As we’ve seen many times with the Philadelphia Eagles offense, it’s a tale of two halves, which was the case on Sunday in the team’s 13-12 win over the Bills.
After scoring 13 points in the first half, the Eagles scored zero points and had only 16 total yards in the second half, including four straight three-and-outs.
Jalen Hurts was 0/7 for zero yards passing in the second half against Buffalo. This was the second time this season he had a second half with zero passing yards.
The Eagles couldn’t run or pass the ball. Fortunately, their defense got the job done.
On Tuesday, first-year offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo was asked what happened to the offense in the second half against the Bills.
“We’re working through that right now still,” Patullo said. “We watched it right after the game as a staff. We watched through it on the plane, then we went through it yesterday, and we’re still going through some stuff now as we speak. Really, when you look at it, is the amount of drives we had and plays, and some of the starting positions, it was the first down thing again. We had four drives where we had inefficient first downs, put us in four second-and-longs, and then from that, we were in three third-and-longs. When you’re doing that, when that’s happening, it’s going to be very hard to move the ball. That’s the unfortunate part of it. We had the one backed-up drive from the minus one; we have to get it out. We ran again on second down; we didn’t get much. Then, third down, we had some pressure, and that was a punt.
“When you look at those drives, it gets frustrating. We need one play. All we need is one spark, one thing to get those things going, and we’re out of it. There [were] a couple– there was one drive, we were very close on the one where we went first-and-10 pass, then we went second-and-10. We had [WR] DeVonta [Smith]. We had a little bit of pressure; we almost made the play. He had a great route versus man coverage [that] we won, and [it] just didn’t happen. Third-and-10, we don’t convert. Those are the frustrating pieces that we’re looking at as a staff. How do we get out of those? What do we need to do better as a coaching staff? How do we execute better? Because really, it’s not just one person, one thing, one play style, one call. It’s everything. We’ve got to look at everything.
“It never comes down to one thing, but it’s the whole full picture of everybody working together, making sure we’re on the same page, and getting those done because that’s what really was frustrating in the second half. You can feel that because the first half, we had some things that we did nicely, and in the second half, we wanted to run the ball and get it going. It just got off, and we got those second-and-longs, and that’s what was really frustrating about it. When you look at it, like I said, we’re still looking at it right now. We’re going through other games to see how things played out, how we can continuously improve from this, and get guys in positions. Once we get them in position, we’ve got to execute it and let it play out.”
It appeared the Eagles went conservative in the second half, but according to Patullo, that was not the case.
“I don’t think we’re trying to be conservative at all,” Patullo said. “I think the biggest piece is– it comes back to what we talked about earlier. If you’re not successful on first down and/or second down, you’re behind. Now the defense is dictating to you what’s going on. I think that’s happened to us a few times, and unfortunately, it’s been with leads like Tampa and this game, and so we’ve had those moments where that’s happened and that’s where we’ve got to get out of because when you go from first-and-10 to second-and-10 or more, now you’re in this weird game of, ‘Okay, I can’t pressure the defense.’ That’s what’s happened to us a little bit, and we’ve had limited plays. When you have those moments, you have limited plays. I think that’s where you get stuck in those ruts where you’ve got to get out of them.”
The Eagles’ offense has not been a thing of beauty in 2025. It lacks rhythm and has been inconsistent all season long. We’ve been waiting for a complete game from the offense, and after 17 games, well, we’re still waiting. Maybe things will get better in the postseason.
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