Black Friday goes dark: 5 takeaways from Bears-Eagles a day later

Black Friday was not just about discounted televisions and clothes in Philadelphia; they were also giving away yards on the ground and a victory.

Friday was not just a bad performance for the Eagles at Lincoln Financial Field; it was an absolute meltdown. In a game, they had to show some life, some fight, some spirit; they looked stuffed from the Thanksgiving meal the night before.

With the Eagles’ garbage time touchdown, the final score was 24-15 Bears. The score does not tell the story. The Bears came into Philadelphia and outdid the Eagles in every aspect of the game, and the Eagles did not even have anything close to a counter-punch.

Here are my five takeaways a day after the loss:

1. THE NUMBERS TELL the story of Friday night’s disaster class.

Eagles: 11 drives, 51 total plays, 20:42 TOP, 317 yards, 87 rushing yards, 14 1st Downs

Bears: 12 drives, 85 total plays, 39:18 TOP, 425 yards, 281 rushing yards, 28 1st Downs

How about at halftime?

Eagles: 4 drives, 17 total plays, 9:00 TOP, 83 yards, 26 rushing yards, 2 1st Downs

Bears: 5 drives, 47 total plays, 21:00 TOP, 222 yards, 142 rushing yards, 16 1st Downs

The Bears played a game on Friday that the Eagles want to play. Dominate on the ground, in the trenches, and bully the opposing line. It is what they did last year, but fail to do this year.

This season is starting to give massive 2023 and 2018 vibes. The Eagles are in a Super Bowl hangover. Let us call it how it is. However, the last two losses have been unacceptable. Blow a 21-point lead in Dallas and then show zero fight at home to Chicago. Somehow, the Eagles look worse every game. Last season, they were a team that improved week in and week out. But that was last year.

2. IS THIS THE WORST offense I have ever seen? It is getting to that point.

Since the bye week, the Eagles have scored 10, 16, 21, and 15 points, and since Week 5, the offense has surpassed 21 points only against the Giants. Two weeks later, New York fired their head coach, and two weeks after that, they fired their defensive coordinator.

It would be one thing if this offense were bad. But they are getting worse every single week. The Eagles’ offense ranks 28th in success rate. They are producing a positive play at a lower rate than offenses like the Saints and the Jets. It is the worst offensive success rate for an Eagles team through Week 13 in the last 20 years.

Saquon Barkley got off to a good start on Friday, then they got away from him, and then he could not get going again against one of the NFL’s worst run defenses.

The passing game looks incompetent. Jalen Hurts was bad again. He threw 19/34 with 230 and two touchdowns, with a bad interception and a fumble. He missed guys, made bad decisions, and looked like the Jalen Hurts who will lose you football games. Most notably, on the third-and-eight play on Chicago’s 26 in the second quarter, where Hurts threw behind a streaking open DeVonta Smith to end the drive, Hurts had Dallas Goedert wide open for a touchdown. Hurts never even looked his way.

The play-calling, also, is an absolute disaster. I understand the banter for Kevin Patullo, but the players are the ones who need to execute, no matter the call.

However, after four weeks of 21 or fewer points with this much talent on offense, it is time for some sort of change. Right?

3. THE PLAY-CALLER IS NOT changing, Nick Sirianni said after the game, completely contradicting his previous statement in which he said the Eagles were “evaluating everything.” I guess that does not pertain to his play-caller.

“No, we’re not changing the play caller, but we will evaluate everything,” Sirianni said postgame. “This weekend, we’ll have another little mini-bye. Another short week that leads to a long weekend where we’ll evaluate everything. But again, like I said after that, it’s never just about one person. You win as a team, you lose as a team, and you try to evaluate everything, win, lose or draw and get better from it.”

The Eagles’ offense went 78 minutes between touchdowns, dating back to the first quarter last Sunday in Dallas. They average the fewest points among teams with a winning record. They are 10-of-35 on third down over their last three games.

The Eagles threw the ball 34 times on an extremely windy evening. On a day when the Bears were starting their fourth and sixth string linebackers, Barkley had 13 carries for 56 yards. In conditions where it was difficult to throw, it was pretty much all they did. Tank Bigsby also did not see the field. Make it make sense.

