Crossing Broad
The thing with a 17-game NFL season is that teams can look so good in September and finish in January with four or five wins. Fans go through every emotion not only during the course of a season, but also during the course of one game. The advent of social media gives us a glimpse into how supporters of other teams are reacting to their own trials and tribulations. Unfortunately as well, that means we have to see Eagles fans who were panicking in the second half of Week 1 against the Cowboys puff their chests out after the Week 12 disaster in Dallas and Week 13 Bears beatdown at The Linc.
My reactive tweet:
I understand that fans don’t want to be fed “a win is a win.” But it’s not because they don’t want the team to win, it’s because they just want to be proven right about how they feel. I understand an offense that looks bad isn’t conducive to winning week after week unless something changes. But there is still something to be said for winning ugly, even in this era of advanced analytics that might tell you a team shouldn’t have won a game. That’s because there’s still a human element in professional sports that the numbers-savvy folks have started to completely ignore. We can watch as much film as we want, but unless we can see what a quarterback sees through his eyes and his thinking progressions, we really have no idea what they should have or shouldn’t have done.
Another reactive tweet:
But the last two weeks, the voices have only gotten louder. An 8-2 Eagles team that many thought could easily move to 10-2 is now 8-4 and it feels eerily similar to how the 2023 team collapsed… and they were 10-1! So I can’t fault some fans for feeling like this team is on the same trajectory. It looks bad. It sounds bad. It doesn’t resemble a remarkably-different product on the field, so it’s hard to think it suddenly will when December rolls around.
But there’s still room for improvement. The Eagles have the ability to score 30 points a game the next month. We’ve seen these same guys do it. Is it coaching? Is it execution? It’s both, because there’s not one singular moment or person that causes a football team to win or lose. There are an abundance of plays throughout the course of the game that help ultimately decide the outcome. I’m tired of some fans trying to blame one facet or the other instead of all of it. Yeah, one facet may be more to blame than the other depending on the situation, but it’s never just Hurts’ fault. It’s never just Patullo’s fault. And it’s never just Sirianni’s fault.
I think coaching has been the biggest obstacle this season. If player execution isn’t there, what are they doing to correct that? Because nothing has changed. I don’t think the players are blameless, but we’ve seen a...
