Now, there is no false hope.
After their 27-10 loss at the hands of the Commanders in Maryland on Sunday Night Football, their second prime-time embarrassment against a divisional opponent in six days, no one could rationalize making a push for a sixth straight postseason appearance.
At 2-6 and languishing at the bottom of a ridiculously bad NFC East, the Eagles’ 2026 season is over.
We should be thankful for closure.
Over the next two weeks, general manager Howie Roseman will work to sell starters on expiring contracts. Those of you with Dallas Goedert, Riq Woolen and/or Hollywood Brown jerseys, you’re in luck there. He will certainly listen to the offers of others. Yes, even Saquon Barkley, who it was reported Sunday the Eagles will not trade as they seek to contend in 2027. It’s hard to believe that Roseman would turn down an obscene offer for anyone on his roster at this point, although Barkley likely won’t put on another uniform this season.
The big question that remains after another horribly sloppy performance Sunday night is whether Nick Sirianni, Sean Mannion, Vic Fangio and the rest of the current coaching staff will be around to coach Barkley and his teammates on next year’s Eagles squad.
It’s no wonder the Eagles are losing right now, and Roseman deserves as much blame for what happened this year as any of his coaches. Roseman and Lurie, after all, hired Sirianni’s offensive coaching staff. But looking through mirrors can be difficult, and Roseman and Lurie aren’t firing shots.
Injuries cannot be helped. If Jalen Hurts had been on the field last night instead of overmatched back-up QB Tanner McKee, the Eagles probably would have won. Losing him for the season with blood clots is an unfortunate bit of bad luck, as are injuries to DeVonta Smith and Tay Wicks, Lane Johnson’s retirement, and Barkley’s inability to stay 100% healthy this year.
But it’s possible to play a cleaner brand of football with mediocre talent than we’ve seen with the Birds in recent weeks. The highly paid and supposedly talented defense knew the offense didn’t stand a chance and seemed to have given up. Vic Fangio was reportedly thinking about retirement this past off-season, and one has to wonder if this nightmare doesn’t accelerate those plans. But there’s no excuse for the kinds of mistakes (off-side penalties, personal fouls), and inability to generate splash plays that we’ve seen from the defense this year.
That part of the ball is pretty healthy.
After Sunday night’s disaster just outside the nation’s capital, Sirianni took the blame for his team’s brutal display.
“I know I’ve said it before: Until we coach better, until we have better detail as coaches, until our players play better detail, then we’re going to see the same results,” he said. “And that’s on me. I feel like, with all the details that aren’t happening right now, I have to try a different approach. And so that’s 100 percent on me. With a lot of those issues going on right now, I’m going to do everything I can to try different things to make sure we get that point across.”
Sirianni is undoubtedly preaching the right messages to his players. Maybe they just aren’t listening. And that is often the death knell of a coaching tenure.
Sirianni’s message helped compile one of the most impressive resumes of any head coach in NFL history. In his sixth year with the team, he enters 2026 with a 59-26 record, the third-highest career winning percentage (.694) in the Super Bowl Era (min. 50 games). Among Super Bowl-winning head coaches, only John Madden (.759, 1969-78) and Vince Lombardi (.738, 1959-67 and 1969) have a better winning percentage. He was also the first coach to reach the playoffs in each of his first five seasons, with three division titles, two trips to the Super Bowl and one Super Bowl victory.
But every coach has a lifecycle, and most don’t last as long as Andy Reid did at the beginning of Lurie’s tenure, or Mike Tomlin in Pittsburgh. Despite preaching the “tough, detailed, together” mantra ad nauseum to his players, these Eagles are none of those things.
They are being bullied. They are very sloppy. They don’t communicate or work well as a unit at any stage of the game.
It wasn’t his fault when Markel Bell made a false start on a 4th-and-4 with the game on the line in the 4th quarter, and it wasn’t his fault when former All-Pro offensive tackle Jordan Mailata lined up wrong on a late game field goal that was negated and then missed. But when you have a string of incidents like this, game after game, that’s less about talent and more about coachability.
While the Eagles are less talented than they were during Sirianni’s tenure, there are enough good players on the roster that the likes of the Cowboys and Commanders shouldn’t put them to shame. They should not be bottom-feeders.
Andy Reid went 5-11 in his first season with the Eagles. It was so ugly before, but it was clear he was doing something. The team has a young quarterback in Donovan McNabb that they are excited about, and the pieces are falling into place. The team looked more cohesive than Ray Rhodes’ disastrous 3-13 disaster in 1998. Despite having a terrible record, the difference in play between the two regimes was stark.
So, what are we witnessing here? Are we looking at Rhodes’ 1998 season, or will Sirianni’s group come together in the second half and somehow put on a good show, like the ’99 Reid squad did?
Obituaries for Sirianni have been written before. There are probably a few Eagles beat reporters with one ready to go in the can midway through the 2021 season, following the 2023 season, or the bye week in 2024. Each time Sirianni has been ruled out for death, he’s revived the team and his job security.
And that might happen again this off-season. He can point to injuries to the offense, particularly the loss of his star quarterback, and the growing pains of an offensive coordinator he didn’t hire. He can point to a defense that hasn’t played anywhere near its potential. He can point out bad luck, bad bounces, and the realities of cyclical NFL life.
But one has to wonder if Sirianni has the skills to actually turn things around this time.
He no longer has an offensive scheme that works. He doesn’t call plays. He is not an offensive mastermind. He has absolutely nothing to do with the defense. He doesn’t have the power to hire his own coaching staff, and player/personnel decisions are all handled by his bosses, albeit with his input I’m sure.
Sirianni’s sole job is to rally the troops, get the messaging going, and get his players to buy in and believe they can overcome the many obstacles in front of them. That may not mean making the playoffs or winning a lot of games this year, but it does mean being competitive, avoiding stupid penalties at inappropriate times, and other unforced errors that make the team look poorly coached.
If you’re Roseman and Lurie, what makes more sense to you?
Does it make more sense to give this current group another season because Jalen Hurts, Saquon Barkley and everyone else on defense lost another year of their prime? Or should they wipe the slate clean and give an offensive-minded coach the keys, let him call plays and hire his own personnel?
There comes a time when every head coach’s message loses resonance. Players hear it, but adapt it come game day. Players start playing for themselves and their numbers, and are not willing to sacrifice for a team that can only win five games.
That seems to be what we are witnessing here as the 2026 season progresses. And if this continues, it’s hard to see how Roseman and Lurie decide to give this coaching staff another bite at the apple next year.