Eagles’ Key to Playoff Success: Learn to Finish!

In this series, Athlon Sports’ Doug Farrar takes a look at the one thing every playoff team in the wild-card round absolutely must do (or absolutely must not do) if they want to advance to the divisional frame and beyond. We continue withthe Philadelphia Eagles, whose offense has been stuck in varying degrees of mud all season long. That's led to some worrisome second-half trends that could be a problem when the Eagles welcome the San Francisco 49ers to Lincoln Financial Field this Sunday at 4:30 p.m. ET (Fox).

Under head coach Nick Sirianni and first-year offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo, the Philadelphia Eagles' offense has been a mixed bag at best in the 2025 season. There's been all kinds of legitimate talk about the lack of creativity in route concepts and run schemes, the inability to utilize the talent to its ultimate potential, and the long stretches of time in which an offense that completely splattered most of the defenses it faced in 2024 on the way to a Super Bowl championship looked more like something that just fell off the back of a truck.

There are all kinds of ramifications to having a more rudimentary offense as the Eagles now do, and the primary one has been the ways in which they've been unable to maintain momentum in the second halves of games.

Per Sumer Sports' awesome "SumerBrain" tool, here's how it's looked this season:

First-Half Performance

• Total Plays: 506
• Total Yards: 2,706
• Passing: 171/254 (67.3%), 1,662 yards
• Rushing: 235 attempts, 1,120 yards
• Touchdowns: 23
• First Downs: 154
• EPA/Play: +0.09
• Scoring Plays: 60 (23 TDs, 12 FGs, 25 XPs)

Second-Half Performance

• Total Plays: 495
• Total Yards: 2,528
• Passing: 143/236 (60.6%), 1,783 yards
• Rushing: 241 attempts, 864 yards
• Touchdowns: 20
• First Downs: 130
• EPA/Play: -0.06
• Scoring Plays: 46 (20 TDs, 8 FGs, 16 XPs)

The good news is that the Eagles are 7-2 this season in games where they held a lead in the first half. That's mostly due to the defense, which has been predictably outstanding under Vic Fangio. The bad news is that none of that matters now, because when Philly welcomes the San Francisco 49ers to Lincoln Financial Field, it's the wild-card round, and all it takes is one lapse for things to fall apart, and for a season to end. Now, there's also 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan's 1-31 record as a head coach when trailing by three or more points in the fourth quarter, but in a one-and-done situation, you can't count on history to save you.

Why are the Eagles falling down in a relative sense when it comes to the second half? Patullo was asked about it on Dec. 30, two days after the Eagles beat the Buffalo Bills, 13-12. In that game, they jetted out to a 13-0 first-half lead and came one failed two-point conversion from losing.

"We’re working through that right now still," Patullo said. "We watched it right after the game as a staff. We watched through it on the plane, then we went through it yesterday, and we’re still going through some stuff now as we speak. Really, when you look at it, is the amount of drives we had and plays and some of the starting positions, it was the first-down thing again. We had four drives where we had inefficient first downs, put us in four second-and-longs, and then from that, we were in three third-and-longs. When you’re doing that, when that’s happening, it’s going to be very hard to move the ball. That’s the unfortunate part of it. We had the one backed-up drive from the minus-1, we have to get it out. We ran again on second down; we didn’t get much. Then third down, we had some pressure and that was a punt.

"When you look at those drives, it gets frustrating. We need one play. All we need is one spark, one thing to get those things going and we’re out of it. There [were] a couple– there was one drive, we were very close on the one where we went first-and-10 pass, then we went second-and-10. We had [wide receiver] DeVonta [Smith], we had a little bit of pressure, we almost made the play. He had a great route versus man coverage [that] we won, and [it] just didn’t happen. Third-and-10, we don’t convert. Those are the frustrating pieces that we’re looking at as a staff. How do we get out of those? What do we need to do better as a coaching staff? How do we execute better? Because really, it’s not just one person, one thing, one play style, one call."

"It’s everything. We’ve got to look at everything."

The second-and-10 play that drove Patullo nuts came with 6:25 left in the third quarter. The Bills were in Cover-1 — man coverage with a single-high safety — and Smith was open against slot defender Taron Johnson. Problem was, Hurts sailed the ball under pressure, and Johnson had the time to catch up and force the incompletion.