For the Philadelphia Eagles, Sunday’s 23-19 loss to the 49ers in the Wild Card Round had a familiar script. The offense would get off to a great start and falter in the second half.
In the first half, the Eagles scored two touchdowns (13 points), but in the second half, they kicked two field goals (6 points).
Ultimately, those second-half struggles, including penalties and missed explosive plays, contributed to their defeat.
“Felt like that was kind of our story as the year progressed,” Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said after the loss. “Like you said, good first half, didn’t do a good enough job coaching, didn’t do a good enough job executing in the second half, in that third quarter particularly. Some penalties got us behind the sticks, and we had a hard time overcoming them.”
Who knows what went wrong, but they didn’t execute in the second half, and maybe the Eagles played too conservatively, which Sirianni doesn’t believe was the case.
“I think that’s always the go-to if it [doesn’t] go the way you want,” he said. “If it goes the way you want it to go in the first half and then not the second half, I think that’s the go-to of people [thinking] you take your foot off the gas, but we were playing more balanced, got the run game going a little bit, trying to mix our play actions in, trying to get our passes in to create explosives. At the end of the day, we didn’t create enough explosives. They did; give them credit. They made more plays than we did. They coached better than we did, and that’s why they won.”
Many will put this loss at the feet of first-year offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo, which might be justified. When asked about Patullo’s future with the team, Sirianni stated the following.
“There will be time to evaluate everybody’s performance,” he said.
Hurts(20/35, 168 yards, TD), who struggled at times on Sunday, wished the team could have been more consistent on offense.
“Obviously, you want more consistency, and there’s a desire to improve steadily throughout the year,” he said. “But it’s hard to look at it from a big picture perspective right now. I think just having the opportunity to go make something happen, and not doing so for whatever reason. Those are the things that we all have to improve [upon].”
The Eagles needed to be better offensively. Defensively, they were good enough to win another Super Bowl. Offensively, it’s clear they were not, and now the season is over.
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