Nov. 9, 2026
In this hideous season, one member of the Eagles has emerged as the biggest culprit, the villain of 2026.
His name is Chris Kuper. He is terrible at his job – so terrible that even a knucklehead like me could see it before the first meaningful snap of the new season.
Kuper was a lousy coach in Minnesota, let go after last year because the talented offensive line he was hired to oversee had underachieved spectacularly. He was unemployable after a 60-sack debacle last season. Over his four seasons with the Vikings, his line allowed a staggering 203 sacks, fifth-most in the league.
Needless to say, Kuper’s job prospects in the NFL were nil. Kaput. Finito. Cooked.
And then, against all odds, he got an offer to take his dubious talents to Philadelphia. Sean Mannion rescued Kuper from NFL extinction, handing his pal the same job he had failed at in Minnesota. Hey, what are friends for if not to ruin a season?
The Eagles lost to a mediocre Giants team at Lincoln Financial Field on Sunday, 19-11, because they cannot block. It’s really that simple. The Eagles offense has gone from dreadful to downright unbearable.
How unbearable, you ask?
Well, let’s start with the seven sacks against Joe Milton, a quarterback who was promoted because of his mobility. Can you imagine how many sacks the Giants would have gotten if the statue he replaced, Tanner McKee, had started instead? The blind hit by Giants rookie Arvell Reese that dislodged the ball from Milton’s grasp in the second quarter registered on the Richter scale. I’m surprised Milton was still breathing after that one.
And then we should talk about the third quarter, during which the Eagles began with a rare lead, 8-6. Thanks to that Swiss-cheese line, the Eagles ran three series, nine plays in all. The first series netted them -2, then nothing, then +2. By the end of the quarter, the Eagles were trailing, 13-8. Thanks, Chris.
The pass-blocking was bad (see above). The run-blocking was even worse (2024 MVP Saquon Barkley averaged 1.8 yards per carry.) And the confusion against a relentless Giants blitz was there to witness on virtually every play.
After the game, Barrett Brooks of NBC Sports Philadelphia – a former nine-year NFL offensive lineman – nearly required sedation on the set as he diagrammed all of the misplays caused by the line.
“Come on now, come on now!” he kept screaming, trying to coax the linemen into their proper positions as he pointed to a video screen. I’m pretty sure Brooks is not a fan of Kuper.
There’s a lot more to say about that ugly, awful football game, but I can’t bear to go back over it yet. Instead, I will offer my continued appreciation for the best Eagle this season, Braden Mann, who punted a ball 85 yards (and another for 60). Kudos also to the Birds’ defensive line, which woke up from a deep slumber to sack J.J. McCarthy six times. And Vic Fangio deserves a nod of approval for holding a revived Giants offense to 19 points.
Overall, though, today is the day to identify what’s wrong with the Eagles and to do something about it. Chris Kuper belongs right at the top of that list.
He stunk in Minnesota. He’s even worse here.
What more do we need to see?
If the Eagles don’t fire Kuper during this bye week, then they are not a serious football team.
Are there two more popular former Eagles than Jason Kelce and Nick Foles?
Uh, no.
Kelce is the most beloved player in the most successful era in Eagles history, a brilliant performer on the field and the team’s best ambassador off it.
Well, guess what. He’s disgusted by the incessant need by the insecure people at the top of the organization who keep trying, unsuccessfully, to control the narrative around this horrendous 2026 version of the Eagles.
And Foles just happens to be a folk hero whose miraculous work in the 2017 season, all the way to the 2018 parade, will live well past all of us. The last time I looked, there’s still a statue outside Lincoln Financial Field immortalizing his extraordinary rescue of that great season. Philly, Philly, indeed.
Unfortunately, Foles also got a view of the front office’s paranoia that forced him to air publicly his contempt for the way the organization tried, again unsuccessfully, to deal with valid and educated criticism.
As I noted months ago, the departure of Jeff Stoutland after last season was symbolic of the dysfunction within the coaching staff headed by Nick Sirianni. Stoutland was forced out, first by the demotion that cost him the run-game coordinator’s job during the year and then the rest of his duties as offensive-line coach after it.
Jeff Stoutland was more effective and smarter than everyone on the current coaching staff, no exceptions. He groomed two linemen into Hall of Famers – Kelce and Lane Johnson – and turned an Australian rugby player with no football experience, Jordan Mailata, into a Pro Bowler. Stoutland presided over the undeniable strength of the team for 13 brilliant seasons.
