On Monday evening, head coach Nick Sirianni and the Philadelphia Eagles snatched defeat from the jaws of victory with a crushing home loss to the Atlanta Falcons, 22-21. After the game, most pundits blamed Sirianni for his decision to run a pass play for Eagles running back Saquon Barkley on a crucial third down with under two minutes ago, a pass that Barkley dropped.
This drop gave the Falcons the ball back with much more time than would have been available had the Eagles run the ball, and Kirk Cousins and company capitalized, going down the field and scoring with 35 seconds remaining.
The controversial decision drew the ire of Eagles fans everywhere, but one person who is not on board with the criticism is former Philadelphia center Jason Kelce, who was in attendance on Monday evening and recently took to his New Heights podcast to relay his thoughts.
“I get it and that's big in that situation and I think that that it's hard to argue against but I also think that roll pass is kind of a conservative, because if it's not there, Jalen is going down and you're gonna get the time or he's gonna run and that's only going to be thrown if it's wide open, which it was,” said Kelce. “Like, it was the perfect play call, and the percentage chance that a wide open pass to Saquon Barkley is getting dropped like that, I just think that's got to be pretty low.”
Although Barkley has been known to drop a pass or two in his career, it was still generally safe to assume that he would be able to catch the loft he received from Jalen Hurts in that situation.
Except that he didn't.
Can the Eagles bounce back?
Eagles fans would be forgiven for having flashbacks to the second half of last year's regular season while watching what transpired on Monday evening.
Throughout 2023, Philadelphia relinquished several leads down the stretch of close games in the waning moments, with many questionable coaching decisions playing a part in those situations as well.
Philadelphia now sits at 1-1 on the young season and will now have to pay a visit to the New Orleans Saints, who through two games at least have looked like an absolute juggernaut on both sides of the ball.
That game is slated to kick off at 1:00 PM ET from New Orleans and will be broadcast on FOX.
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