No more Band-Aid: 8 takeaways from 49ers-Eagles Wild Card a day later
Jan 11, 2026; Philadelphia, PA, USA; Philadelphia Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni looks on during the fourth quarter against the San Francisco 49ers in an NFC Wild Card Round game at Lincoln Financial Field. Mandatory Credit: Bill Streicher-Imagn Images
Back in November, the Eagles were in the midst of not just a season-long offensive rut, but also dealing with an A.J. Brown epidemic. He was not pleased with how he was being utilized in the offense, and he was very outspoken about it.
While a lot of the quotes from Brown at that time were covered by a PR blanket, one quote really stuck.
“You can’t keep slapping a Band-Aid over that and expect to win late in the year and think you’re going to go to that at the end of the year. It’s not going to f—ing happen.”
He was right. The Eagles’ Band-Aid was not just peeled off on Sunday; it ripped off a layer of skin.
At home with a rested lineup against a depleted 49ers team playing with house money, the Eagles’ season ends with a 23-19 embarrassment at Lincoln Financial Field. The 49ers lost George Kittle in the first half, were traveling across the country, and were trailing six going into the fourth quarter.
One of the most disappointing seasons in Eagles history ends with the first home playoff loss in the Nick Sirianni era.
Here are my eight takeaways a day after the loss:
1. THE EAGLES’ OFFENSE was pathetic all year long. It is embarrassing that we expected them to score more than 19 points on Sunday, given how their season has gone. And once again, it was a good first half followed by a terrible and conservative second half. I feel like a broken record, but it was the same thing all season long.
“It’s frustrating, you know, because we work, we work hard, and you want to go out there, and you want to put out a product that people can be happy with and put out a product that’s going out there and win football games, but again, it’s been a common theme,” Saquon Barkley, who was solid Sunday rushing for 106 yards, said postgame.
“It’s easy to be like we expect to get to the playoffs and it’s going to change, and it just didn’t, you know? You tell me a time. We’ve played, what, 18 games this year? You tell me a time on offense that we put together two halves. And I bet you it’s under five.
“And we expected that we were going to make it work [Sunday]. That’s just the confidence you should have, that we’re gonna go out there and make it work, but we just didn’t, we just didn’t do it, and it caught up to us. It caught up to us in the playoffs and in this, in the playoffs in the NFL, it’s not the NBA, you know, you don’t get seven games, best-of-seven. It’s whoever’s the best that day, and they were the better team.”
In the first half, the Eagles scored 13 points on 188 yards. In the second, they totaled just six points on 119 yards, along with no big plays in the passing game, too many three-and-outs, and no creativity in the play calling. The Eagles had so many opportunities in the second half with great field position, and managed just two field goals.
Sound familiar? Yeah, because it has been going on since September 4.
The Eagles finished the 2025-26 season averaging 9.67 points in the second half of games. They had a -14 point differential in the second half. Both are by far the worst in the Sirianni era.
“I think we all could have been better,” Barkley said. “It’s easy to point the finger at one person; that’s for you guys, but internally, we didn’t do enough as a collective. At the end of the day, we as a collective didn’t make enough plays. People are gonna have their opinions, and people are gonna say what they want to say. I’m not really in the right mindset right now to kind of expand on what I think, fresh off a loss.
“I’m upset, upset, and frustrated. More with myself, I’m a big believer that you’ve got to start with yourself, and throughout the season, I didn’t make enough plays, and today didn’t make enough plays, and I think if we all hold ourselves accountable and stay true to ourselves, we all will be able to say the same thing.
“There’s a lot of self-inflicted stuff. Penalties, drops, I had a drop on third down, but it comes back to little things. I’m trying to make a play, I’m taking my eyes off the ball, and I’ve done that four or five times this year. So it’s been a common theme. We didn’t make enough plays. Especially in critical moments and critical games like the playoffs.
“Common themes, same stuff. We just didn’t get it done.”
The Eagles’ offense never established an identity in 2025. They never really got “going.” Their identity was just hoping the defense would bail them out. How can you have the talents of Jalen Hurts, Barkley, Brown, and DeVonta Smith and have that be what defines your season?
