Report: Matt Patricia to call plays for Eagles’ defense instead of DC Sean Desai

Philadelphia Eagles (10-3) senior defensive assistant Matt Patricia will be on the sideline calling the plays into the green dot player beginning with Monday’s Week 15 road contest against the Seattle Seahawks (6-7).

Per Ian Rapoport of NFL Network, defensive coordinator Sean Desai will move to the coaching booth. Rapoport added that Eagles players have been impressed with Patricia. The Eagles quietly made the switch this week, looking for a better output from their once stout defense.

According to NFL.com, Philadelphia has allowed 33-plus points in three straight games for the second time in team history (Weeks 11-13, 1967). In addition, the Eagles have surrendered a league-high 428.2 yards per game since Week 8. The defense, which ranked No. 2 in the NFL last season, has slipped to 23rd this season. Philadelphia is coming off back-to-back blowout losses to the San Francisco 49ers (10-3) and Dallas Cowboys (10-3), in which they allowed 75 combined points.

Eagles in search of better execution on defensive side of the ball

“I think it’s just we have been inopportune. We have not been able to get off the field when we need to get off the field. Yeah, in third down and situational football we got to be better, third down, red zone. Those have been our bugaboos. Not going to lie to you. That’s been our Achilles heel right now,” Desai said this week, via the team’s website. “I feel really good about where we’re going with it, feel really good about our planning process towards it, and our players’ mentality in approaching that situation, being able to put guys in spots to go win those.

“Again, we won a lot of third downs early in the year. We just haven’t been able to do that this year. That’s hurting us as a defense. Increases our play counts. But it hurts us as a team. Our job as a defense is to get the ball back to the offense as fast as we can, and we haven’t been able to do that effectively enough.”

Head coach Nick Sirianni said the team simply needs to “execute better.”

“We gotta coach ’em better. We gotta put ’em in better spots,” Sirianni said. “Have to detail it out for them. We also got to execute better. I think that everybody is in on that. This is a team game. Team. You hear me all the time say, ‘This is the greatest team sport there is.’ Usually when I’m talking about that, I’m talking about the good things that happen. But it’s also the truth when bad things are happening, too.

“To single one person out is not the right move here. It’s, ‘How do we get better as a team?’ And we have to get better as a team, make no mistake about it.”