The Philadelphia Eagles were not expected to do well this season. Entering the year, they had all the traits of a shitty team—coming off a 4-11-1 season; young QB, but on the older side otherwise; new, inexperienced coaching staff.
It’s six games into the NFL season and the Eagles are, indeed, not good! They‘re 2-4. They routed the Falcons in their opener, but have pretty much played like trash ever since—except in garbage time, when they sometimes score a touchdown or two to make the game seem closer.
Sunday’s game at Las Vegas was a good example. They scored a touchdown on their opening drive and then let the Raiders score 30 consecutive points. Only after they were down 30-7, and the Raiders defense stopped caring, did the offense look like a professional one. Nothing seems to be going right—for weeks, people begged them to run the ball a little more, and Miles Sanders got five carries for 30 yards on the opening drive Sunday, then was seriously hurt on the team’s second drive.
Nick Sirianni—the Eagles' new, green head coach—has taken much of the blame for these failures. It would be unfair to him only if the Eagles didn’t look even worse than their talent level for long stretches this season. But despite the 33-22 loss to the Raiders, Sirianni says he can see a bright future ahead. Already, the coach has had several press conferences where he has said silly things. And yesterday he added another one!
“There’s gotta be a message that I have to keep everybody together and to keep everybody sticking to what we really want to do. This is what I said the team today: The results aren’t there right now. But what’s going on here is that there’s growth under the soil. I put a picture of a flower up. It’s coming through the ground and the roots are growing out. And the roots are continuing to grow out. And everybody wants to see results. Shoot, nobody wants to see results more than us. We want to see results, too.
"But it’s really important that the foundation is being built and that the roots are growing out. And the only way the roots grow out every single day, and they grow stronger, and they grow better, is if we all water. We all fertilize. We all do our part. Each individual, each individual coach, each individual player, everybody in the building, that we do our part to water to make sure that when it does pop out, it really pops out and it grows.
"And so, that was my message today. Like I said to you guys before, I’m always thinking of different messages to give to the team, that are either messages that I think really fit to the situation, that I’ve gotten before in a situation, from another head coach or my dad or whatever. So that was my message today, because we are going through tough times. And everybody wants to see results. But just keep doing what we’re doing, keep watering, and look at yourselves first and know ‘Are you watering and are you fertilizing every day?’ So, when it’s time to pop, it’ll pop.”
Fertilizer? Geeze. C’mon, man. Just say it: The Eagles are shit!
