Eagles offense once again at the crossroads.

I know a lot of Birds fans are feeling down about that Rams game, as am I, but to be frank I just can't get too bent out of shape over the result, considering the positively biblical plague of injuries that the Birds sustained:

MISSED THE GAME

Lane Johnson*

Landon Dickerson*

Devonta Smith

Dallas Goedert

Zach Baun*

Marcus Epps

MISSED MOST OF THE GAME

Saquon Barkley*

Quinyon Mitchell*

MISSED SOME OF THE GAME

Jonathan Greenard*

Cooper DeJean*

Tank Bigsby

*starred players have made at least one Pro Bowl/All Pro team in their careers

It was borderline comical how banged up the Birds were by the 4th quarter. Small wonder that the team ran out of gas. I recognize that the Rams were missing three key defensive starters as well, but let's just agree that they had the edge in team health and it wasn't particularly close.

Considering that, to have the presumptive favorites on the ropes for much of the game is worth celebrating, even if they didn't get the job done (largely thanks to a horribly bungled goal line sequence that we'll come to). There's some real negatives that this team will have to reckon with, but any discussion of the game must be put in the context of the fact that we basically saw the Eagles' JV team out there and they still nearly got the job done.

A few more Week 4-specific quick hitters:

• Much will (righty) be made of Jalen Hurts' struggles of late, but can we point out how rough Matthew Stafford looked? He did have 300 yards but took 51 throws to get there, had two picks (could easily have been four) and no scores. The Rams offensive unit was nearly completely healthy, so it's either "hats off to the Birds defense" or "it's OK for a QB to struggle in a big game"; pick a narrative, sports media.

• That said, Jalen had a bad game; no doubt about it. I can forgive some of the inefficiency considering not only the weather conditions but the aforementioned offensive injuries, but once again the pressure got to him more than it should have, once again he was largely ineffective as a runner (even that one big gain in the fourth quarter could have been 4-5 yards more if he was willing to take some contact; I miss the gutsy old Jalen), and even the BS has largely ceased to be a weapon for the team. His first score to Cooper was a bad throw that was nearly picked; the incompetence of the Rams DB and the heads up play by Cooper bailed him out. Again, it's hard to know how much of all of this is to blame on QB1 due to the specific circumstances (it should be pointed out he had a higher passer rating than Stafford), but this song and dance is getting old. Need to see a bit more from a guy making $50 million +.

• Time to officially talk about this offense; it's been four games. They are 29th in yards per game, 29th in yards per play, 30th in first downs per game, 28th in 4th down conversion rate and 22nd in passer rating. I get that health issues, scheme switches and first-month general wonkiness all play into performance, but these figures are terrible for a group this talented. I don't have a specific fix in mind other than to say it might be time to simplify the playbook and just go with straightforward plays that work until the defense proves they can stop it. For example, the one drive in the entire second half that actually showed anything like promise was built on variations of the simplest of plays: the halfback draw. The Rams, for whatever reason had no answer for it at that moment.

• Let's talk about that drive's painful conclusion. To recap, Philly ran the ball down LA's throat, marching 62 yards in nine plays to reach third and goal from the two. Instead of doing the obvious thing and just run down the middle twice (again, LA wasn't stopping them and the shortest distance between two points is a straight line), the Birds tried a QB bootleg that almost looked like a trick play. The Eagles actually had it blocked up well, but Jalen bobbled the snap, screwed up the timing and was stuffed for no gain. On fourth down, they passed on the FG and tried a messy looking pass play that fell incomplete. In hindsight, I think it's the right call to go for the TD (the FG wouldn't have helped them in the end, as it turned out) but the playcalling was too complicated for the moment. I had flashbacks to the Brian Johnson days.

Big picture observations:

Fix that offense! As pointed out above, and everywhere else on the web, this group isn't good enough right now. The good news is that the personnel is better than this and should improve with better health*. It's hard it imagine it getting worse, at any rate. If no improvement occurs, it's hard to imagine that either Hurts or Sirianni is here next season. Don't think they don't know it.

