November 24, 2025
The first sign of trouble came right after the Eagles raced out to a 21-0 lead in Dallas on Sunday. Nick Sirianni and Kevin Patullo celebrated on the sideline with that moronic high five that links their arms at the elbow.
It looked like two crazed frat boys toasting the tapping of a new keg.
By now I’m sure you know that the Eagles lost to the Cowboys, 24-21, because they were not smart enough to exploit a three-touchdown lead and an even bigger advantage in talent and experience against a Dallas team struggling to make it to .500.
And leading the parade of culprits in that horrific loss were the head coach and his offensive coordinator.
Sirianni and Patullo.
Bozo and his bobo.
The amazing thing about the loss is that it came after eight improbable wins in the first 10 games. You should not be shocked that the Birds finally lost a game. You should be shocked that they were 8-2 when fate made a dramatic course correction on Sunday.
Sirianni has been a living symbol of the power of luck for all of the 2025 season. He has alternated head-scratching strategic decisions with his usual sideline buffoonery, all with no negative ramifications.
When he placed the two most recent wins in peril late with insane coaching strategies, he got away with it. When his offense stalled – as it has in most games this season – somehow the Birds won anyway.
The chickens came home to roost on Sunday. The odds finally flipped. The horseshoe up Sirianni’s rear end suddenly lost its magical powers.
I will spare you readers many of the gruesome details on the collapse in the second half; the last thing a fan in pain needs is to re-live the nightmare. Instead, I’ll just focus on how utterly idiotic the offensive coaching was on Sunday.
It all started the way it usually does, when the first 15 or 20 plays are scripted by the entire Eagles coaching staff. The arsenal of Eagles weapons was on display during those first three drives. Patullo went to A.J. Brown so many times in those opening minutes, I thought the ball-hungry receiver might actually beg his bosses for a break.
Then the script ran out. And so, not coincidentally, did Patullo’s ability to dial up effective plays.
The run didn’t work because the offensive line has no idea how to block when Lane Johnson is not there to anchor it. The Cowboys adjusted – imagine that! – after the first three series and slammed shut all avenues to the end zone, or so it seemed.
With offensive talent that matches or exceeds any Eagles team in franchise history, the Birds scored zero points in the last 41 minutes of the game. Over the final eight series, they recorded seven first downs. The novice OC was in beyond his depth, again.
There was a damning article last week on NJ.com that reported a podcast conversation between NFL broadcaster Ross Tucker and NFL Films senior producer (and acclaimed film analyst) Greg Cosell that left no doubt how inept Patullo is. It described in depth how the offensive scheme is so basic, so unsophisticated, that there is virtually no intertwining of pass patterns. There is no plan to get the receivers open through the scheme. None.
Basically, the 2025 version of the Eagles offense is Football For Dummies.
After the game, analysts Reuben Frank and Jason Avant on the NBC Sports Philadelphia postgame show called for the immediate removal of Patullo as play-caller.
Welcome to the club, fellas. It’s about time.
Because I am a lost cause myself, I actually waited to hear Sirianni in his consistently useless news conference to grasp if he understood why his offense had faltered so badly. Instead I got the usual disingenuous drivel about everyone having to take responsibility, about how the ball takes funny bounces, blah, blah, blah.
The head coach has no clue. If he did, he would have realized by now that he made the same mistake twice, hiring as his OC a coach with no experience and no ability to think on his feet. He did it two years ago with Brian Johnson, and now this season with Patullo.
It takes a special kind of fool to manage zero points in 41 minutes with all of that talent at his beck and call against the 30th-ranked defense in the league.
And yet, not only did Sirianni never question the play-calling in his post-game news conference, neither did the media. I got the feeling most of those so-called reporters were no better at adjusting to a sudden loss than the coaches they so often gush over.
Taking their cue from Sirianni, lots of accounts are even laying some of the blame today on the defense for allowing the yardage on the final drive that led to the game-winning 42-yard field goal. These accounts are laughably ignorant.
Here’s all you need to know about Vic Fangio’s defense: With just over five minutes left in a tie game, those defenders were sent out to their own eight-yard line to stop the Cowboys from scoring after a brutal fumble by Xavier Gipson, a punt returner so bad he was cut from the hideous Jets (for fumbling) earlier this season.
It was stupid of the Eagles to have Gipson out there in the first place, stupid that he decided to catch the punt at his own two-yard line, and stupid that he carried the football recklessly when he tried to escape the chaos near the goal line.
Still, the defense somehow found a way to keep Dallas off the scoreboard. Four plays later, the Birds had the ball back at their own two-yard-line. The only problem was, Patullo then had to devise a plan to maneuver the Birds into field-goal position.
He couldn’t, and Dallas QB Dak Prescott had just enough time to line up the game-winner.
So here’s where we are after 11 games: The Eagles are No. 2 in the NFC now, behind the Rams. They still have more talent than any other team in the NFL (see: 2024). And they still have an offensive coordinator who is far better at offending than coordinating.
If anything at all positive came from the loss it is that now most of the world sees what has been obvious from the beginning – the Eagles cannot hope to win another Super Bowl with Kevin Patullo calling the plays.
This realization, by the way, comes just a few days after Patullo was being mentioned as a potential NFL head coach next year somewhere. My first reaction when I saw the speculation was to laugh. Then I realized that an equally inept ex-Sirianni assistant, Jonathan Gannon, got a head job three years ago.
Gannon, who was the person most responsible for blowing Super Bowl 57, is 3-8 in Arizona right now, amid rumors that he’s about to get fired.
Hey, maybe Gannon could serve as Patullo’s defensive coordinator next year somewhere in the NFL. Then they could master that stupid high-five elbow lock that Sirianni and Patullo executed so beautifully in Dallas on Sunday. How cool would that be?
If the movie people ever decide to write a script about these three amazing young coaches, I have the perfect title.
Dumb, Dumber and Dumbest.