You could say there’s nothing wrong with 5-1. You could say the Eagles still share the best record in the NFL. You could say it was a non-conference loss so it’s not that bad.
You can try to rationalize this loss any way you want, but nah.
It was that bad. It was terrible.
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This was an opportunity to build a one-game lead over the 49ers in the battle for the No. 1 seed in the NFC and a very disappointing loss against a team the Eagles should have dominated.
1. Jalen Hurts hasn’t had a game like this in a while. He was terrible, and that interception just after the two-minute warning was inexcusable. No other word for it. A rookie play. With the Eagles up 14-12 on a 3rd-and-9? Hurts locked his eyes on Dallas Goedert and fired the ball right to Jets safety Tony Adams, whose interception was pretty much ballgame. The worst pass he’s thrown in a long, long time. Maybe the worst interception of his career. Hurts tied a career high with three interceptions – he threw six all last year – and although the first one wasn’t his fault, it was off Goedert’s hands, he really made some bad decisions, especially on that last one. You give Hurts some slack. He’s been so good and so consistent week in and week out. He was out there without two starting offensive linemen and once Lane Johnson left the game with an ankle injury he was under constant pressure. But Hurts should be beyond a performance like this. He has to be.
2. As the Eagles struggled more and more as the game went on, I really didn’t like their body language. The Jets were the ones playing with emotion, the Jets were the ones who were confident and playing with swagger, the Jets were the ones who were taking it to the Eagles in all phases, and we really haven’t seen that with this team for a long time. I don’t know how much of that was guys like Darius Slay and Jalen Carter and then later Lane Johnson being absent because those are all guys who bring a ton of energy and life to the field. But as the game wore on, I just saw a Jets team that was playing with the fire we’re used to seeing the Eagles play with. And this is an Eagles team that’s dealt with adversity extremely well, whether it's giving up leads, trailing late or getting out to slow starts. But something just seemed like it was missing Sunday, and Nick Sirianni needs to figure out why because the schedule does not get any easier.
3. Brutal game all around on offense for the Eagles and there’s no reason this offense should score just 14 points and get blanked in the second half against a Jets defense ranked 22nd in the league, 27th on third down, 29th against the run and missing four cornerbacks. Whether it was Goedert’s fumble – officially a Jalen Hurts interception but really a Goedert fumble – or D’Andre Swift fumbling away the ball with the Eagles driving late in the second quarter or a wide-open D’Vonta Smith dropping what would have been a 25- to 30-yard catch deep in Jets territory, it was just sloppy offensive football. Once Lane Johnson left, the o-line really had trouble protecting Hurts, who was repeatedly flushed out of the pocket, and while he made some plays on the move, the pressure really prevented the Eagles from running the offense efficiently and productively. The Eagles continued their red-zone problems with a late drive inside the Jets’ 20 that resulted in no points when the Jets stopped a Hurts scramble on third down and then Jake Elliott missed a 37-yard field goal. Just an ugly game offensively. With these weapons? The defense kept the Eagles in the game, but no reason the Eagles should score 14 points against the Jets.
Philadelphia Eagles
4. And expanding on that No. 29 ranking vs. the run, I don’t get why the Eagles didn’t hammer the ball on the ground against that Jets defense. I get that the Jets were missing a bunch of corners, including starters Sauce Gardner and D.J. Reed, but this is a defense allowing 149 rushing yards per game, and the Eagles can hammer it on the ground against anybody. Yet the Eagles stopped running after a couple unsuccessful early plays. Eagles running backs got just 14 carries, and the Eagles called 55 pass plays – passes, sacks and Hurts running plays. Come on. You’ve got this whole arsenal of talented running backs and a monster o-line and you don’t run it? In a close game? Against a team that’s allowed 134, 157, 204 and 139 rushing yards the last four weeks? Brian Johnson and Nick Sirianni finally started dialing up some running plays in the final minutes, but it wasn’t enough by a longshot. Not saying run every time, but a 50-14 ratio just doesn’t make sense. Against this team?
5. I really can’t blame the defense at all for this one. I have no problem with anything they did, other than maybe the lack of takeaways. They held the Jets to 244 yards, 2-for-11 on third down, recorded five more sacks and the only touchdown they allowed they let the Jets score, and it came after an eight-yard drive following Hurts’ third interception. They really just allowed four field goals and they were all on short fields – 16, 34, 50 and 51 yards. Considering no Darius Slay, no Justin Evans, no Jalen Carter and then no Reed Blankenship? They did all they could. This one was purely on the offense.
6. Haason Reddick was so confident that once he got rid of that cast on his broken left hand he’d look like the Haason Reddick from last year, and that’s sure happening. Reddick, blanked in the sack column in the three games he wore the cast, now has 5 ½ sacks in three games without the cast, including two against the Rams last week and 2 ½ vs. the Jets Sunday. He’s already only 3 ½ sacks from reaching double digits for the fourth straight year and the second year in a row as an Eagle, something no Eagle has done since Trent Cole 2009 through 2011 (and William Fuller before that in 1995 and 1996). Reddick is playing at such a high level right now and he’s just relentless going after the quarterback. His 12-yard sack late in the third quarter on a 2nd-and-5 with the Jets at the Eagles’ 8-yard-line would have been the play of the game for the Eagles if they won. I don’t know what Reddick’s next contract is going to look like, but it’s going to be enormous. And deserved.
7. A.J. Brown is the best receiver I’ve ever seen.
8. Giveaway-takeaway is really becoming a concern. The Eagles are now minus-1 this year in turnover ratio, with nine turnovers and eight takeaways. Over the last three weeks, they’re minus-5, with no takeaways and five giveaways. On Sunday, they were minus-4. It’s the first time since 2012 they’ve gone three straight games without a takeaway. They committed four turnovers Sunday and each one was really a play where the Jets were physical and aggressive, forcing Dallas Goedert to fumble (technically a Hurts INT), forcing a D’Andre Swift fumble, getting an arm on Hurts’ throwing arm as he released the football and then the last one was just Hurts throwing into double coverage. These weren’t bad play calls, they were just the Jets being better and more physical on those plays. You can’t win that way.
9. The Eagles’ last offensive play? I just don’t get it. At all. The Eagles had 4th-and-8 on their own 27 with 1:24 left trailing 20-14 and that’s when Hurts threw that bomb down the field to DeVonta Smith in double coverage, a throw that had no chance. The Eagles had a lot of field to eat up, but there was almost a minute and a half left and with this offense that’s a lot of time. There’s no way that throw gave the Eagles their best chance to gain nine yards. No way. That’s a low-percentage play and it was the wrong play at the wrong time.
10. One thing the Eagles have been exceptional at under Nick Sirianni is responding to adversity and this is sure another chance. Hurts hasn't lost back-to-back regular-season games in two years – since the Bucs and Raiders in October of 2021. That’s when the Eagles dropped to 2-5 and Sirianni gave the team the famous roots-growing-outdoors speech, and they just started winning regularly. The schedule is about to get very tough. None of the Eagles’ next eight opponents has a losing record. Combined they’re 30-14. This won’t be easy. But this is still a very talented, very proud team, a Super Bowl team, a team that still shares the best record in the NFL. This is a team that understands they gave a game away Sunday but has proven week after week over the last three years that it knows how to bounce back and learn and grow from negative experiences. And right now they've got a lot of bouncing back to do.