I don’t remember a Philadelphia Eagles season in my lifetime that felt more boom or bust than this upcoming one. If you look at the betting markets, the Eagles have roughly the same odds to get to the Super Bowl (+550) as they do to win seven games or fewer (+540). Think about those two scenarios. In the first one, Nick Sirianni would have a résumé that includes four playoff berths and two NFC championships in his first four seasons as a head coach. In the second, he would probably be begging his coaching friends to hire him for a vague senior adviser role next season.
So which way will it go? Will the moves the Eagles made in the offseason result in the team once again competing for a Lombardi? Or will owner Jeffrey Lurie be reaching out to potential head-coaching candidates in mid-December?
Below are five questions that will determine which way the 2024 Eagles season will go.
1. Will the Sirianni experiment work?
It’s impossible to overstate just how bad the Eagles’ collapse was last season. After starting out 10-1, they lost five of their last six regular-season games to finish 11-6 and got embarrassed in the wild-card round by Tampa Bay. It was the first time in NFL history that a team started a season 10-1 and failed to win at least 12 games. The meltdown included a disconnect between Sirianni and quarterback Jalen Hurts (more on that later), an expensive pass rush that looked lifeless, and someone’s bright idea to hand the defensive reins to Matt Patricia. Shockingly, that last decision did not work out.
After the playoff loss, the Eagles waited nine days to hold a press conference, in which they confirmed that Sirianni would return. Executive vice president and general manager Howie Roseman cited the snowy weather and other factors as reasons for the delay, but anyone with a functioning BS meter could see that Lurie was taking some time to decide whether to make a coaching change. On one hand, Sirianni’s Pro Football Reference page is a thing of beauty. He’s 34-17 with three playoff appearances and a Super Bowl berth. Among 201 coaches who have coached at least 50 games, Sirianni has the 14th-highest winning percentage! On the other hand, it’s difficult to figure out where exactly he is giving the Eagles an edge.
While Lurie decided to keep Sirianni, he stripped the head coach of more responsibilities. The Eagles hired Kellen Moore as their offensive coordinator, and he appears to be in full control on that side of the ball. They hired Vic Fangio as defensive coordinator, and my gut says Fangio probably won’t need Sirianni’s input on game-planning and scheming. Indeed, a report in The Athletic confirmed what seemed likely: Roseman made those coordinator hires. Sirianni doesn’t even get to make decisions on his own staff.
The label thrown around locally is “CEO head coach”—like John Harbaugh or Mike Tomlin. But in Philadelphia, decisions on things like practice schedule and roster moves and incorporating analytics into game-day decision-making are made at an organizational level, not by Sirianni alone. So the obvious question is: What exactly will he be doing this season?
He will lead team meetings. He will address the media. He will try to foster a healthy culture. And he will be responsible for communicating and connecting with players. The hope is that might be enough. The Eagles are trying to win a Super Bowl with as little head coach involvement as possible. They have a talented roster. They have a relatively easy schedule. And they have two capable, veteran coordinators. On paper, it looks like a setup that could actually work.
It’s also highly unorthodox. ESPN reported earlier this offseason that the Eagles were one of the teams that “discussed” hiring Bill Belichick. They decided against exploring the possibility further because such a move would have meant handing the entire organization over to the head coach. With Sirianni, they are essentially doing the opposite. Meanwhile, he goes into the season knowing he has a pretty high bar to clear to keep his job in 2025.
Remember, Doug Pederson went into the 2017 season knowing that his job was on the line, and he responded by leading the Eagles to their only Super Bowl title in franchise history. Seven years later, Sirianni finds himself in a similar spot, and the organization is banking on this experiment to yield similar results. If that doesn’t happen, everyone knows who will take the blame.
2. What version of Jalen Hurts will the Eagles get?
The 2022 version of Hurts is the best one we’ve seen so far. He was dynamic as a runner. He provided answers for the offense in short yardage. He made good decisions. He aggressively pushed the ball downfield to playmakers A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith. And he threw a beautiful deep ball.
So what happened last season, and how much of the blame falls on Hurts as opposed to the coaching? That question will be a lot easier to answer four months from now. Hurts has a coordinator in Moore who has directed multiple high-level offenses with the Cowboys, and Dak Prescott had worse supporting casts with those teams than Hurts has now.
The Eagles’ film from last year showed an offense that failed to give the quarterback solutions. The Eagles were a disaster against the blitz. They used motion at the lowest rate of any offense in the NFL. They went under center at the lowest rate. And they targeted the middle of the field at the lowest rate. None of those things are easy buttons that automatically make an offense good, but they are layers that modern offenses should be able to incorporate to help out the quarterback. The Eagles are counting on Moore to do just that.
