Eagles Offense Hits Rock Bottom in Los Angeles In Hurts’ Worst Game as an Eagle

Monday Night Football has historically been friendly to the Eagles; they come into tonight’s game with a 44-33 record in games on Monday night. Given the team’s recent offensive struggles this season, Nick Sirianni and the squad were hopeful that this trip to Inglewood to take on the Los Angeles Chargers would be a chance for the offense to get on track.

The Chargers’ defense would make that difficult, as they, like the Eagles, have been impressive and covering for a less-than-stellar offense. With Justin Herbert having hand surgery last week, and the Eagles’ offensive struggles this season, there didn’t feel like there would be a bunch of offense.

The game would start with the Chargers going down the field and Omarion Hampton putting the Eagles offense into what felt like a huge hole early on. They did march down the field and kick a field goal, but the feeling is that they needed to get more than that. It would stay that way until the second quarter.

Jalen Hurts threw the first of his three interceptions and perhaps the craziest single play of the season. Hurts threw an ill-advised pass trying to force the ball into A.J. Brown and never looked at Da’Shawn Hand, who was standing right in the path of the ball. While advancing the ball, Hand had it knocked away by Jalyx Hunt, and Hurts recovered it; however, that would be short-lived because Jamaree Caldwell separated the ball from Hurts, and Troy Dye recovered it. Ending the craziest play of this season. The second interception from Hurts came when Donte Jackson jumped the pass and picked it off easily. Fortunately, Nakobe Dean stripped the ball from Herbert, and the Eagles got it back, which landed them a field goal.

The half ended with a strange series of plays, Herbert was picked off by Adoree’ Jackson, and there was a personal foul on the return, which put the Eagles in field goal range. Jake Elliott would end up missing the field goal, and the half ended 10-6

In the second half, the action picked up, and Saquon Barkley took over. He had a beautiful 53-yard run that looked like Saquon of last year, which gave the Eagles a 16-13 lead at the time. This would be the last touchdown of the night of the game, the rest of the game would be field goals, and yet again, the fourth quarter would end tied, giving us overtime.

In the OT period, the Chargers went down the field, scored another field goal. The Eagles would march down the field, and while trying to get into the end zone, Hurts threw his 4th pick on a deflected pass, ending the game with an Eagles loss, 22-19.

I think it’s time to have an uncomfortable conversation. I have been very critical of the play calling of Kevin Pitullo, and while he is definitely a huge part of the problem, I am starting to see that there is a bigger issue, and that was on full display tonight. Hurts has been off timing all season. This was by far his worst performance of the year, and for the first time in his career, he had 5 turnovers in a game. This is huge because coming into the game, he had 2 picks in the first 12 games, tonight 4. Turnovers absolutely kill every football team, and a struggling offense is going to be a death sentence. There was a lot of talk about Hurts being in the shotgun vs. under center. tonight he was just over 3 yards in shotgun, 12 yards under center, so that answers that.

While I don’t want to only point at Hurts, he has to take the lion’s share of the blame here. In the third interception of the game, he threw an absolute dart to Brown on a crossing play, which was high. Granted, Brown should have probably caught the ball, but if the ball had been lower, Brown could have handled it. But more than that, why rifle the ball in on a 13-yard crossing route over the middle? The second INT was completely on Hurts, as he threw the ball right to Hand.

I will say that sometimes it’s hard for a QB to see defensive linemen in a passing situation, but he was right there. That one was a mental mistake where Hurts didn’t see him and threw into where Brown was supposed to be. That is a mental mistake on the part of Hurts. Tonight was not just mental mistakes; it was also a lack of accuracy, which could also be attributed to offensive line issues, but all but the last pick was on Hurts and not being mentally sharp.

This was a gut-wrenching loss because the defense sacked Herbert 7 times, got a fumble, and a pick, which is all for naught. They also wasted Saquon’s second 100-yard game of the season, which has to hurt even more. I don’t know what the answer is on offense for the Eagles, because in the 5 losses this season, there seems to be a new reason the Eagles’ passing game fails to show up. This time, the blame falls on the shoulders of #1. I will say that the play calling was much improved in this game, but the execution was terrible. This is starting to feel like 2 seasons ago, where the second half of the season smashes the hearts and hopes of Eagles fans.

Right now, the Eagles’ coaching staff needs to take a step back and look at what is causing the offense to be so out of sync and fix it. As it stands now, the Eagles are collapsing before our eyes again.

The players on offense are frustrated, but we have to hope that something changes this week, because 8-5 hurts enough, but a 6th loss would be catastrophic.

This can’t continue, because while the NFC East looks like it will be won with 2 or 3 more wins, the NFC playoff teams will definitely send the Eagles home after one playoff game, unless something changes fast.

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