For the second week in a row, the Eagles lost a game that they should have won. Moments after their stunning defeat to the Jaguars on Sunday, head coach Nick Sirianni made an obvious admission about who was to blame.
“I didn’t make the right decision and I lost us that game,” Sirianni said after Philadelphia’s 19-17 loss to Jacksonville in London. “I told that to our guys. What hurts there is that the guys fought so hard and then I don’t make the decision that I should make and I cost us the game and I put that fully on me."
NFL Week 5 Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Jaguars Escape After Dramatic Ending
The Eagles, who blew last week’s game by giving up two late touchdowns at home to the Rams, kicked a go-ahead field goal against the Jaguars with just eight seconds left in the fourth quarter. All they then had to do was avoid disaster on the ensuing kickoff and they would have been celebrating a win on their long flight home.
But the Eagles weren’t able to do that. Instead, Jacksonville’s Ameer Abdullah fielded the kick and returned it 53 yards. He was brought down with one second left on the clock which allowed Cam Little to come on the field and boot a game-winning 57-yard field goal that must have left Eagles fans feeling sick to their stomachs.
Here’s how that wild ending played out:
Sirianni, who is no stranger to being on a hot seat despite his past success in Philadelphia, was asked what went into his thought process on that final kickoff. The Eagles could have kicked the ball out of the back of the end zone or even kicked it out of bounds. Either one of those options would have forced Jacksonville to pull off a miraculous play in order to win the game.
“I don’t really want to get into exactly what it is, but at the end of the day ,I didn’t make the right decision and I cost us the game,” Siranni said. “There’s no other way around it. I didn’t do my job good enough in that situation.”
Quarterback Jalen Hurts, meanwhile, had a very telling answer when he was asked why the Eagles didn’t kill more of the clock before their field goal in the final seconds.
“Ultimately, that’s not my place,” Hurts said.
The banged-up Eagles are now 2–3 on the season and will host a solid Panthers team next week. Saquon Barkley and DeVonta Smith both missed Sunday’s game with injuries. Earlier in the week future Hall of Famer Lane Johnson announced his immediate retirement. And then Philadelphia traded starting center Cam Jergens to the Ravens.
It’s clear the Eagles are a bit of a hot mess right now. And you have to think Sirianni’s decision making at the end of Sunday’s loss is going to lead to a frustrating week in Philadelphia, as fans can’t be happy with their head coach, even if he did take all the blame.
It will be interesting to see if the Eagles will be able to regroup and turn things around, or if this is just the start of a lost season.
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ANDY NESBITT
Andy Nesbitt is the assistant managing editor of audience engagement at Sports Illustrated. He works closely with the Breaking and Trending News team to shape SI’s daily coverage across all sports. A 20-year veteran of the sports media business, he has worked for Fox Sports, For the Win, The Boston Globe and NBC Sports, having joined SI in February 2023. Nesbitt is a golf fanatic who desperately wants to see the Super Bowl played on a Saturday night.
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