Multiple things can be true at the same time. They usually are when a team\u2019s season ends the way the Eagles\u2019 did on Sunday. <\/p>\n
It takes a special kind of bad to lose this limply. It is a collective bad, an existential bad, a bad that raises all kinds of hard questions that a team must confront head-on and wrestle with in the darkness. That is true even of a team that is less than a year removed from winning a Super Bowl<\/a>. In fact, it is especially true for such a team. <\/p>\n The bad that the Eagles were in a 23-19 loss to the 49ers<\/a> is a disconcerting bad. It is a bad that shakes you to your core, a bad so bad that you spend an entire season desperate to disbelieve it. <\/p>\n More than anything, it is a bad that is nearly impossible to achieve if your quarterback is doing the things he needs to do. <\/p>\n Jalen Hurts<\/a> did not do those things for the Eagles on Sunday. His counterpart did them for the 49ers. That is why the Eagles are headed home. It is why the 49ers are headed to Seattle. The difference in this particular playoff game was the same as it is in most of them. One team had a quarterback who rose above his circumstances. The other did not. <\/p>\n \u201cIt starts with me and ends with me,\u201d Hurts said afterward. <\/p>\n Whether or not he truly believed those words, he was correct. <\/p>\n A team that cannot, or will not, put pressure on a defense in the intermediate-to-deep part of the field is a team whose luck will eventually run out. Whether Hurts can\u2019t or won\u2019t doesn\u2019t matter at this point. He didn\u2019t, and that\u2019s that. He completed just three passes that traveled more than 10 yards in the air, on 11 attempts. Those three completions gained a total of 38 yards. He was 17-for-20 on his short throws. <\/p>\n Compare that to Brock Purdy, who was dealing with an offense that lost its last blue-chip pass-catching weapon when tight end George Kittle tore his Achilles tendon with six minutes left in the second quarter. The game should have been over then, one of several moments when that was the case. That it wasn\u2019t is largely a testament to Purdy, whose poise and patience and intentionality were on display against an Eagles defense several calibers above that of the practice-squad Niners. <\/p>\n San Francisco\u2019s game-winning 66-yard touchdown drive late in the fourth quarter featured a 16-yard completion to Demarcus Robinson and a 5-yard scramble, both for first downs, to help set up his 4-yard touchdown pass to Christian McCaffrey with just under three minutes remaining. A couple of possessions earlier, he found fullback Kyle Juszczyk of all people for a 27-yard gain that set up a trick play touchdown on an end-around pass from wide receiver Jauan Jennings to McCaffrey. <\/p>\n \u00bb READ MORE: The 2025 Eagles played not to lose. In the end, that\u2019s why they did.<\/a><\/p>\n There was a 14-yard pass to backup tight end Jake Tonges on third-and-14 late in the second quarter, a 45-yarder to Jennings earlier in the period, and a 61-yarder to Robinson that set up a touchdown on the 49ers\u2019 opening drive. <\/p>\n Purdy\u2019s numbers on throws longer than 10 yards: 8-of-13, for 178 yards. His two interceptions were the cost of doing business. <\/p>\n