At the end of an NFL season, all Ws look the same in the standings. That's fortunate for Nick Sirianni and the Philadelphia Eagles.
The Eagles' 10-7 victory over the Green Bay Packers on Monday night can go in the ugly-win column. Philly's defense stole the show, as the offense struggled to gain much traction. The 10 points marked the fewest in an Eagles win since Week 15, 2007 at Dallas (10-6).
Philly had multiple chances to put the game away, but the offense came up shy. Sirianni made his most controversial decision of the night on a fourth-and-6 from the Green Bay 35-yard line with 33 seconds remaining.
The Eagles had three choices: 1) Go for it. 2) Try a long field goal. 3) Punt.
Philly not only went for it, but it did so with a low-percentage deep shot from Jalen Hurts to A.J. Brown that fell incomplete. The miss gave Green Bay the ball with a shot to get into field-goal range with 27 seconds remaining.
Luckily for Sirianni, his defense stood tall and forced a 64-yard Brandon McManus field goal attempt that had no shot at connecting.
"So the end of the game, we are up three and I would have liked to be in a little closer to kick a field goal," Sirianni said when asked about the decision. "Again, you play every situation a little bit differently, but it was into the wind on that one. I knew the kick would have to be a little bit lower trajectory of a kick on that particular one.
"I've got a lot of faith in our offense. It didn't work out on this one. We just didn't get it, but I stand put on that decision, especially being up three because you go up six, they are still going to need a touchdown. So we would have ended the game if we would have got that and I've got a lot of faith in our guys to be able to do that. But the reason I didn't kick the field goal, again, being up three, it was just the trajectory into the wind there on that particular one."
The 50-plus-yard field goal was one option, but a miss would have given the Packers even better field position. There is also the dreaded 6-point lead situation that Sirianni likely wanted to avoid, but with so little time, that's not as big a danger.
While Sirianni focused on the field goal option, the real question was why didn't he punt? For all the hand-wringing that analytics constantly suggests teams go for it on fourth downs, in this case, punt was the recommendation of some.
A punt could have pinned the Packers deeper into their own end, and with no timeouts, would have made it more difficult for Green Bay to get into any sort of prayer field goal situation. Not to mention that a punt generally takes a few more ticks off the clock than a normal play.
Regardless of the analytics of it all, Sirianni is comfortable trusting his guys to make a play, pointing to a similar decision in which Hurts connected last year against Cleveland -- that 40-yard bomb to Brown came on a second-and-11 in a four-point game, so it isn't exactly apples-to-apples.
"Again, in that moment, we made the decision to go for it on that one," he said. "Don't regret that at all, wanted to be able to end the game. The play didn't work this time. Sometimes that happens, but I've got a lot of faith in sending those guys back out there in those scenarios. We had a very similar one that we are all high-fiving about against Cleveland last year, right? Very similar, very similar, that we went vertical on and A.J. and Jalen made a great play. It didn't work this time, in a four-minute mode. Kind of similar-ish to the Minnesota game.
"So when they work, we are high-fiving. When they don't work, you are going to go back and say, 'Hey, was this the best thing that we should have done in this particular case?' And we'll be hyper-critical of ourselves there, but I know how much trust I have in Jalen and I know how much trust I have in the guys that are out there, and he threw it to A.J. in that particular case, and A.J. and the offensive line and everybody that goes into that. We'll look at it, but we've hit it before, and this time we didn't hit and the defense did a great job of ending the game without any points."
The Eagles' play-calling near the end of the game left the door open to be questioned, including pass plays on second and third downs on the previous drive. However, the defense made all those questions easier to digest in Philly this week.