This Eagles offense was boring all year, and when it mattered most, they went to sleep snoring.
2. BROWN DID NOT JUST EMBARASS the Eagles on Sunday; more importantly, for him, he embarrassed himself. All season, we heard displeasure from Brown asking to get the ball more. They started doing it, and they lost games. In the biggest game of the year, season on the line, Brown makes three vital drops, gets in an argument with Sirianni on the sidelines, and leaves the building ignoring the media. This was a real character game for him.
What a horrible sequence Brown partook in in the second quarter. Hurts puts up two dimes for Brown, and he just displays a lack of effort and misses both of them. Both would have been huge plays for the Eagles, but Brown lollygags at the end of his routes and does not make either play. The best receivers in football make plays like that.
And then that wretched drop on the final drive. Hurts put it right there. My grandma would have made that catch. Brown is extremely lucky that Dallas Goedert saved him.
Brown finished with just three catches and three drops for 25 yards. In the biggest game of the season, the loudest mouth did not show up. You can squawk for the ball all you want, but you have to show up when it matters.
Sometimes, teams just need to cut their losses. This is a pretty good example of that.
A pre-June 1 trade of Brown means the Eagles would be taking on the fourth-largest single-season dead cap hit in history at $20.1 million. So the Eagles would have to sit with Brown, try to acquire a receiver, and then look to move him in June, well after the draft.
What a horrible situation.
3. THAT FINAL PLAY, are you kidding me? That did not even work on the playground in fourth grade.
The Eagles call a timeout, and you can see the exact moment Hurts, who underperformed on Sunday, knew Kevin Patullo was calling up nonsense on fourth-and-11 with the season on the line.
It was a four-vertical, no one was open, and Hurts was forced to throw into triple coverage. The same thing occurred on third down.
Season on the line, Patullo’s behind on the hotseat, and that is the best they can come up with? That play never had a shot of being executed. This is a situation where coaches have a play planned for months. This is what the Eagles had.
I would say it is unbelievable, but it is not.
4. THIS SEASON OPENED my eyes to just how important it is to have great coaches around a team. The NFL truly is a coach-driven league. A team can have a unit with talent top-to-bottom, but if you have incompetent coaching, it is almost impossible to overcome. That is what the Eagles dealt with this season.
“There will be time to evaluate everybody’s performance,” Sirianni said postgame. “Right now, I feel for all our guys in the locker room, all the players, all the coaches, the front office, everybody that works so hard, the fans that come out and support us, Mr. [Jeffrey] Lurie. I feel for all of us, all of them, and there’ll be time to evaluate everything coming up.”
This offensive letdown in 2025 is on everyone. The players did not execute, and the play-calling from Patullo was fireable, which seems like it will be happening in the near future.
The Eagles returned 10 of 11 offensive starters from the Super Bowl season. The one major change was at the offensive coordinator spot, where Patullo replaced Kellen Moore. That is the stem of the blame.
But you have to look at whose scheme this is and who hired Patullo in the first place. Sirianni.
Patullo is Sirianni’s guy. He brought him over from Indianapolis in 2021, put him at pass-game coordinator, and handed him the offensive coordinator job this past summer without ever looking outside.
Hurts is going to be on his sixth coordinator in six seasons. Changing the play-caller every single season is damaging to a quarterback’s development. This situation would all be easier if Sirianni himself were a capable play-caller. He is not. Here we are on another season of searching.
Hurts and the offense’s best years came from when Sirianni was not making the hire for the OC: Shane Steichen and Moore. This organization is failing its franchise quarterback.
If Sirianni is going to take the approach to stand by his brother Patullo, we could have another Doug Pederson situation.
Siritullo strikes. Season struck.
5. THE LANE JOHNSON conundrum was very strange. He was supposed to return from his Lisfranc injury a month ago. Now, two months after suffering the injury, he missed the Eagles’ lone playoff game.
It was reported numerous times that Johnson would be returning to practice prior to the postseason. He never did. He suffered this injury against Detroit two months ago and was never placed on injured reserve. This was supposed to be a three-week injury.
