PHILADELPHIA — The Philadelphia Eagles are an organization built on inspiring you. Everything before home games seems tailored to this goal. Giant title banners hang from the rafters. An actual bald eagle flies a lap high above the American flag during the national anthem. The “Rocky” theme blares before kickoff — punctuating when foot meets ball.
All of this is supposed to mark the end of whatever misery your week brought. Win or lose, there is at the very least a baseline expectation that the Eagles will transcend the malaise of common life with an effort that defeats despondency.
The Eagles have met that baseline with regularity during a golden era that includes three Super Bowl appearances and two wins. Only twice have they descended into dejection. A disastrous 2020 ended the Doug Pederson era. The cataclysmic collapse of 2023 forced Nick Sirianni to overhaul both coordinators.
The 2025 Eagles are teetering into that territory. And Friday’s crowd knew it, booing their team all along the way. The Eagles were lousy and listless in their 24-15 loss to the Chicago Bears at Lincoln Financial Field. The entire game was about as uninspiring as a rotting turkey carcass at the bottom of a trash can.
First-time offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo’s system continues to deteriorate. Sirianni, who elevated his longtime colleague, continues to defend him. Sirianni once again said there would be no change at play caller, pinning the struggles of an offense that slogged 297 net yards and went three-and-out four times on his staff’s collaboration.
“They outcoached us,” Sirianni said. “They outplayed us.”
Those words are self-damning in Week 13, especially when the Eagles held the NFC’s top seed only two weeks ago. Both statements were self-evident. Worst of all, an Eagles defense that has so often been the squad’s savior this season surrendered the team’s most rushing yards (281) since 2015. Kyle Monangai, a seventh-round rookie, rushed for 130 yards and a touchdown. D’Andre Swift, a former Eagle, rushed for 125 yards and another score. The tandem castoffs sliced and diced a talent-laden defensive front with a series of cutbacks and misdirection runs.
“That was a poor product that we put on the field,” defensive tackle Jordan Davis said.
The Eagles, reinforced by the trade-deadline addition of edge rusher Jaelan Phillips, entered the weekend having allowed 92.8 rushing yards per game in their previous four games. But defensive coordinator Vic Fangio’s unit frequently found itself either out of position or getting pushed around. Davis said they got “gashed” on runs with “a lot of sideways action.” Inside linebacker Nakobe Dean said they needed to “strike blocks better.” Sirianni added tackling to the list of critiques: 161 of Chicago’s 281 rushing yards were logged after contact, per TruMedia.
“I don’t know if I ever gave up that many rushing yards ever in a game on defenses I was on,” said Dean, whose Philadelphia and Georgia defenses indeed never did. “We know we’ve gotta do better.”
Defensive tackle Jalen Carter was critical of his own performance against the Bears. (Bill Streicher / Imagn Images)
Few teams invest as much in their defensive front as the Eagles. It is uncharacteristic and foreboding to watch it crumble. Defensive tackle Jalen Carter, a 2024 Pro Bowler, was particularly self-critical of his performance. He said, “there was some runs out there where I got drove back where I wasn’t making no effect on the play.” He said the Eagles “made an adjustment” with who they deployed on their early downs and on third downs. Carter did not expand on the specifics of the adjustment. Indeed, defensive tackle Byron Young had an increased workload. But the defense hardly improved.
“It just felt like we were leaky,” Young said. “They would get a big run here and there, because somebody might be a little bit behind on the block or something. I know it happened to me one time. I got pushed out of my gap, and they got about 7 yards or so. It’s just stuff like that, man.”
Carter opined that Bears center Drew Dalman offered valuable insight to his team. Dalman played four seasons with the Atlanta Falcons, including in their Week 2 win over the Eagles last year. Bijan Robinson rushed for 97 yards on 14 carries in that game, and Carter said Chicago’s zone-run scheme felt similar to what he experienced against Atlanta.
