The Eagles found their offensive identity early during the 2024 season. They melted down in late September in Tampa Bay, and during the bye week that followed, decided to become a run-heavy squad featuring the league’s best offensive line and a superstar back with something to prove.
By February, Saquon Barkley and the offensive linemen were shotgunning beers on “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” and celebrating the franchise’s second Super Bowl title.
With 10 of the 11 offensive players returning — including Barkley and all but one of those jumbo collection of people movers up front — the Eagles thought they’d be able to rely heavily on a similar plan again in 2025. That, however, has not been the case for head coach Nick Sirianni and offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo.
The offense, which is 24th in the NFL in yards and 19th in points, has cratered in recent weeks, with the latest example being a dud against the Bears on Black Friday, a loss that dropped them to 8-4.
So, how have things changed so dramatically?
“For me, the big picture is a year ago that offensive line was the most dominant offensive line in football,” said Mike Mayock, the former general manager of the Las Vegas Raiders and a longtime NFL TV and radio analyst. “They lost one piece of it.”
That piece was Mekhi Becton, the massive right guard who signed as a free agent with the Los Angeles Chargers, the team the Eagles will see Monday night when they attempt to end their second two-game losing streak of the season.
“I know they’ve been banged up,” Mayock said. “Lane Johnson has missed a few games now. I feel like Landon Dickerson has been hurt most of the year just watching the tape … and I think teams are playing them a little bit differently. I think teams came in this year saying job No. 1 when you play the Eagles is to stop the run, and they’ve done that for a combination of different reasons.”
Longtime NFL analyst and former Raiders GM Mike Mayock, a Philadelphia native, can’t figure out what the Eagles’ identity is on offense.AP
Before we delve deeper into the failure of the run game, it should be noted that Tyler Steen has done a solid job filling in for Becton, but center Cam Jurgens has also dealt with an assortment of injuries that have hindered his play. Left tackle Jordan Mailata has still been good, but not great like he was last year when Pro Football Focus had him graded as the best tackle in the NFL and the best run blocker at any position along the offensive line.
“Yeah, I don’t think the offensive line has been as good and I think most of it is because they’ve been banged up,” said Mayock, who was the Westwood One radio analyst when the Chicago Bears held the Eagles to 87 rushing yards last Friday, marking the seventh time in 12 games the offense has failed to pick up 100 yards on the ground.
Has Saquon Barkley lost a step?
So how much of the run game issues fall on Barkley, who a year ago was a first-team All Pro and set the rushing record for regular season and postseason yards combined?
“I think the running back thing is tough,” Mayock said. “We look at last year, where he had gaping holes that he could explode through, make a safety miss and go — that’s the best of Saquon. But he was getting to the second level untouched and sometimes even the third level. And then you could see his athleticism and explosion.”
Some believe that Barkley has lost some of that explosion — commonly referred to as “losing a step” in NFL parlance — but there are numbers that tell contrasting stories.
Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley has rushed for 740 yards this season.AP Photo/Matt Slocum
In addition to his 2,005 regular-season rushing yards, Barkley had 17 runs of 20-plus yards and seven of 40-plus yards. Through 12 games this season, he has 740 rushing yards, two runs of 20-plus yards and just one of more than 40 yards.
On the other hand, he is not getting the same space to run. According to Next Gen Stats, he was averaging 2.3 yards before contact through the team’s first 11 games this season compared to 3.8 yards before contact a season ago.
“The reads are not as clean,” Mayock said. “Part of that is that other teams have schemed them up pretty well, so now you might get to where you want to be and there’s an extra safety in the hole or the guard fell off his block or the tight end couldn’t dig out a safety in the ‘C’ gap. That can create hesitation in the best backs. Do I think he’s frustrated? Sure, and that can impact him. He’s a human being.”
Mayock, however, still thinks Barkley is among the best at his trade.
“I think if the blocking improves … and Saquon gets a clean look, I think he still hits it hard and I think he makes people miss and drops his pad level — all the things you want to see from a running back,” he said.
Barkley also still has belief in the offense in general and the running game in particular.
“The sky is falling outside the locker room,” he said after the loss to the Bears. “We understand that. But I have nothing but the utmost confidence in the men in this locker room — players and coaches — and it’s going to take all of us.”
Can Jalen Hurts and the passing game save Eagles?
Barkley and the running game were the undeniable identity of the Eagles’ offense a season ago. But when the star running back was shut down in the Super Bowl by Kansas City, Hurts responded with an MVP performance, throwing touchdowns to two receivers while also burning the Chiefs time and again with his legs.
The response has not been the same this season. Hurts admitted before the loss to the Bears that the Eagles have not been able to find an identity on offense this season, even when they were off to an 8-2 start.
“We’ve talked about a lot of different ways that we’ve won football games,” Hurts said. “I think it’s important to go into a game and find a flow and have an identity, but from a bigger point of view, nothing takes precedent over finding ways to win. That’s the most important thing, and we’ve been able to win games in different ways.
“But we do have to settle in an identity. I think that’s most important. Settle in identity, commit to it and then we fine tune things, knowing that there are going to be some ups and downs, but we’re all confident in what we’re doing and we’re all confident in the direction we’re going in and the structure that is in place for us to do that.”
That certainly didn’t happen against the Bears. After the running game worked early — Barkley had 24 yards on his first four carries — he was stopped for a three-yard loss on the offense’s first possession of the second half. He only carried eight more times for 35 yards the rest of the game.
