For three quarters, the Eagles looked like the reigning NFC East champions. Jalen Hurts threw two early touchdowns, and Philadelphia led the Rams 20-10 at home. Then the offense stopped converting. Philadelphia went scoreless in the second half and watched that lead turn into a 24-20 loss.
Watch What’s Trending Now!
Now an Eagles legend is pointing the finger at Nick Sirianni and his quarterback.
“Everything that could go their way went their way until Nick Sirianni did what Nick Sirianni does,” former Eagles linebacker Seth Joyner said on the Seth Joyner Show. “People are going to say, but look at his record. But look at his record lately. When a team loses a game because the players don’t get it done, it’s one thing. It’s a whole other situation when the head coach [Nick Sirianni] is the reason that you lose the game. I’m sorry.”
“This loss today is on when Nick Sirianni, as bad as Jalen [Hurts] played, and as bad as the defense played the last two possessions of the game, this loss is on Nick Sirianni.”
For most of Sunday, the Rams didn’t look anything like a Super Bowl contender. Then the fourth quarter arrived, and Los Angeles put together two long touchdown drives to beat the Eagles 24-20 at Lincoln Financial Field.
Philadelphia had a 10-point lead at halftime and let it slip away. Kyren Williams punched in two rushing touchdowns in the fourth quarter, and the Eagles dropped to 2 wins and 2 losses, their second straight defeat.
Jalen Hurts did his part early with two touchdown passes to Darius Cooper, but the offense never found the end zone again after halftime. Hurts finished 12 of 27 for 93 yards and went down four times on sacks. As a team, the Eagles managed only 172 yards.
Minutes after the loss, Nick Sirianni stood at the podium and walked through how it all unraveled, including his call late in the fourth quarter with the Eagles up by 10. His team battled with a lot of heart and effort through injuries all over the roster, and Sirianni addressed a range of topics now that the Eagles sit at 2-2.
The decision everyone wanted to hear about came on fourth-and-goal from the 2-yard line, with Philadelphia leading 20-10. The offense had just picked up four first downs and drained 6 minutes and 40 seconds off the clock. Here is how Sirianni explained it.
“I wanted to make it a three-score game right there,” Sirianni said. “Fourth-and-2 from the 2, you leave them in a true backed-up scenario. I’m very well aware of how the fourth-down decisions go as the head coach. You go for it, and you get it, great. You go for it, and you don’t get it, that’s on the head coach. And we didn’t get it, so that’s on me.”
That failed attempt gave the Rams the spark they needed, and Williams scored twice late to finish the comeback.
What really jumped off the page was the Eagles’ 0-for-12 third-down conversion rate. According to NFL Network research, that is the most third-down attempts without a single conversion by any team since 2020, and the most for this franchise since at least 1991.
When asked about those struggles, Sirianni didn’t point at one person:
“Everybody contributed to that,” Sirianni said in a postgame news conference when asked about the third-down struggles. “There are execution errors. There are coaching errors. Everybody contributed to that.”
It was a big win for a Rams team that has struggled with the Eagles earlier and was still stinging from last week’s loss to the Broncos. At 2-2, Los Angeles now turns its attention to a Monday night home game against the Bills next week.
The Eagles are also sitting at 2-2, and they won’t get much of a breather. They are heading to London in Week 5 to take on a Jaguars team that is 3-1.