“They came in with a game plan,” Carter said. “They knew what they wanted to do and they ran the ball.”
Inspiration degraded from the onset. The Bears converted seven of their first eight third-down tries. They ran the ball on six of them, and Swift’s 3-yard run seized a 7-0 lead. The Bears never trailed. They perpetually pounded a defense Sirianni usually could rely upon. Instead, trailing 10-3 with 2:47 left in the first half, Sirianni opted to drain the clock to hit the two-minute warning after Jalen Hurts completed a 1-yard pass to A.J. Brown on the drive’s first play. The crowd booed the conservative decision, one that signaled the Eagles were most concerned with the Bears scoring again.
There was little offense to believe in. The Eagles ran their fewest first-half plays of the season (17). They totaled 83 yards. They overcame two false start penalties, but were 1-of-5 on third-down conversions. Patullo’s play calls involved disorder and gained little yardage when executed. Consider their third possession: a 2-yard Saquon Barkley run, a 5-yard play-action rollout to Dallas Goedert, a tightly contested third-and-3 slant to Goedert that fell incomplete against a heavy blitz.
Or to open the second half: Barkley wasn’t looking on a first-down throw that sailed past his helmet, incomplete. That came out of a two-back look, which intimated creativity. But at what cost? Barkley gained just a yard on the second-down run, and Hurts threw an incomplete pass while facing a heavy blitz on third down. The crowd booed the unit’s third straight three-and-out.
At times, the offense looked aimless and reckless. Hurts chucked a third-quarter pass to Brown in heavy coverage along the right sideline, and Bears safety Kevin Byard tracked it the whole way for an interception. Eagles edge rusher Jalyx Hunt gave them a chance to take a third-quarter lead by leaping for an interception he returned to Chicago’s 36, but Bears cornerback Nahshson Wright later stole the ball from Hurts while the quarterback tried to convert a third-and-1 on a Brotherly Shove.
Special teams errors complicated any comeback attempts by the Eagles offense. Against 18 mph westward winds, Jake Elliott missed his first extra-point attempt of the season after Brown’s 33-yard touchdown reception in the third quarter. The Bears then held a 10-9 lead. Elliott’s miss forced the Eagles to attempt a two-point conversion after Hurts threw another late touchdown pass to Brown, but Hurts’ incomplete pass to Barkley kept their deficit at two scores. Elliott’s 52-yard miss on Philly’s final drive set the final score and eliminated an onside kick try with 13 seconds left in the game.
The Linc began emptying after the failed two-point try. Smatterings hung around to boo the Birds for a little bit longer. A woman standing in a section near the press box screamed curses until the clock ran out.
“It’s Philly,” Davis said. “They’re going to tell you what they want to hear, and what they want to see, and what they expect of us. A lot of players can either shy away from that or they can embrace it and get better. That really just falls on the individual. Me personally, I hear those and they just want, they expect better of us and we have to do that. There’s no excuses. I’m not gonna sit here and mope around and be like, ‘Woe is me.’ We just have to get fixed. We have to get the issues fixed and next week, we get a chance to get it fixed, so we’ll do that.”
The Eagles will be searching for inspiration to avoid their second collapse in three years. The on-field product has shriveled into a shell of what a star-studded roster believes it can be. Complete games are far too rare for this team. Competitive ones are becoming a diminishing commodity, too. After blowing a 21-point lead to the Dallas Cowboys last week, the largest blown lead of the Sirianni era, Barkley said, “They wanted it a little more.” Toughness is one of Sirianni’s core values. Asked Sunday how he evaluates his team’s effort, Sirianni said, “I don’t think it was an effort thing.”
“I’m not going to ever question our physicality at all,” safety Reed Blankenship said. “I feel like we’ve got the right guys in the room to have that.”
“We’re real confident,” Dean said. “Our confidence stems from the work that we put in. And I know when we get back to it, we’re gonna be the hardest working team in the NFL.”