PHILADELPHIA - There are so many theories behind the Eagles' offensive struggles, and the rubber seems to have hit the road inside the NovaCare Complex in advance of Sunday's matchup at Dallas.
"You talk about it a lot but at some point you just have to go out there and do it and that’s where we are," quarterback Jalen Hurts admitted earlier this week.
Outside noise always tends to be superficial and focused on one magic fix.
Maybe it's the QB's need to be less risk averse, or the playmakers have lost a step, or the offensive line being too banged-up in the 21-game run to a Super Bowl LIX championship. For many more, it's the coaching staff's inability to "scheme open" some of the most talented players in the world.
Whatever camp you're in, the levers that need to be pulled are far more complicated than the low-hanging fruit of assessing blame to your least favorite member of the organization in the heat of the moment.
It's never one thing in professional football and when a unit is struggling, you can patch up one leak and another appears.
For the Eagles, the buzzword is efficiency.
Jalen Hurts
Jalen Hurts speaks to reporters at the NovaCare Complex on Nov. 19, 2025. / John McMullen/Eagles On SI
The goal isn't designed to be high volume in the passing game, it's to revert to where the group was last season, maybe not to the historic level of ground game but certainly above Saquon Barkley at 3.8 yards per carry and 900 yards off his 2KSA pace.
The magic pill solution in-house to to eliminate what has become a tsunami of negative plays early in drives that gets the offense off-schedule. However, there are so many tentacles contributing to that it's become like fighting off an octopus armies with the artificial intelligence to understand defensive football.
The defensive minds that have been thrown at the Eagles during their 8-2 start are a who's who of the NFL's best behind the Eagles own defensive coordinator Vic Fangio, including Steve Spagnuolo, Todd Bowles, Vance Joseph, Brian Flores. Jeff Hafley and for the second time this Sunday at Dallas, Matt Eberflus.
The book seems to be out on stopping the Eagles.
According to SumerSports, the Eagles have 75 negative plays through 10 games and a 12.78% negative-play percentage. That's No. 31 in the NFL, only outpacing Las Vegas, which has a 12.83% negative play-rate.
Ironically, Sunday's opponent, the Dallas Cowboys, has a league-best 6.98% negative-play rate and ranks No. 3 in total offense and No. 1 in passing offense. The league median would be 9.9%. Last season the Eagles were above even the medium at 10.59% so perhaps that's the acceptable level
The first part to solving the problem is the easiest or at least should be. What Eagles coach Nick Sirianni describes as "mastering the things that take no talent." In any NFL city, pre-snap penalties are unacceptable.
The others negatives are a complicated menagerie that can result into things like sacks, tackles for loss, or batted passes.
"We’re working towards trying to bring it to action and bring it to life," Hurts said. "I look back at this last game [against the Detroit Lions], I look at a lot of these games, there’s always different things that come up but it’s kind of been a similar trend in that, so we’re working towards it. This last game specifically, we had an opportunity to score a touchdown but we had a ball handling error in the backfield."
You can whack the mole of ball-handling and the pre-snap issues pop up.
"We have little things like a false start trying to convert a first down," said Huts. "These are all things we can control and being on the same page on all fronts of the offense, knowing our assignments, knowing the key, knowing the fundamentals of how we do it, having it detailed out so we’re all executing with the expectation of whatever it is.
"It’s gotta be important [to everyone]. You have to take pride in all those little details. You ask me how I lead, you ask me how I try to set the precedent for those things is to go out there and try to do it myself."
As Hurts has often said, "there are no losses, if you learned from it."
"If it’s something’s not enough then you do even more, you work even harder, you give even more of yourself," the QB1 said. "That’s how my mentality has always been and that’s not going to change in terms of trying to improve and trying to get to where we wanna go. I think in hindsight, that’s what it’s
about, it’s about constant growth and building forward, but you have to go out there and do it together."
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