Nick Sirianni’s 4th down calls cost the Eagles a game they should have won
Nick Sirianni and the Philadelphia Eagles lost 24-20 to the Rams on Sunday at the Linc.
Losing to a good Rams team in Week 4 with half the roster in the injury tent isn’t the end of the world, and nobody needs to hit the panic button on the season but this one needs to be called what it is. The Eagles had this game won, and two of Nick Sirianni’s decisions directly handed it back to the Rams.
That’s not the first time we’ve seen it either. When the Eagles lose under Sirianni, the questionable calls usually aren’t hard to find, and Sunday had two of the worst ones he’s made.
The Tush Push Was the Wrong Call:
It started at the end of the third quarter on 4th-and-1. I understand the thinking behind going for it. This offense has done nothing in the third quarter all season, with four straight weeks of three-and-outs coming out of halftime. That says a lot about the lack of halftime adjustments, but that’s a conversation for another day.
So I get wanting to keep a drive alive in the third for once. You just have to look at who was on the field. Dallas Goedert and Lane Johnson were both out, Saquon Barkley was hurt, and the offensive line had been getting pushed around all afternoon.
It was 4th-and-1, and it was a long 1. The Tush Push works when you have the guys who make it work, and the Eagles didn’t have them. Just about any other play call had a better shot, and Sirianni went back to the one thing he always goes back to.
It went exactly how everyone watching expected it to.
The Call That Flipped the Game:
The second one hurt a lot more. Up 20-10 in the fourth quarter, the Eagles finally found a run game and hammered the Rams with nine straight runs for 62 yards. The defense was on its heels and the Linc was rocking. Then right before third-and-goal, Sirianni called a timeout and killed every bit of that momentum himself.
The play out of the timeout was fine, but the snap got botched and they gained nothing. That left fourth-and-2 from the 2-yard line with a 10-point lead. Kick the field goal, go up 13 and force the Rams to score two touchdowns to beat you. Sirianni went for it instead, the pass fell incomplete, and the Rams took over at their own 2.
Momentum Matters:
Some people will point to the analytics and say going for it was the right decision. Analytics don’t account for what happens to a game when you come away empty at the 2-yard line, and we all watched it happen.
The Rams went 98 yards for a touchdown. The Eagles went three-and-out. The Rams went 79 more yards for the game-winner. That’s 177 yards and 14 points in four minutes, and it all started with passing on a chip-shot field goal.
It also changed the math on the final drive. Instead of needing a field goal to tie, the Eagles needed a touchdown to win. Those three points would have mattered.
It was never going to be easy. The Eagles were short-handed from the jump, with DeVonta Smith, Goedert and Johnson out before kickoff. Then Saquon, Quinyon Mitchell, Cooper DeJean and Tank Bigsby all went down during the game.
By the fourth quarter, this roster was running on fumes.
That’s exactly why the coaching had to be sharp. The Eagles had a 10-point lead with the ball at the 2 late in the fourth quarter against a team that was letting them hang around. With a banged-up roster, you take the points and make the other team beat you.
Nick Sirianni didn’t, and it cost them.
Nick Sirianni Has to Get Better.
One loss to the Rams doesn’t define this season but the third-quarter struggles, the predictable short-yardage calls and the fourth-down decisions are all things the head coach controls, and they’re showing up every week. Nick Sirianni needs to own Sunday, because the players did enough to win this game and the decisions on the sideline didn’t.
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