PHILADELPHIA \u2014 Eleven months later, no music blasted. No strobe lights canvassed the locker room and no cigar smoke wafted through its revelry.<\/p>\n
There was not a Lombardi Trophy to parade Sunday night in Philadelphia nor Champagne bottles to uncork with protective goggles.<\/p>\n
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Because unlike last season, the Eagles are not going home Super Bowl champions.<\/p>\n
This season, they will not even win a playoff game.<\/p>\n
This is the standard outcome: Repeat titles elude NFL champions more often than this century\u2019s Kansas City Chiefs<\/a> and New England Patriots<\/a> of late make it seem.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not shocking the Eagles succumbed to this fate: The outcome of a 23-19 home wild-card loss to the San Francisco 49ers<\/a> was an upset by betting standards \u2014 but its recipe was familiar to Eagles players and fans alike.<\/p>\n For the sixth time this season, the Eagles failed to score a touchdown in the second half. A sputtering offense couldn\u2019t capitalize on its consistent defense. So an overachieving, resilient 49ers team rebounded from its latest major injury (tight end George Kittle was carted off with a torm Achilles<\/a>) to outlast an underachieving, searching Eagles team that never quite figured out how to capture their offensive potential in a way a strikingly similar cast did a year ago.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Accountability will prompt changes. Offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo is unlikely to return even as players insist publicly that execution, rather than play-calling or scheme, doomed them. Coordinator Brian Johnson lost his job two seasons ago for an offensive \u201cregression\u201d to ranking seventh in scoring and eighth in offensive yardage. Those numbers held in last year\u2019s Super Bowl run, before this season’s offense fell to 19th in scoring and 24th in yardage.<\/p>\n Quarterback Jalen Hurts emphasized that he takes full ownership for the mistakes. Receiver DeVonta Smith used a version of the word \u201cexecution\u201d 16 times in fewer than six minutes at his locker. Left tackle Jordan Mailata raised his voice to emphasize that it would be \u201cvery unfair\u201d to blame Patullo rather than players.<\/p>\n None of their statements changed the finality of the outcome, an earlier-than-hoped exit for a team with some young players who hadn\u2019t yet experienced ending the NFL season with a loss. The Eagles were left literally and metaphorically shaking their heads after three fourth-quarter lead changes in a fittingly wild wild-card weekend.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n The elation of the Lombardi seemed so recent and also so distant.<\/p>\n \u201cI mean, s***, we had the highs of the highs; we\u2019re back to the lows of the lows,\u201d offensive tackle Fred Johnson said. \u201cOnly thing you can do is pick yourself up, brush off the dust, come back in April with who you got. You don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to change.<\/p>\n \u201cThis team had a one-year shelf life. And it sucks to go out like this.\u201d<\/p>\n After A.J. Brown struggled, Eagles try to sort through explanations<\/p>\n Some players spoke with their heads shaking or hanging; still others resting their hands dejectedly on their hips.<\/p>\n Smith crossed his arms as he addressed reporters.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n \u201cOffensively, we didn’t execute,\u201d he said after his team-high eight catches for 70 yards. \u201cYou can’t play one half of football. I mean, we’ve been preaching for that the whole year and we constantly did that.\u201d<\/p>\n At halftime, the Eagles led 13-10 thanks to a pair of touchdowns courtesy of tight end Dallas Goedert. The offense had begun surely enough.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Twenty rushes to 16 passes helped Philadelphia nearly double the 49ers\u2019 first-half time of possession, 19:06 to 10:54. Niners quarterback Brock Purdy was hitting receivers for explosives to the tune of a Demarcus Robinson 64-yarder and Jauan Jennings for 45, but couldn\u2019t the Eagles subsist as running back Saquon Barkley ripped off a 29-yard burst \u2014 to the right side that famously was without six-time Pro Bowl tackle Lane Johnson, no less?<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n But this was an Eagles team that had outscored opponents in the first half by an average of 3.76 points per game, per TruMediaSports, while opponents outscored them by 0.41 points on average in the second.<\/p>\n Put another way: This Eagles team has not inspired confidence in its ability to maintain and extend leads even as they won the NFC East and secured the NFC\u2019s No. 3 seed. Call it a lack of rhythm or an influx of penalties or an absence of explosive plays \u2014 regardless, the result was an Eagles team that would not win relying on second-half runs, and a 49ers defense that sensed loading the box more after halftime would make a difference.<\/p>\n Cue the decision-making narratives.<\/p>\n \u201cIf it goes the way you want it to go in the first half and then not the second half, I think that’s the go-to of people [thinking] you take your foot off the gas,\u201d Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni said. \u201cBut we were playing more balanced, got the run game going a little bit, trying to mix our play-actions in, trying to get our passes in to create explosives. At the end of the day, we didn’t create enough explosives. They did; give them credit. They made more plays than we did. They coached better than we did.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n \u201cAnd that’s why they won.\u201d<\/p>\n The 49ers rebounded from the loss of Kittle to register an explosive the very next play. They would later score a pair of fourth-quarter touchdowns via a trick play from Jennings to Christian McCaffrey, and a McCaffrey catch from Purdy on Purdy\u2019s final read of his designed progressions.<\/p>\n The Eagles\u2019 stars didn\u2019t step up concurrently, receiver A.J. Brown catching just three of seven targets for 25 yards on a night in which he dropped a pass on third-and-5 with 2:25 to play. Goedert ultimately caught a fourth-down target the next play that kept the Eagles\u2019 hopes alive another minute. With 40 seconds to play, they turned the ball over on downs.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Without Brown as a serious threat Sunday night, the Eagles looked like a collection of talented individuals while the 49ers looked like a scrappy team.<\/p>\n \u201cWe knew we couldn\u2019t come in here and just win by certain guys making plays,\u201d Shanahan said. \u201cWe knew we had to come here and win as a complete team, and I really believed we played as a complete team today and that\u2019s why we got it done.\u201d<\/p>\n Strong defensive stretches from the Eagles weren\u2019t enough, Philadelphia\u2019s offense failing to get a first down on an initial interception-gifted possession and settling for a field goal on the second.<\/p>\n