The Philadelphia Eagles will not be repeating as Super Bowl champions, as head coach Nick Sirianni’s team fell 23-19 to the San Francisco 49ers in the wild-card round Sunday. There’s a ton of blame to spread for this disappointing team.
Here’s our ranking in inverse order of the biggest culprits for Philadelphia’s inexcusable loss.
5. S Reed Blankenship
The 49ers struggled to move the ball Sunday, but they scored 23 points because of a handful of explosive pass plays. Blankenship allowed five catches for 62 yards and a touchdown in coverage and finished with a below-average 35.3 Pro Football Focus coverage grade. He was directly at fault for a few of those catches.
On the first play of the fourth quarter, Blankenship let Christian McCaffrey run right past him on a trick play for a 29-yard touchdown pass that gave the 49ers a 17-16 lead. Blankenship has been a weak link in Philadelphia’s secondary all season, and the 49ers exposed him in the playoffs.
4. Defensive line
As good as the defensive line was in the run game (three yards per carry allowed), it failed to put consistent pressure on QB Brock Purdy in the pocket. The pass rush, which carried the Eagles to a championship last season, delivered one sack and gave Purdy an above-average time of 3.03 seconds to throw.
That’s not good enough to win in the playoffs, especially for a team that went out of its way to bolster the pass rush by trading for Jaelan Phillips at the deadline.
3. WR A.J. Brown
At what point is the juice not worth the squeeze on Brown, who didn’t speak to the media after the loss? The star wide receiver, after publicly calling out the passing offense and causing friction in the locker room most of the season, dropped a career-high two passes and finished with only 25 yards on three catches.