I will never question Johnson’s toughness. He could break his arm and still find his way back in the game. He is a warrior. But this is weird.
The Eagles just never seemed honest about his status. He was a lock to play on Sunday. He suffered a setback in practice. No one knew that. Why did we not know?
It feels like how the Sixers handled Joel Embiid in the past: lying to their fans’ faces. I thought the Eagles were better than that.
Now, Johnson will be entering his age 36 season, his 14th year in the NFL. He remains one of the best offensive linemen in the league, but how much more does he have left in the tank? We do not really know because he missed the last two months of the season.
6. PRETTY BIG LETDOWN by this Eagles defense on Sunday. They started off horribly and ended brutally. The unit has been called upon so much this year, and really could not come through when it mattered most.
With the game on the line late in the fourth quarter and the Eagles holding a 19-17 lead, the Eagles gave up a 10-play, 66-yard touchdown drive.
The defense did a lot of good against the undermanned 49ers, especially the two takeaways, but ultimately, they came up small, allowing two fourth-quarter touchdowns on long drives.
When it mattered the most, this group underachieved. The Eagles never would have won 11 games or reached the playoffs without this defense being as elite as it was, but on Sunday, they just were not good enough when they had to be.
They gave up 361 yards, 6-for-11 on third down, and allowed numerous big plays to Demarcus Robinson and Jauan Jennings. Are we serious?
They got no pressure on Brock Purdy, allowed a trick-play touchdown, and 13 points in the fourth quarter of a home playoff game.
The 49ers produced the highest single-game offensive success rate against the Eagles since Vic Fangio became their defensive coordinator. Kyle Shanahan deserves a ton of credit, but the Eagles did not show up.
A big key was for the pass-rush to get some pressure on Prudy, who holds onto the ball at one of the highest rates in the NFL. They only got one sack from Jalen Carter, and just a single QB hit from an edge rusher, Nolan Smith.
The pass rush was a big reason why the Eagles won a Super Bowl last season. It was a major factor in a lot of wins this year. Now, it is something they will need to address this offseason.
7. ON A POSITIVE NOTE, Quinyon Mitchell, after a grueling start, was fantastic. Mitchell has zero career interceptions in the regular season. After getting two on Sunday, he has four in five playoff games.
The first-team All-Pro had his worst series of the season to start, allowing the big 61-yard completion to Robinson — the longest Mitchell has allowed in his career — and then the touchdown a few plays later.
Credit to Mitchell for putting that in the rear-view mirror and getting the two picks.
8. THE EAGLES WERE PLAGUED by the same problems all season long. Sluggish second halves, three-and-outs, missing kicks, protecting leads, failure to get the ball to their best players, too many penalties, horrible play-calling, among many other things. Elite teams overcome their issues. The Eagles did not.
The Eagles’ season is over because of their inability to figure out why they kept collapsing after halftime. Week 4 at the Buccaneers, Week 5 against the Broncos, Week 6 at the Giants, Week 10 in Green Bay, Week 11 against the Lions, Week 12 in Dallas, Week 13 against the Bears, Week 14 in Los Angeles, Week 17 in Buffalo, and almost every single week these issues were prominent.
The Eagles, 129 days after their win over Dallas to open the season, never figured out these issues.
They never established a run game, could never get the passing game going, and never utilized Hurts’ legs. Excluding the tush push, Hurts had 41 runs by design. Comapre that to 2024, he had 96.
The Eagles could never get out of their own way this season. If anyone was going to beat them this postseason, it was going to be themselves. In the end, that is just what happened.
Band-Aid, ripped.
Benjamin Goldstein
Benjamin has been covering Philly Sports for Philly Sports Reports since 2017. He is a podcaster, writer, and founder of Philly Sports Reports. Benjamin is also an intern at the WBCB Sports Network on 1490AM. Through Philly Sports Reports, Benjamin has gotten the opportunity to meet Phillies owner John Middleton in his suite and be honored as the Philadelphia sports fan of the week for KYW News Radio. He hopes to be reporting on Philly sports as a full-time job in the future.
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