The 2025 Philadelphia Eagles; what went right?

CLICK HERE if you're interested in reading the "What went wrong?" version of this column.

Losing an embarrassing playoff game in the wake of a frustrating season is no way to defend your Super Bowl championship, but no matter how bitter the taste of last season might be, there were plenty of positives, some of which set Philly up pretty well for the future:

Philly won 11 games despite a brutal schedule. A quick review of the Eagles' schedule reveals "only" six games against eventual playoff teams, but that doesn't count early games against Kansas City or Tampa Bay (playoff caliber teams before injuries wrecked their rosters) or games against Minnesota or Detroit, who finished with winning records but missed the playoffs. The Eagles went 7-3 in these ten games.

The Eagles finally broke the Curse of the Defending NFC East champion. A remarkable 20 year streak with no repeat champions (as pointed out in the link, the odds of this occurring are about one in 64,000) was finally broken by the Birds. What's really odd about how this happened was that the rest of the East didn't lie down for the Eagles; while none of the other NFC East teams finished with a winning record, 2025 was the first season in the Sirianni era where each team beat the Eagles once. Still, Philly won the division by an easy 3.5 games.

The defense, despite significant losses, remained solid. Around this time last year we talked about the remarkable losses the stop unit had endured; while a valid concern, it was pretty clear that it didn't matter too much:

	2024 rank	2025 rank
yards/play	1	7
EPA	2	11
DSRS	T1	3
total yards allowed	1	13
total points allowed	2	5

Some slippage occurred but not enough to get excited about, especially considering the turnover. It's likely that the total lack of support from the offense played a notable role in the minor regression. We'll review this in a future piece, but the team retained enough of both the depth chart and the coaching staff to predict a similar level of success in 2026.

Bad health may explain a lot of the offensive issues. A quick and likely not exhaustive list:

• This is well documented, but both Cam Jurgens and Landon Dickerson had significant offseason surgeries that left them well short of 100% going into the season. Neither player hit their ceilings.

• Although he didn't seem to have a specific injury, Jordan Mailata also mentioned how worn out his body was in the 2025 offseason.

• Similarly, no one has ever touched the ball as much as Saquon did in 2024 and returned just as strong the next year. Barkley was "just" pretty good in 2025 but can look to recent examples in Derrick Henry and Christian McCaffrey as players who had monster RB seasons, took a step back and then came back strong down the road.

• This is a repeating theme, but AJ Brown had a lingering injury of some sort that the team was very cagey about and kept him out of most of the preseason. No matter what was going on behind closed doors, Brown was clearly not himself physically last season. We'll set aside the fact that he wasn't himself mentally either for a future article.

• Lane Johnson missed the second half of the season, which historically has been a death knell for Philly. If you're keeping track, that's four of five OL starters that were banged up last year. Since the OL has been the engine of this team for more than a decade, can we really be shocked that the offense struggled while they were hurt?

• Everyone has forgotten it by now, but Jalen Hurts was pretty banged up for much of the 2024 playoffs and it remains unclear how much (if any) of that lingered in the offseason. He also missed a couple games while hurt late in the season (again).

• Jalen Carter had shoulder issues, was not 100% for much of the season and missed five games total.

• Drew Mukuba's promising rookie season was cut short and he missed the final six games of the regular season.

• Nolan Smith missed six games. Nakobe Dean missed seven. Adoree Jackson and Dallas Goedert each missed two.

In short, the team dealt with more than their share of health issues and never seemed to turn in a fully healthy week at any point. They seem due to have at least somewhat better injury luck this coming season.

For a player who supposedly struggled mightily, Jalen Hurts was actually pretty good. Before we look at the numbers, recall the narrative surrounding Hurts after the '25 season concluded: "overrated"; "terrible season"; "runs an ugly offense"; "product of his supporting cast"; "a fullback playing QB"; "can't throw the deep ball", etc. Not to imply that no criticism is warranted (click the link above to "What went wrong?" for some details), but check out a few of these numbers (out of 33 qualifying passers):

Passer rating: 12th

ANY/A: 12th

ESPN's QBR: 22nd

PFF grade: T-9th

Turnover worthy play %: T-4th

Certainly not perfect but considering that 2025 was supposed to be a down year for Jalen, it doesn't really look that bad.

Enough about the 2025 Birds, except to just reiterate that some aspects of last year are pointing in a positive direction for this coming year. Up next, we'll review the offseason as it has progressed to this point.