Before diving into the Official Review, presented by AAA, make sure to check out the instant postgame analysis from Sunday's 21-17 loss to the Denver Broncos, the first of the season for the Eagles and first at home since Week 2 of the 2024 campaign.
- Eagles Insider Dave Spadaro's 7 observations from Broncos-Eagles
- Matt Ryan's in-depth game recap story
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1. Jalen Hurts: 'It's not a capability thing'
The Eagles have at times looked unstoppable on both sides of the ball, like in the second half against the Rams and the first half versus the Buccaneers. However, they are yet to put together a complete game this season.
Jalen Hurts said multiple times postgame that there was a lack of execution against the Broncos, but he knows the Eagles have the talent to be the team they strive to be.
"It is about us, and how we look into our process and we have to truly take that a day at a time so we can make it as difficult or as easy as it needs to be," Hurts said. "Ultimately, we just have to have the right mentality going into this week and every week and take [control of] the things that we can control, assess our systems, assess our process, assess all of these things and say, 'What can we improve on? What's working?' Not even what's working, what's efficient, what can we improve on, and really evaluate that and grow.
"But I say this again, it's not a capability thing. We just have to really stay focused on the task at hand, stay focused on the main thing, and be bought into the collective of doing that by any means necessary. So this is a great one to learn from and we will learn from it."
2. Dallas Goedert: 'The game shouldn't have come down to that'
With nine seconds left in the game and no timeouts, the Eagles had the ball at the Broncos' 29-yard line, needing a touchdown. Quarterback Jalen Hurts aired the ball deep down the right sideline for tight end Dallas Goedert. Two snaps earlier, Goedert was able to draw a pass interference penalty on safety JL Skinner. Once again Skinner was in coverage, and despite video footage of the safety pulling on Goedert's jersey, no flag was called.
"The game really shouldn't have come down to that," Goedert said after the game.
"So our officials saw mutual hand fighting and hand-to-hand combat and did not see action that rose to the level of a foul on that play," Referee Adrian Hill said in a pool report.
The Eagles had one more play, a Hail Mary attempt into the back of the end zone, that fell incomplete.
"There's plays to be made out there that we didn't make and that ultimately decided the game," said Goedert, who had three catches for 19 yards and a touchdown. "Offensively, I feel like we let the team down for sure."
Goedert shared what Head Coach Nick Sirianni's message was to the team after the game.
"Move on. Don't let this be a deciding factor in the season. Move on. Let's get ready to play on Thursday (against the Giants)," Goedert said.
3. Zack Baun on his unnecessary roughness penalty
It appeared the Eagles had picked up a crucial stop on 3rd-and-2 with just over two minutes remaining and trailing by one point, but linebacker Zack Baun was flagged for unnecessary roughness for a late hit on running back RJ Harvey. The flag gave Denver a first down and helped the Broncos take time off the clock ahead of Philadelphia's final possession.
Harvey was wrapped up by safety Andrew Mukuba and continued to fight for the first down before Baun came in.
"Short yardage situation. He was fighting for extra yards and we're taught to cap off on those type of situations," Baun said postgame. "I didn't think he was down. One ref through the flag. It was a subjective penalty, I think. … I thought it could have gone either way, honestly."
The Eagles were penalized nine times for 55 yards, but many of those came in key situations. Multiple players spoke postgame about the need to clean up self inflicted wounds.
"A lot of the penalties were honestly just dumb mistakes by us," Baun said. "We can't be making those silly mistakes. Unfortunate that I made one of them and on offense there were a few, too. We just have to not make those mistakes.
"… It's frustrating, but it's also something that we can fix. It's a mentality of focusing on the small details. Honestly, I think that's the bright side of it, that we're able to fix them."
4. Cooper DeJean, Jihaad Campbell think loss could be good in long run
The Eagles had won 10 straight games (including postseason) dating back to last year and 20 of 21 contests. Sunday's defeat to the Broncos was a rare loss over the last year for the Eagles, but it's something players think could help them in the long run.
"It's probably good for us, that this happened," defensive back Cooper DeJean said. "We understand that we just got to continue to get better as the season goes on. That's what you have to do is get better. We're at the fifth game in, so we got to get going."
For the rookies on the roster, this is their first time experiencing a loss in the NFL, but first-round linebacker Jihaad Campbell sees a lot of learning that can come from Sunday's game.
"It's adversity. There's always a mountain that we got to climb, each and every day," Campbell said. "Every time we wake up, there's a mountain we got to climb. You know, we grateful for this loss. Yeah, it hurts, of course, but I think the biggest thing is just learning from it.
"Having that chip on our shoulder to go back out there on Thursday and the next weeks to come, and to know that 'L,' that was in the past. And moving forward and looking forward to more challenges and more adversity. Because like I said, there's a mountain that we got to climb, Coach [Nick] Sirianni always talks about it, [and] we're going to keep on climbing that mountain."
5. DeVonta Smith: 'Self-inflicted wounds' the difference Sunday
Quarterback Jalen Hurts attempted nine passes of 20+ air yards, according to Next Gen Stats, which was the second-most of his career. He completed two of those passes for 99 yards and a touchdown. One of those passes was a 52-yarder to wide receiver DeVonta Smith on Sunday.
Smith paced the passing attack from a pass-catching standpoint, with eight catches for a season-high 114 yards. Hurts had season highs with 280 passing yards and 7.37 yards per attempt, while completing 60.5 percent of his attempts for a 100.8 passer rating.
"We made improvements in certain areas. It can still get a lot better. We shot ourselves in the foot a lot," Smith said. "We talk about being aggressive all of the time. We know when we do that, we're aggressive, a lot of good things happen."
Head Coach Nick Sirianni said the Eagles made an emphasis on being more explosive on offense Sunday.
"Obviously, as the game goes you see different things that come up. We've talked about being more explosive in the run and the pass game and obviously I'd have to look at what the stats were. We didn't make enough plays and we didn't coach good enough today," Sirianni said.
Smith detailed how everything must come together for the passing game to unlock, balancing what all of the players are seeing and processing in real-time. It's just a matter of erasing the "self-inflicted wounds" – the penalties and miscues that prevented the offense from taking off Sunday.
Added Sirianni: "There's a lot that I'm going to have to watch to be able to process everything, and obviously at the end of the day, had the lead in the fourth quarter and they made more plays and coached better than us and played better than us, and they came back and got a win."
6. Saquon Barkley on his late penalty: 'I gotta be better in that situation'
Facing a 4th-and-4 and trailing by one with a little over five minutes remaining, DeVonta Smith rose up for a jump ball that would have been a 30-yard completion, but Saquon Barkley was called for an illegal shift on the play.
The penalty forced the Eagles to punt, and they ran out of time on their final possession with a chance for the win. After the game, Jalen Hurts said that he puts that penalty on the operation, which starts with him. "I own that," he said. However, Barkley said that flag was his fault and he needs to be better going forward.
"That's how you lose football games, not being detailed," Barkley said. "And on that play, I definitely wasn't [detailed] enough. … We weren't detailed in a lot of things throughout that game. So, but in that play, I gotta own it. I gotta be better in that situation, especially with Smitty coming and making a big play there."