While the coaching last year failed Hurts, it’s also fair to question his role in some of the offensive failures. There were times when plays called for him to be aggressive and make throws over the middle, and he refused to do so. Funneling targets to Brown and Smith makes a lot of sense, but when defenses commit resources to stopping those premier receivers, Hurts has to trust the other players on the field. And he didn’t show a willingness to do that last season.
Hurts also hasn’t shown a willingness to publicly take accountability for his on-field missteps. That might not matter if he’s doing so inside the building, but it’s still something to keep an eye on. Sirianni took the blame for Hurts’s late-game interception during a Week 15 loss at Seattle, saying the Eagles were trying to draw a pass interference penalty. Weeks later, Brown revealed that he and Hurts had improvised on the play and that the players were actually responsible for the turnover. Hurts, meanwhile, stayed quiet. After the season, and even deep into the offseason, Hurts made it clear—whether directly or indirectly—that the coaching, not his play, was the problem.
Hurts will be asked to do more this season than ever before. With veteran center Jason Kelce gone, he’s working with new center Cam Jurgens to set the blocking protections at the line of scrimmage. Using more pre-snap motion is great, but it also asks the quarterback to direct more of the operation with precise timing. These additions will be new to Hurts, and he’ll have to show that he’s capable of handling everything.
And then there’s the issue of Hurts’s relationship with Sirianni. An ESPN report painted a picture of dysfunction. Hurts and Sirianni are wired differently. Hurts’s stoic nature often leaves people wondering what he’s thinking. Sirianni’s emotional outbursts leave no doubt. The relationship can work if there’s mutual respect, but Hurts does not seem to believe that Sirianni can help him become the player he wants to be. If the team is winning, as it was in the 2022 season, it will be all good. But if the Eagles get off to a slow start, the strain on their relationship may be unavoidable.
Still, the floor for a Hurts-led offense is high. In three seasons with Hurts as the starter, the Eagles have finished 11th, third, and 10th in offensive efficiency. Over the past two seasons, he ranks ninth out of 37 quarterbacks in expected points added per pass play. The ceiling is high, too. We saw that during the Super Bowl run. When the Eagles offense was rolling, it felt like it had answers to any problem a defense could present. Most quarterbacks in the NFL have to be envious of Hurts’s supporting cast, which includes Brown, Smith, tight end Dallas Goedert, and, now, running back Saquon Barkley. If Hurts looks like an MVP candidate once again, last season’s dip will be easily explained. The coaching failed him. But if he can’t operate at an elite level with this group, then how good can he actually be?
Football is fun to analyze from a hundred different angles, but a lot of times a team’s Super Bowl chances come down to one simple question: How good is the quarterback? That question should be pretty easy to answer once we see how Hurts performs in 2024.
3. How much of an impact can Vic Fangio have?
On paper, going from Patricia (and, before him, Sean Desai) to Fangio feels like a home run. The defense was up and down under Desai, but it was a complete disaster under Patricia, with players on the field appearing confused week after week. Fangio, meanwhile, is an experienced, accomplished coordinator who has designed a defensive scheme that others have tried to replicate. The Fangio defensive philosophy has layers, but the basic premise is to start in the same two-high safety structure every play and then move the safeties right before or right after the snap to create moments of indecision for opposing quarterbacks. When this defense is executed well, it can flummox high-powered offenses.
While Fangio should undoubtedly raise the floor of the Eagles defense in 2024, he is not a miracle worker. Since directing the 49ers defenses under Jim Harbaugh, Fangio has had eight seasons as a coordinator or head coach (four with the Bears, three with the Broncos, and one with the Dolphins). In those eight seasons, he’s produced a top-10 defense (based on DVOA) just once.
He’s working with an Eagles roster that (once again!) has serious questions at off-ball linebacker. They took a one-year flier on former Tampa Bay Buc Devin White, and in the summer, Zack Baun was occupying the other spot. In the secondary, Darius Slay is penciled in for one starting cornerback spot. Slay has been a terrific player for the Eagles, but he is 33 years old. Corner is typically a young man’s position, and when the cliff comes, it can come fast. Last year, there was exactly one corner in the entire NFL who was 33 or older and started at least 10 games: Patrick Peterson. In other words, if Slay can stay healthy and perform at a high level, he’ll very much be the exception.
In the draft, the Eagles spent the no. 22 pick on corner Quinyon Mitchell and the 40th pick on defensive back Cooper DeJean. Both guys were quality prospects, but counting on rookies to come in and play at a high level immediately is risky.