“When you win, when you lose, it’s never about one person,” Sirianni said. “We all collectively have to do a better job and that’s going to be starting with us as coaches, starting with me as head coach, finding solutions to get the offense going, and so I’ll put that on us as a staff and put that on me most individually there to help get this thing pointed in the right direction.”

Patullo is more the face of the problem with the offense than the exact problem. The Eagles’ offense is basically the same as it has been for the past few seasons; Patullo is the only difference. But when you look at the past five offenses with Hurts and Sirianni, this is the least productive and least efficient offense during their tenure here, and we now have a 12-game sample size of it. Something has to give.

“I have confidence in the entire group,” Sirianni said. “I know it will keep coming back to Kevin, but again, if I thought it was one thing, then you make those changes. Obviously, it’s a lot of different things, but I don’t think it is Kevin. Now, we all have a part in it. Kevin has a part of it. I have a part of it. All the coaches have a part of it. All the players have a part of it. Again, you win and lose as a team. It’s never on one thing.”

After the Eagles lost Shane Steichen in 2023, Sirianni was in charge of his first offensive coordinator search. As we all know, he went in-house and hired Brian Johnson. It did not go well.

“No matter if Kevin Patullo is calling it, Shane Steichen’s calling it, Brian Johnson is calling it, Jeff Stoutland’s calling it, Jason Michael is calling it, Jonathan Gannon comes over and calls it, Howie [Roseman] calls it from up there, [Jeffrey] Lurie, Dom [DiSandro], Julian [Lurie],” Sirianni said while laughing back in 2023. “I’m very particular, and I know what I believe in, in the passing and the running game and offensive football.”

You can look at Patullo all you want, but Sirianni is the one directing the big-picture in-game strategy. That is what plagues the Eagles.

It is not just Patullo. It is not just Sirianni. It is Siritullo.

Sirianni does not do much during actual games. He is a CEO head coach who tries to control the locker room, which, to me, is quite out of control at the moment. And, hey, he wins. He has the best winning percentage of any coach in the NFL. Now, when the wins are not coming in, there is not much positivity left to throw at Sirianni.

4. THE RUN DEFENSE was historically bad on Friday. D’Andre Swift put on an all-time homecoming performance at the Linc, and Kyle Monangai really made a name for himself. Both surpassed the century mark, and the Bears totalled 281 yards, the most the Eagles have given up on the ground in a game since 2015. The Bears, as a team, averaged six yards per rushing attempt.

The Eagles’ defense was unable to match the Bears’ physicality. They got manhandled up front. The Bears’ offensive line was a replica of what the Eagles try to conduct with theirs: just wearing you down, opening a hole, and letting your back go.

And when the Bears got to the second level, the Eagles could not tackle. They gave up 177 yards after contact on designed runs. The Eagles gave up more yards after contact than they had given up rushing yards in a single game this season. That is unimaginable.

The Eagles had given up just 92.0 rushing yards per game over their previous five games. The Bears surpassed the 100-yard mark on their first run of the second quarter.

It was hard to believe that this defense, one we were calling one of the best in this team’s history just two weeks ago, got pushed around and bullied like they did on Friday. You cannot give up 281 rushing yards at home and call yourself a Super Bowl contender.

5. A LOT OF DEJA VU is coming through right now. It feels like we are saying the same things this season as we did in 2018 after the Super Bowl and 2023 after the NFC Championship. This team is in a mass Super Bowl hangover.

The Eagles are ineffective, unimaginative, and unmotivated.

That is common for a team that has never been there. The Eagles ownership has been to four Super Bowls, won two of them. Howie Roseman has been to three. Sirianni and this core have been to two. They should know how to handle a hangover. Instead, they are falling back into the collapse they suffered in 2023.

That is what has Eagles fans so anxious. In 2023, the Eagles, for 12 weeks, were able to sneak away with tight victories, and then all of a sudden, they completely fell apart. The same deal is happening in 2025.

These guys have been there and experienced this before. It would be safe to speculate that they would be able to avoid something like 2023 from happening again.

I guess this is why we are told to never assume.

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