But in the end, Sirianni didn’t like anybody pushing back on his many uninspired or just plain stupid ideas. Stoutland told the coach when he was wrong. Jeff had the audacity to push back. Imagine that.
Enter Kuper, a line coach as unaccomplished as Stoutland is a legend. When the Kuper experiment went to hell, someone in the Eagles organization – probably PR bully Bob Lange – decided to leak a story that Stoutland was pushed out because the linemen he coached wanted the 64-year-old disciplinarian to leave. It was their decision, not the front office’s, or so the story went.
It was a story only the dumbest lemmings bought. Kelce, a longtime friend and admirer of Stoutland, is not a dumb lemming.
“The reason to move off of Jeff Stoutland had nothing to do with the players,” Kelce said. “It had to do with the building wanting to go in a different direction. That’s fine, but don’t give me this crap, trying to defer direction on the decisions you guys wanted to make.”
Look, I never aspired to go into PR – honesty really matters to me – but forcing your most beloved player to slam the organization is not good message-managing by any definition. It is dishonest and tone-deaf in a city that pays attention. It’s also really stupid.
Meanwhile, Foles drew the wrath of Sirianni himself, who referred last week to the ex-QB’’s criticism of his coaching, his culture, and the poor play of some players as “crap.” (Hey, it’s comforting to see Kelce and Foles are in synch with their descriptive terms, isn’t it?)
“The fact that we’re ruffling feathers with the people at the top bothers me a little bit,” Foles said on a podcast with Super-Bowl hero Brandon Graham. “The fact that they’re getting emotional based on what we’re saying, block it out. Like, block us out. We’re talking to the fans.”
Welcome to our world, Nick Foles.
Hey, in Sirianni’s defense, what is the head coach supposed to do? He doesn’t oversee the offense, call plays, manage the defense or special teams and he clearly expends no energy trying to get better at news conferences. He has to do something with all of that spare time, doesn’t he?
I’m not going to lie to you here. Part of me is enjoying this season, if only because so many truths are being exposed. When an organization is alienating two of its biggest heroes, it desperately needs the kind of course correction a seven-game losing streak can provide. Knocking these arrogant phonies down a peg or two has been long overdue.
When the Eagles are charting a new direction after this disastrous season, they should also seriously rethink their paranoia about what people are saying about them. They should worry about what they themselves are doing, not what former players, media blowhards (present company included) or fans are saying.
They should try something entirely new – honesty.
To coin a suddenly-popular term, it’s time for all of this crap to end.
More fallout from the Milton move. . . .
- Nick Sirianni’s story now is that he planned all along to bench Tanner McKee for Eric Milton, even after he declared that “Tanner’s our guy” last Monday. He said he understands the media has a job to do, but “my job is to win football games.” Oh? And how’s that working out for him so far this season?
- When a coach lies to the media, he’s actually lying to the people paying his salary, the fans. It says a lot about a coach who has been here six years and still feels no obligation to speak the truth. In my experience over the past 40 years in this great sports city, no coach or manager has been less honest with the fans than Nick Sirianni. (Yes, including Andy Reid.)
- I was absolutely flabbergasted when, after playing a clip of Sirianni admitting his deception on Friday, Jason Dumas of 6ABC said that he “has to respect” what the coach did. Huh? I was equally shocked when I then learned that Dumas went to one of the best communications schools in the world, Syracuse University. Dumas graduated in 2011. Is it to late to revoke that degree?
- This latest bit of BS by Sirianni wouldn’t have survived a single day when actual journalism was being practiced on the sports beats in Philadelphia. I can envision columns by Stan Hochman, Mark Whicker and Ray Didinger blasting the coach’s lie. The coaches who preceded Sirianni – everyone from Joe Kuharick and Rick Kotite to Dick Vermeil and Doug Pederson – learned that lesson. Unfortunately, now there’s no one with enough balls in the media to teach it to Sirianni.
- And finally, I still don’t believe it was actually a lie. I still think Sirianni said it to defuse speculation that the order to switch to Milton came from upstairs. Sirianni did acknowledge that his decision came after a conversation “in great detail” with GM Howie Roseman.
Here’s a full transcript of that discussion:
Howie: Let’s try Milton this week.
Sirianni: Yes, sir.