LANDOVER, Md. – The word Philadelphia Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni kept coming back to shortly after his team lost 36-33 to the Washington Commanders on Sunday was “sloppy.”
Penalties. Turnovers. Drops. Alignment confusion. All of it.
“When you play a good football team like we played today, and you’re sloppy regardless of how many turnovers you force, it’s going to be hard to win,” Sirianni said, referencing the five turnovers (three fumbles, two interceptions) the Commanders had. “What I said to those guys is like when it’s sloppy with every piece of that, that’s always going to be on me as the head coach.”
The Eagles deserve whatever grace is warranted given quarterback Jalen Hurts exited less than six minutes into the game. He was ruled out with a concussion, and Kenny Pickett took over quarterback duties and went 14-for-24 for 143 yards with one touchdown and one interception.
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“We talked about it on the field right there as it happened,” Sirianni said of the extracurricular penalties. “Again, if it didn’t get fixed though, that’s always going to be on me, they got to be better in those scenarios, and I got to be better in those scenarios to help them. So again, we look at this as an opportunity to get better for them because we know we need to. We know we need to get better from the things that we messed up today.”
Cornerback Darius Slay couldn’t run off the field before Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels hit Olamide Zaccheaus for a 49-yard touchdown to give the Commanders their first lead of the game with 9:06 left in the game.
Punter Braden Mann, who handles the kickoffs, struggled from the start of the game – when the ball didn’t reach the designated landing area – to the end, when another weak kick allowed a return (plus a penalty on Eagles safety Sydney Brown) that set the Commanders up needing only 57 yards to score a touchdown and take the lead. Daniels found Jamison Crowder for the receiver’s second touchdown of the game with six seconds remaining.
Running back Saquon Barkely scorched his way to 108 rushing yards on seven attempts in the first quarter with two touchdowns, including a 68-yarder. It looked like the Eagles’ offensive line would dominate all day. But Hurts’ injury changed the entire dynamic of the game, and Washington keyed on the run for the remainder of the afternoon. Barkley finished with 150 rushing yards on 29 attempts.
Barkley said Sirianni stressed the “little things” in his message after the team’s first loss in 11 games.
“Go back and look on it, there’s a lot of little things we left out there,” Barkley said. “We gotta be better all around, from all phases. You look at the penalties and like I said, all those little things we didn’t accomplish, you tend to lose those football games. Gotta give credit to (the Commanders). They were the better team.
“We didn’t do what we wanted to accomplish. We’re not gonna panic.”
The Eagles converted three of 16 third-down attempts (18.8%), while the Commanders were successful on seven of their 13 chances on third down. The most costly of the Eagles’ third-down mishaps came moments before the two-minute warning in the fourth quarter.
DeVonta Smith was wide open for what would have been a first down and allowed Sirianni and the vaunted Eagles’ offensive line to essentially ice the game with a 30-28 lead. But after his drop forced a fourth down with the clock stopped, Sirianni extended the lead. Daniels made it irrelevant.
Sirianni said the team has been aggressive in those types of scenarios before as an explanation of why the Eagles opted for a pass play rather than keeping it on the ground.
“That’s how we’ve been able to run a lot of the clocks out,” Sirianni said one week after the Eagles held the ball for the final 10 minutes of the game in a victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers. “We just didn’t do it this time.”
After the game, Smith said the drop is “over with.” There’s nothing he could do about it then and no teaching moment to take from it. He was open, he called for it and the ball wound up on the ground.
“I was calling for it,” he said. “They put it in my hand. I got to make the goddamn play.”
Smith acknowledging his error, much like Barkley did after a drop in a similar situation in a Week 2 loss to the Atlanta Falcons, gives Sirianni hope – especially in the context of Hurts being sidelined for nearly the entire game.
“Accountability doesn’t change though based off your result, right?” Sirianni said. “I’d be a hypocrite if I did that.”