While everyone points fingers at Jalen Hurts, The Jake Elliott Problem continues to be ignored
The Philadelphia Eagles have to acknowledge The Jake Elliott Problem.
While the sky continues to fall around the Eagles after their third straight loss on Monday Night Football, most of the blame is directed straight at Jalen Hurts.
It makes sense on the surface. Hurts had a brutal night with four interceptions and a fumble in Los Angeles. Nobody is denying that, obviously, but the blame doesn’t fall on his shoulders alone, either.
You also have AJ Brown, who casual football fans somehow still blame for everything. If AJ Brown doesn’t get enough looks, the fanbase calls him a diva for wanting the football.
When he does play well, like has over the past three weeks, and the Eagles lose, casual fans blame him for somehow being selfish while ignoring literally everything else that happened in those games.
Doesn’t make a lick of sense to me but I suppose it’s what happens when the national media slanders him for 10-weeks straight and people simply decide that anything bad on offense must be his fault.
Add in an offensive line that has battled injuries all season and is no longer the dominant force it once was and sprinkle in Nick Sirianni and Kevin Patullo, who get their fair share of heat too, and we have been left with (annoying) despair throughout the Delaware Valley for weeks at this point.
It’s really not that bad, right?
It’s actually not. Even after all that, the Eagles are still 8-5 and remain in control of the NFC East. They are still staring down the number three seed in the playoffs if they can simply hold things together over the final four weeks of the regular season.
So now that the obvious talking points are out of the way, it is time to bring up the one guy nobody seems willing to mention while everyone rolls around in the mud.
The Philadelphia Eagles have a Jake Elliott problem.
Jake Elliott has been terrible.
It hasn’t just been recently either. We’re not talking a few bad performances, this has been a continuous trend that stretches back two full seasons.
Jake Elliott’s rankings over the last two seasons among 42 qualified kickers:
- 37th in field goal percentage at 77.2 percent
- 42nd in fifty plus percentage at 35.7 percent
Five makes on 14 attempts from fifty plus is bottom of the league bad. Jake Elliott has quietly been one of the worst kickers in the NFL since the start of 2024, and it has been overshadowed by every other headline around the team.
What makes this even more interesting is the long snapper situation the Eagles created for themselves. The team just released Cal Adomitis, which raised eyebrows because Jake Elliott has been struggling and the last thing you want is instability at long snapper.
Then you look at the numbers, factor in Jake Elliott and realize something crazy.
- Eagles record with Charley Hughlett: 4-0
- Eagles record with Cal Adomitis: 4-5
- Jake Elliott misses with Hughlett: 0
- Jake Elliott misses with Adomitis: 6
The Curse of Cal Adomitis?
That is not a coincidence. That is a complete collapse in operation rhythm between the snapper, the holder, and the kicker. You cannot be one of the worst long range kickers in the league and also have nine games of disrupted mechanics layered on top of it.
That combination has cost the Eagles points all season and nobody really talks about it because everything else happening with the offense is louder and easier to blame.
So while the city screams about Hurts, complains about AJ Brown, questions the play calling, yells about the offensive line, and tries to fire the head coach for the tenth time this season, the Eagles also have a kicker problem that has been hiding in plain sight.
If they want to stabilize this thing and actually make a run once January rolls around, they need Hurts to clean up the turnovers, they need Brown to shake off the drops, they need the line healthier, and they need Sirianni to pull his offense out of the mud.
They also need Jake Elliott to stop leaving points on the field. He has been a major part of the problem, and the numbers prove it.
Fix that, and Philadelphia might actually be able to breathe again. Ignore it, and this slow spiral toward mediocrity is only going to get worse.
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