There’s also the question of Fangio’s fit within the organization. The Eagles tend to run a light training camp with a focus on keeping guys healthy. Fangio has mentioned on multiple occasions how he thinks the “load management” philosophy has gone too far. We saw in the preseason that Fangio has some juice, as defensive starters for the Eagles played more than offensive starters. He doesn’t appear to be a man who wants to be advised on new, efficient, analytically sound ways of doing things. And then there’s the buzz about Fangio’s inability to relate to his players. It’s been nearly impossible to read an article about the Dolphins defense this offseason without seeing players take not-so-veiled shots at Fangio’s approach.
Like everything else with the 2024 Eagles, there’s a wide range of outcomes here. Maybe Fangio can work his magic, maximize the talent on the roster, and produce a defense that could surprise some people. Or maybe we’ll see some personality clashes, some fireworks, and a one-year marriage.
4. Can Jalen Carter make the leap?
The player who could make Fangio’s life a lot easier is second-year defensive tackle Carter. The ninth pick in the 2023 draft, Carter started last season on fire but faded a bit down the stretch. According to Pro Football Focus’s charting, Carter’s 49 pressures were the most by any rookie defensive tackle in the past 10 seasons. His six sacks were third most, behind only Aaron Donald and fellow 2023 rookie Kobie Turner. According to Next Gen Stats, Carter ranked top 20 among all defensive tackles in sacks and pressures in 2023. Carter’s highlights were eye-popping. He can win with quickness, power, and leverage. On those snaps where Carter puts it all together, opposing guards and centers often look helpless.
Haason Reddick and Josh Sweat produced the two highest sack totals for the Eagles last season, while Fletcher Cox was fourth. Sweat is still around, but the Eagles traded Reddick, and Cox retired. They need someone to emerge as the guy that opposing offensive coordinators have to game-plan for. The most likely candidate to fill that role is Carter. But he’ll be asked to play a lot more snaps than he did last season (534). The Dolphins’ best defensive tackle under Fangio, Christian Wilkins, barely came off the field in 2023, registering 852 snaps. This is another area where Fangio’s view may conflict with the Eagles’ organizational view, which has typically been to rely on more of a defensive line rotation.
Roseman drew heavy praise in 2022 and 2023 when he drafted five players from Georgia, but so far the only one who looks like a sure hit is Carter. The Eagles need him to be a game wrecker to lift this defense’s ceiling in 2024.
5. Will the Saquon Barkley signing pay off?
There’s plenty we can learn from studying the Eagles’ run game over the past few seasons. It’s been a high-floor group, regardless of who’s at running back. The Eagles finished third in rushing DVOA in 2021, first in 2022, and fifth last season. Their leading rusher in 2021 was Hurts, it was Miles Sanders in 2022, and it was D’Andre Swift in 2023. The evidence seemed to be pretty clear that as long as you had Hurts as a rushing threat, good blocking, and legendary offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland designing the scheme, it didn’t matter all that much who was playing running back.
Or so we thought! The Eagles pulled a surprise this offseason by signing Barkley to a three-year deal worth $37.8 million that includes $26 million fully guaranteed. Adding Barkley to the previous versions of this offense would have been a lot of fun. But Kelce is gone, and Jurgens is sliding over from right guard to center. Veteran Mekhi Becton replaces Jurgens at right guard. The Eagles offensive line should still be above average, but it has more questions than it’s had in a while.
History tells us that paying running backs who are entering their seventh season doesn’t usually work out. But on paper, even with some of the offensive line uncertainty, this should be the best situation that Barkley’s ever had. He’s never been the most efficient back, but we have evidence to suggest that Barkley’s new surroundings can help him in that respect. In 2022, Sanders ranked fourth among all backs in rushing success rate with the Eagles. He signed with the Panthers as a free agent, and last year Sanders ranked 46th. Another reminder of how much circumstances matter for a running back.
The Eagles are banking on the idea that the scheme will give Barkley big-play opportunities to produce more explosive plays than Sanders and Swift did in previous seasons.
If you’re wondering where all of this leaves the Eagles, well, I don’t really know. The last time they went into a season with this much intrigue was probably 2013, when Chip Kelly was making the leap from college to the NFL. In the months ahead, the Philly group chats could include links to travel options to New Orleans for the Super Bowl or links to articles about head-coaching candidates in 2025.
Emotions will run high. Arguments will get heated. And takes will fly. Can’t you just feel it? Another football season in Philadelphia is almost here.