“It looked good (early),” Mayock said. “But then they stopped him two of the next three times and they hardly went back to him after that.”
That left Hurts and his cast of star receivers to put up the yards and points, but like the running game, the Eagles’ ability to throw the football looks good at times and then disappears without explanation.
“You know, the passing game to me is frustrating,” Mayock said. “I know everybody talks about A.J. Brown being great, and to me, DeVonta Smith is in the same category. I think he’s special. And I think Dallas Goedert is a high-end tight end, and we know Barkley is a high-end back. So from a skill-position group, you have a lot to work with.
“And then you look at the quarterback. Every quarterback in the league does certain things well and other things not so well. So Jalen Hurts is never going to be Matthew Stafford, but Matthew Stafford is never going to be Jalen Hurts either. And, by the way, each one has won a Super Bowl, right?”
Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts has thrown 19 touchdowns against two interceptions.(AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
Hurts’ strengths are well documented. So are his weaknesses.
“He’s a great athlete,” Mayock said. “He runs the ball well. He’s tough as nails. I think he throws outbreaking and deep routes well. But he’s not going to be a rhythm and anticipation guy like a Matthew Stafford. That’s just not who he is. That’s when you go to the next thing — it’s the coach’s job to put each player in a position to win their individual battles and then collectively win each play as a team, so where do you go from there? That’s a hard one.”
Is Kevin Patullo to blame?
Mayock said he has seen some things from the Eagles in recent weeks that have left him wondering what they were trying to do.
His primary example came on the third-and-2 play in the fourth quarter against the Dallas Cowboys in Week 12 that ended with Hurts being sacked. The Cowboys got the ball back and completed their comeback victory from 21 points down on a field goal as time expired.
“I used to play defensive back, and when I watch tape I ask myself, ‘What’s the degree of difficulty outside the talent level?’” Mayock said. “Third-and-2 out of the shotgun, that ought to be a difficult position for a defensive back, where you’re looking at bunch sets, rubs, picks, mesh routes.
“It’s a situation where you’re anticipating man coverage and you have the ability to help guys get off press and even though you have really good wideouts, you want to make it more difficult for the defense to cover who they are supposed to cover. On that third-and-2, they lined up and ran their routes.”
Philadelphia Eagles offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo has taken heat for a struggling offense.(AP Photo/Reed Hoffmann)
Mayock believes the Eagles could have done better there and that falls upon both Patullo as the play caller and Sirianni, a head coach with a heavy influence on the offensive scheme.
“From my perspective, I’d like to see more of the motions and the bunches and the rubs and the stacks and the things that help even really good wide receivers get off press coverage and get off the line of scrimmage,” Mayock said.
Sirianni has consistently defended Patullo’s work as the team’s play caller. He made it clear Monday that his longtime co-worker will continue to do so Monday night against the Chargers.
“Again, it isn’t just one person,” Sirianni said. “It’s the ultimate team game. I have a lot of faith in all the players. I have a lot of faith in all the coaches. We’ve just got to execute it better and scheme it better, and … we’ve got to call it better. It’s every area that we need to improve on. That’s why we always say we look internally through all these things.”
The issues on offense, of course, have extended beyond the field with the social media rumblings of Brown. The Eagles managed to get past that kind of thing last season and all seems peaceful at the moment, but you never know when the next controversial post will drop.
“Look, I’m not a fan of the passive-aggressive social media stuff that (Brown) puts out there,” Mayock said. “But — and this isn’t a cop out — unless you’re in the building, you don’t really know what kind of impact that is having. I’ve been in buildings where people go, ‘Oh, that’s just so and so, don’t worry about it.’ The players just laugh because that’s just him.
“But I’ve also been in buildings where that stuff is insidious and it creates a certain pressure inside the building. I don’t know what the case is in Philadelphia, but it can go either way.”
The coach has to fix it
Mayock was born in Philadelphia, played his high school football at the Haverford School and was a cornerback at Villanova, so he knows that Eagles fans can be guilty of overreaction. He also knows they can fixate on certain players and coaches, a wrath that Brown, Hurts, Sirianni and Patullo have felt at different times this season.
“I don’t like the weighting system, and I know everybody in Philadelphia always wants to assign blame, because that’s what we do in Philly,” Mayock said. “And I think every group in the building has got to look at themselves and figure this thing out because it’s going in the wrong direction. About a month ago, I thought maybe they were coming out of it this. They were running the ball a little bit and throwing it, but the last couple of weeks have been bad, and then you get the haymaker with what happened to their defense against the Bears.”
Mayock ultimately believes that the Eagles’ best chance for success remains getting the running game going again, a realistic possibility because he believes offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland is one of the best in the game. The Eagles have denied requests this season to allow Stoutland to talk about the struggling running game.
“I think what has happened starts with their inability to run the football,” Mayock said. “And that progresses into the passing game. Accountability has to be everywhere. It’s not, is it Saquon? Is it Jalen? Is it the O line? It’s all of it, plus it’s the coaches and it’s the head coach’s job to get this thing fixed at the end of the day.”
Sirianni doesn’t disagree.
“If it’s not gelling … that’s on me first,” the coach said. “It’s my job to do whatever I need to do to help get it fixed and that’s what we’re working on right now.”
Mayock sees a team right now that has a lot of work to do.
“There’s nothing with this team right now where if you’re a coach or a player, you kind of go, ‘Yeah, we got this,’” the former GM said. “I’ve been saying since week one that I have no idea what their identity is, and I still don’t.”