Thanks for Nothing, Nick & Rob
October 6, 2025
It was a lost weekend for the Eagles and Phillies, and in the storied tradition of Philadelphia sports, it’s time to assign blame for the nightmarish happenings.
You are hearing lots of theories this morning about the mistakes of the quarterback, the tired defense, the lousy relief pitching, and even the awful officiating. These arguments are all true to a point, but they ignore the root of the issues.
Yup. It’s the boys running the teams on the field, the two overrated bosses making the decisions during close games. If anyone thought the Philly teams had the coaching and managing advantages – Nick Sirianni and Rob Thomson vs. Sean Payton and Dave Roberts – stop reading now, please.
In the words of Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, You can’t handle the truth.
Look, I can understand the point that the Eagles were not going to go undefeated this season. With the 17-game schedule, the rigors of travel, blah, blah, blah, no team is a real threat these days to challenge the perfect 1972 Dolphins.
But losing to the Denver Broncos, at home, is obviously not a matter of the more talented team winning. The Eagles are reigning champs, and they are regarded as the NFL’s best roster again this season.
The team with better players should win most games, unless the coaches screw things up. And that’s the story of the Eagles’ first loss of 2025. Nick Sirianni and his bobo OC Kevin Patullo lost the game. Sean Payton gave both young coaches a lesson in game-planning and adjustments that they sorely needed.
There is one statistic that is cause for charges of mismanagement. In fact, it is almost unbelievable. The MVP of last season, Saquon Barkley, carried the football six times in the game. The best runner in the NFL took the ball and ran in less than one-tenth of the plays.
I know the counter argument. Payton game-planned to stop Barkley. Oh, and he also blocked the running lanes for Jalen Hurts, who ran with the ball only twice, for three yards. Together, the two best Eagles runners gained 36 yards on eight carries.
If you know football at all, you realize that all of this attention on the run means there were opportunities all over the field for big pass plays. The Eagles did manage a few of them in building a 17-3 lead, but then those chances dried up, too. (Except for one misconnection on a deep ball to an open Brown.)
Where was the play-calling during the second-half shutout? Where was the scheming that would open A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith for big plays all over the field? Where was the adjusting?
There was none. Patullo proved yet again that he has no idea what to call, in big moments or otherwise. Anyone who tells you differently is either one of the many self-appointed PR people currently covering the team for media outlets, or they have no clue about how the NFL works.
Want an example of great coaching? Consider what Payton did in the latter stages of the game. After punting on seven of their first eight possessions, the Broncos put up 18 points on their final three drives encompassing 27 plays and 186 yards. (Denver also exploited an exhausted Eagles defense in the 80-plus weather.)
It’s called adjusting.
The Eagles should try it sometime.
And then there was the demeanor of Sirianni, acting the fool once again after a series of calls went against the Birds in the fourth quarter. He had a good case on an intentional-grounding flag that was picked up, and even more so on a mugging of Dallas Goedert on a pass that would have set up a game-deciding final play from the two-yard line.
You saw what I saw. Sirianni was livid. He thought – maybe accurately – that his team had a win snatched away from it.
Then came the obligatory lie after the game when he was asked about the officiating: “I know there’s always going to be like, ‘Well, we got screwed in this one.’ I don’t think that way. They all balance each other out.”
Maybe the coach forgot that the NFL televises these games. I ran back the tape when Sirianni was losing his mind on the non-call on Goedert. The words “balance each other out” were not even close to what he actually said. (I’m no lip-reader, but I’m really sure of this.)
The next time Sirianni tells the truth in a news conference, we should hold a parade. Based on his coaching this season, it will be our only parade.
A day earlier, we got more of the same from Rob(ot) Thomson, the pre-programmed Phillies manager. Unlike the Eagles vs. Broncos, the Phils do not have a better roster than the defending-champ Dodgers, so it becomes even more important that he wins the chess match against LA manager Dave Roberts.
Good luck with that.
The first game of the NLDS at an electric Citizens Bank Park on Saturday night came down to how well Rob Thomson managed his bullpen. Game over.
I have argued for years now that Thomson is the ultimate blueprint manager, not trusting himself enough during a game to strategize according to what is happening, in real time, on the field. Now I have proof.
After the game, Thomson said he had locked into a matchup of Shohei Othani and Matt Strahm when he sent Dave Robertson out to start the seventh inning with a 3-2 lead. Robertson, 40, had never sat down and then come back into a game since his return to baseball in August.
The manager was worried about the third hitter in the inning, Othani, not the first two at the bottom of the LA lineup. But when both hitters reached base, Thomson got more than he had planned for. Now Strahm would face not just Ohtani, but also two great righthanded hitters, Mookie Betts and Teoscar Hernandez.
The reliever retired the first two batters he faced, but Hernandez hit a 400-foot bomb to give the Dodgers a lead they would hold for the rest of the night.
There’s a very good reason Thomson didn’t get his first MLB managing job until he was 57. He is not a quick thinker, and he knows it. That’s why he programs all of his moves before games, why he is such a slave to pitch counts. He doesn’t trust his own instincts.
The strange twist in Thomson’s career is that this should actually be the third year of his retirement. He had planned to step down as Joe Girardi’s bench coach after the 2022 season, before Joe got the boot in June.
Thomson got the Phillies to the World Series that season, then the NLCS in 2023, and the NLDS last year. If the Dodgers win the series this week, maybe Thomson will finally get his wish.
And if he keeps managing the way he did in Game One, it will also be the wish of every intelligent fan who cares about the Phillies.
Trick Question of the Week:
Nakobe Dean and Landon Dickerson are both healthy for Thursday night’s game against the Giants. Which Eagle player limps off the field first?
Answer: It’s impossible. Dean and Dickerson cannot ever be healthy for the same game. (In fact, Dickerson got hurt again while I was writing this blog.)