We don’t know nothin’

In the sportswriting business, we work toward drawing conclusions. After we’ve seen something happen a certain way over a period of time, we like to think we understand it.

We decide we know stuff. The Eagles get to the Super Bowl last season, almost win, behind an amazng effort from their quarterback/offense, so we know Nick Sirianni was a good coaching hire. After 2022, we know that the arc of Jalen Hurts’ ascent from middling pro prospect to elite QB/indomitable leader is bound to bend ever upward.

We craft narratives around what we’ve witnessed, because that’s the job, right? Explaining how things came to be. Sirianni does this, this and that, so these are the keys to his success. Hurts outworks everybody, has such an incredible will to improve, so the reservations scouts had that made him a second-round draft pick are forever null and void.

Then more stuff happens, and we realize we don’t know nothin’.

Things broke the Eagles’ way last season, from the easy schedule to the playoff opponents. We acknowledged that, but mostly as a footnote, because when a team goes to the Super Bowl, nobody writes, “this is nice, but it seems kind of random in some ways, how often are you going to get 70 sacks and a bunch of takeaways, while hardly ever suffering a turnover?”

Personally, I’ve been wrong about all kinds of things regarding this year’s Eagles, starting with what it would mean to have the league’s toughest schedule.

I was the guy saying that the defensive debacle in the Super Bowl meant that you need to play the really good teams along the way, to get better, identify and fix the flaws. Instead, the 2023 schedule has broken this team, shredded cohesion and confidence, pointed out flaws that just aren’t fixable.

Once players and coaches realize something like that, it tends to go like those cartoons where the character steps off the cliff and keeps running on air, until he looks down, and, oops.

Self-confidence, trust in the guy next to you, trust in what the coaches are asking you to do — these are all as important as talent in the NFL. This is what the Eagles have lost, in three successive setbacks. I think the doubts were creeping in even before that, for a team that hasn’t really played a solid game since beating Miami back on Oct. 22.

Yes, it was a shame defensive pass interference wasn’t called on that intercepted heave to Quez Watkins Monday night. Also, the throw was bad, Watkins didn’t fight for the ball, and the play call, at a time when the Eagles were winning and could have just kept grinding down the clock, was ridiculous.

The Eagles won a game at Kansas City because a touchdown pass clanked off the hands of a wide-open Marquez Valdes-Scantling. Fate doesn’t always bail you out. Sometimes you have to do the work yourself.

For me, that 92-yard Drew Lock touchdown drive with 1:52 left Monday night in Seattle proved that replacing Sean Desai with Matt Patricia made no difference. Cling to a couple of encouraging stats from the rest of the game if you want, but that was the game right there, and when it mattered, Patricia was just as helpless to stop the bleeding as Desai was against the Bills, 49ers and Cowboys. Against a career backup, no less.

It might have made a difference Monday if the Eagles had Darius Slay as their No. 1 corner instead of James Bradberry, but Slay mysteriously opted for arthroscopic knee surgery just as Patricia replaced Desai. Patricia was the head coach in Detroit that Slay very publicly hated, of course.

I was spectacularly wrong about Hurts’ progress. I should know better by now. I covered the whole Carson Wentz thing. I covered most of Donovan McNabb’s career, all the various Nick Foles eruptions, and the all-too-brief resurgence of Michael Vick. A stretch of great games, even a year of great games, even several years of what seems like progress toward greatness — in the end, we don’t know nothin’.

I have no idea what the hell is going on with Hurts, but it started in the opener against the Patriots. Hesitant to run, slow to pull the trigger after dropping back to pass, curiously short on just bringing juice to the offense. Why? (And no, it isn’t some minor knee injury that has to be healed by now.)

If I had to guess, I would say that he isn’t getting the answers he needs during the week leading up to each game, that he feels he’s being asked to try things that won’t work, he keeps seeing things from opposing defenses that he wasn’t expecting. But that is a guess.

Last season, Hurts’ stoicism was hailed as a part of his superior makeup. This year, notably Monday night, it looked and sounded less like stoicism than desolation. He doesn’t give the vibe of being a guy who can will his team to win, the way he sometimes did last year.

The offense hasn’t had rhythm or flow all season. Offensive line injuries haven’t helped. The defense’s constant spectacular failures have brought unwelcome pressure on Hurts and the offense. Neither Sirianni nor offensive coordinator Brian Johnson seems able to explain any of this or, more crucially, to fix it.

Then there is Sirianni. I’ve covered Andy Reid, Chip Kelly, Doug Pederson, and now Nick. They all reached a point where they had no answers. I’ve been extremely unimpressed with Sirianni’s inability to make the fixes he pledges to make after every game.

Some people say last year’s offensive success was all Shane Steichen. That’s an easy answer, and maybe it’s true. But that also was the narrative when another guy, Frank Reich, left the Eagles after a Super Bowl season to coach the very same Colts Steichen now leads, and the Reich narrative faded badly with time.

Here is one thing that I actually do know, and I’m not afraid of being proven wrong about it: Getting back to the Super Bowl the year after losing it is damn near impossible, unless you have Tom Brady.

Getting back to the Super Bowl the year after losing it is especially difficult. The last NFC team to do so was the Bud Grant Vikings in 1974. It might be that all the dysfunction we are seeing just boils down to this.

But bear in mind, stumbling the year after a Super Bowl appearance doesn’t guarantee that you will then turn things around. You can just as well be the 2004 Eagles, and have blown your best shot.

These Eagles will face massive personnel/leadership change this coming offseason. (Anybody notice that lately when the defense does make a play, it’s often Fletcher Cox or Brandon Graham, instead of one of the younger guys? Or that the offense’s most consistent players are 36-year-old Jason Kelce and 33-year-old Lane Johnson?)

A bright future is still possible, but it is far, far from assured. And this year’s team can do whatever these last three games, it’s still not going anywhere in the playoffs, unless a miracle occurs.