Add A Disconnect In Messaging to Eagles' Collapse Autopsy

It was perplexing when left guard Landon Dickerson pointed to unscouted looks with Dallas’ “Bear” or “50 Front” because head coach Nick Sirianni claimed that the shift to playing more five-man front by the Cowboys after the acquisition of Quinnen Williams was why the Eagles came out pass-heavy from a game-plan perspective. 

 "I think some of the things that we did today, we're trying to throw them out of it because when you have five men ... then they're gonna have one less guy there into the coverage,” Sirianni explained. “So we did some of those things, obviously, not well enough. 

“Again, it comes back to how we scheme it against the different personnel groups and how we execute it."

That seemingly never reached Dickerson.

"They gave us a defense that they rarely run and we just didn't execute the game plan we had," Dickerson told reporters.

When pressed what defense it was, Dickerson pointed to the 50 looks that will be the norm for Matt Eberflus moving forward after adding Williams to Kenny Clark and Osa Odighizuwa on the Cowboys defensive interior.

“Just five-down fronts. It's not usually, typically something they were running a whole lot, and turns out that was their flavor of the day," Dickerson said.

What Dickerson said would be correct pre-Williams but post-Williams is a different story and the surprise would have been coming out with the traditional four-man fronts, especially against an offense with the reputation of the Eagles.

Quarterback Jalen Hurts was locked into what was going on with the Cowboys.

"I think that's just how they're built now, given the three interior defenders they have,” the QB1 assessed. “They want to keep their best guys on the field, and it's very effective, and it was something that we didn't handle as good as we like to.” 

One of the toughest tests for any coach with a shelf life is making sure his messaging stays fresh especially with veteran players who’ve heard all the hits.

So perhaps you can add Sirianni’s messaging to the penalties and the ineffective running game as the top issues in the Eagles’ biggest collapse of the century.