*It's possible that this group has just aged quickly, like the 2018 Eagles did, but that's a tough sell for me. The only offensive starters from Super Bowl 59 (just 20 months ago, by the way) that weren't available for this season were AJ Brown, Mekhi Becton and Jahan Dotson. None of the returning 8 starters noticeably crossed a threshold from "playing at a high level" to "clearly past his prime", unless it turns out that guys like Dickerson and Jurgens are just broken beyond repair.

What would a best case scenario have looked like? The Eagles at 2-2 are pretty close to the worst case scenario, based on how these four games have unfolded. It's possible they would have lost the Washington game, if Stefon Diggs had any brains at all. Their best case scenario looks something like this:

Beat Commanders 24-16. The Commanders recovered a fumble on their potential game winning drive; the 50-50 nature of fumble recoveries makes this outcome as likely as the actual outcome was.

Beat Titans 31-13. We discussed why this was a very possible result HERE.

Lost to Bears 17-20. We discussed why this was a realistic outcome HERE.

Beat Rams 27-24. I'm just going to reduce the Birds' bubonic plague of injuries enough to give them that touchdown on the now-infamous goal line series. Or, if you think that sequence plays out the same, maybe we give Philly back players like Mitchell and Greenard for the Rams' final drive and maybe they are fresh enough and talented enough to stop them and the Birds win 20-17.

If Philly is 3-1 with a net scoring margin of +26 instead of 2-2 with a margin of -18, are we feeing quite as bad? Naturally, it's absurd to dwell on the above too much, but it isn't absurd to say that the above scenario is about as likely to have played out as the current one has. EDIT: the Eagles have recovered just two of the six fumbles that have occurred so far; those two were Barkley's "fumble" on that play he was injured that went straight out of bounds and no one could have recovered, and Jalen's fumble on the second to last play of the Rams game that would have changed nothing. The other four fumbles were far more impactful and Philly had bad luck to recover none of them.

Even at 2-2, this season is hardly lost. In fact, the comparisons between this season and 2024 are more than a little striking:

1. Both seasons started 2-2 with fans questioning everything after four weeks.

2. Both 2-2 starts felt misleading as the team was outscored both times (-10 in 2024, -18 in 2026)

3. Both seasons featured a game where the weather played an inordinate factor (Tampa in 24, Tennessee in 26)

4. Both had a game in which a bungled red zone sequence cost the team dearly (the infamous 4th Down Game against Atlanta in 24, LA in 26)

5. Both had a game in which a comical run of injuries effectively ended any chance of winning (Tampa in 24, LA in 26)

There are dissimilarities as well; in 2024, Barkley was both healthy and was obviously on track to have a good season. So far this season, neither of those things have been true. Through the first four games, the 2024 Eagles had been outgained by just one yard. In 2026 they have been outgained by 297 yards. Expecting the '26 version of this team to turn into the NFL's best over the next two months isn't realistic, but expecting meaningful improvement is.

Finally, after this coming weekend's London clash with a surprisingly good Jacksonville team, the schedule lightens up noticeably; the following eight games are as follows: Panthers, Cowboys, @Commanders, Giants, Steelers, @Cowboys, @Cardinals, Colts. Even if they lose this Jaguars game (they are currently a 5.5 point underdog, seems about right), it's difficult to see them being much worse than 7-6 or 8-5 going into the stretch run. I had predicted a 10-3 record by that point, so we'd be behind schedule but likely still in a good position to at least win the division.

Of course, if they don't get healthier and get their offense together, throw all that out the window. If overall quality of play doesn't improve, they are headed for six or seven wins total. The offense must drag itself into at least mediocre territory to stay in the postseason chase.

EDIT: the original version of this article published minutes before the news broke that Lane Johnson was retiring. This loss in itself will probably cost the Birds three of four wins. For the last time, I'll cite the Lane Metric: when he plays at least 50% of the snaps, the Birds are 106-54-1 (66.2%); when he doesn't, they are 23-32 (41.9%). That difference works out to four wins over a 127 game season.