … again, aside from Brandon Graham who is 36 years old and retiring after this season which is not just sad, it’s literally and downright gut-wrenching.

In Week 1, you could excuse the Eagles' lack of pass rush because of a horrible field. We saw that before in Super Bowl LVII when the field neutralized Haason Reddick. The field was pristine in Week 2. There is no excuse. 

Bryce Huff is being paid $17 million per year and through two games, he’s had an assist on a tackle and that’s it. He’s provided nothing to this team and a game against a 36-year-old quarterback who is clearly hampered by an Achilles injury would, and should, be a time to showcase his potential. Instead, he spent his time being shoved to the ground and being blocked by tight ends. Congratulations on scamming the Eagles, Bryce.

Josh Sweat is a player on the Eagles 53-man roster and that’s just about it. He exists as a player who takes up space and stops someone else from being double-teamed. He hasn't done anything as a pass rusher since he logged his last sack against Dak Prescott on November 5, 2023.

Jalen Carter and Jordan Davis were absolute no-shows except for maybe a play or two. Those are two guys who were first-round draft picks and they NEED to be something, let alone, not be nothing. Sure, Carter was getting double-teamed, but he should be able to beat those. Instead, he was bullied. The ‘Jalen Carter for DPOY’ campaign is dead before it even started. 

Milton Williams and Thomas Booker showed up. Milton, who is a pretty good player, and Booker, who is a practice squad player who made the active roster, were the two defensive linemen who relatively shined. It’s just gross.

Just win. Just win your reps. If that’s too much, just be competitive during a play. If that’s too much, just lie down face up so maybe you can grab a running back’s leg when he runs over you. It shouldn’t be a lot to ask, but here we are.

How about a one-for-one trade: Bryce Huff to the New York Jets for Haason Reddick. Bring the king back home. We know Reddick is good and hates his situation. Huff looks like he hates his situation and he’s bad. Just do something about it and stop the hemorrhaging. Trade for and pay the good guy, and get rid of the paperweight. Who says no?

As far as stopping the run? Get out of here. The D line was just as bad. Bijan Robinson had 97 yards on the ground with 23 rushing yards over expected (RYOE) per Next Gen Stats. That essentially means that the chip every player has in their pads shows Bijan had a whole lot more rushing yards than he should have given all of the defenders around him. 

23 yards might not mean a lot at surface level, but Alvin Kamara who had 115 yards against the Cowboys in Week 2 had 20 RYOE. Kamara was incredibly dominant, so Bijan’s 23 RYOE is very telling about how terrible the defensive line was against the run, in case you wanted to challenge your eye test. You can't be bad at stopping the run and rushing the passer and expect to be a serviceable defense. It's awful.

Winner-adjacent: C.J. Gardner-Johnson

C.J.G.J. played well for a pretty good chunk of the game, but when he was bad, he was really bad. Unfortunately that ‘really bad’ came on a 41-yard touchdown pass to Darnell Mooney when C.J. sat on a route where he was turned around and missed a tackle. That was brutal. This isn’t an attempt to try to make that any less bad, because that was really really bad.

C.J. shined in two specific spots: when he instigated a personal foul and when he gutted Bijan Robinson on a fourth down.

The instigation was awesome because it’s something that we haven’t seen from him in his time as an Eagle. As a Saint, C.J. got into it with a whole lot of players and drew a whole lot of penalties. We didn’t see that in 2022, but just two weeks into the 2024 season, he’s back on his instigator grind. That’s awesome to see, especially since he’s playing the hits. 

He ripped Ray Ray McCloud’s mouthpiece off which rightfully got in McCloud’s head. If you haven’t seen the Jomboy Media breakdown of this exact thing, it’s well worth a watch.

A defensive back who can force players into making stupid and emotional mistakes is very underutilized. It’s great to see that C.J. is sticking to his truth.

The fourth down stop was special. It was a seemingly ‘must have it’ situation for the Falcons and C.J. proved that the low man wins. He flew downhill and he didn’t just stuff Bijan, he straight-up demolished him, and Bijan is a really good and really strong running back. That kind of physicality is exactly what everyone wants in a football player.

Winner (if you don’t consider the potentially season-altering drop): Saquon Barkley

Four weeks ago, the Eagles' Week 3 and 4 games against the New Orleans Saints and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers seemed like a couple of stepping stones for the Eagles to make it to the bye week on a good note. Now we’re in a spot where they need to at least split those games for everything to not turn into a poop smoothie before an early bye week.

If Saquon catches that ball, everything is golden. He didn’t, and now the season is on the verge of a hellscape. 

That being said, Saquon rocks. In an NFL without Cleveland’s Nick Chubb, Saquon is the best pure running back in the league and he’s playing behind the best offensive line he’s ever had. 

On his first four carries, Saquon ran for 39 yards (9.75 yards per carry). It was awesome and he looked unstoppable. There was a little bit of a lull for a minute, but he ended the game with 22 carries for 95 yards (4.3 YPC). Nine of those carries were for nine or more yards. He just barrelled forward and constantly had a positive impact. 

Saquon, except for the drop, has been everything advertised and more. In order for him to break the Eagles’ single-season rushing record of 1,607 yards set by Shady McCoy in 2013, Saquon needs to average 94.5 yards per game. So far he’s at 204 yards which is 102 yards per game. 

Words can’t express how terrible it would be if Saquon broke that record in a season where the Eagles go 9-8 and don’t make it to the playoffs. 

Relative winner: Britain Covey

Before this game, Britain Covey had a grand total of one single catch during a meaningful football game, and that catch was as an ‘atta boy’ kind of reward after he had a 54-yard punt return in Week 16 last season.

Against the Falcons, he went six-for-six for 23 yards. It’s not much, but relative to what he’s had, that’s kind of huge. 

His size was clearly a detriment to his usage. At one point he caught a ball and it looked like he had a full head of steam moving forward… until he was arm tackled and everyone thought, ‘Oh yeah, the 5 foot 8 inch guy who weighs 175 pounds probably doesn’t have the same power that literally anyone else on the roster has.’ 

Covey is a pipsqueak (respectfully) but he knows it. His money is made in being a shifty ball carrier and he was able to show that a little bit. If A.J. Brown is out multiple weeks, a game plan that includes Britain Covey has the potential to be moderately successful.

Winner winner chicken dinner: Jalen Hurts

Jalen made some really dumb decisions against the Green Bay Packers in Week 1. In Week 2, he shifted. You can argue that the interception he threw in the Eagles' last drive was a bad decision, and you’re probably right. 

He only needed 15 yards or so to get into field goal range for Jake Elliott and he was unfortunately aggressive. Based on what the broadcast showed us, it didn’t look like there was anything underneath that was open, which seems kind of dumb, but he never should’ve been in that situation anyway. Other than that, Jalen was AWESOME. 

His first run where he tried to make it to the edge was fruitless, but then it clicked and he started to rip. He ran the ball 13 times for 85 yards and a touchdown. Three of those were Brotherly Shoves for a total of five yards and the touchdown, so in reality, Jalen ran 10 times for 80 yards. That’s awe-inspiring; akin to 2022 Jalen Hurts. This is the second week in a row when he had some runs that were drive-changing. If he can keep this up, he’ll be able to win games despite the defense.

He was hampered by not having A.J. Brown on the field, but he still threw 23-for-30. It was only for 183 yards, but it sure seemed like he made the right decisions given what he had.

Next up for the Eagles is an away game against the New Orleans Saints who have scored 91 points in their first two games. There's nothing about the Birds’ Week 2 performance that should give you any hope for that game. Darkness is settling early on the Eagles 2024 season.