The Philadelphia Eagles dominated the Dallas Cowboys for a quarter and a half, building a 21-0 lead and looking like they would cruise to an easy win. They proceeded to blow their three-score lead over the next two and a half quarters, and took their third loss of the season. As always, win, lose, or tie, we hand out 10 awards. 1) The ‘Foot Off the Gas’ Award ⛽: Nick Sirianni The Eagles had a good offensive gameplan heading into this matchup. Jalen Hurts was finding open receivers in the intermediate areas of the field, A. J. Brown was involved, the tempo and pace was crisp, and there were results, as they quickly put 21 points on the board. They almost looked a little like the team that went to the Super Bowl in 2022 or the one that won it all in 2024, when things were clicking. But once they got a big lead, the Eagles’ offensive approach very clearly shifted. They started calling more conversative plays, whether that was running the ball into heavy boxes, or calling short passes unlikely to lead to explosive plays. Several Eagles players credited the Cowboys for adjusting, and Nick Sirianni disagreed that the offense took their foot off the gas. “I didn’t think so,” Sirianni said. “I don’t know what the run: pass ratio was in the second half. You guys could probably tell me that a little bit better. Obviously, we’re trying to be a balanced attack, so again, we’ll have to look at ourselves and look at the schemes, and then we’re going to look at the execution and see what the issue were. We just weren’t very efficient as an offense in that second half. “I didn’t really feel that we took our foot off the gas.” Their play calls would say otherwise: Their three touchdown drives early in the game were jump-started by passing. • TD drive No. 1: First two plays, 6 yard pass to Brown, followed by a 10 yard pass to Brown. • TD drive No. 2: This drive actually stalled initially (it started with a run), but the Eagles were basically gifted a second possession when the Cowboys roughed punter Braden Mann. On their second chance, first play, their drive got going with a 13-yard pass to Brown. • TD drive No. 3: First play, pass to Saquon Barkley for 16 yards. The Eagles had mismatches all over the field against the Cowboys’ secondary, and they simply stopped exploiting them once they got a big lead. Sirianni also decided not to try for points at the end of the first half, with 17 seconds left, two timeouts, and the ball at the 28 yard line. The Eagles employ three talented receivers in A. J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, and Dallas Goedert, who are all good at making contested catches, as well as gobbling up yards after the catch. Even if it may not be a super high percentage likelihood that you’ll end up with points in that scenario, it’s at least worth trying. It’s certainly far more likely that you’ll score points than if something were to go horribly wrong and the defense would end up with points instead. But Sirianni has consistently turtled up in those situations all season. “17 seconds, I won’t get into where our cutoff is, the ball was on the 28 yard line,” he explained. “If you look through a lot of that stuff, I’ve looked at all of those throughout the last 15 years, and that was the decision I made to go with that particular one. “A lot of things happen when you’re in those scenarios when you’re against the clock. We tried to run it to see if we could bounce one out of there, and see what happened after that, and we didn’t get anything there, so we let the clock run out there. “And they had their timeouts as well, and their kicker can make it from long range. We had a 21-7 lead, and that’s what I decided to do at that particular time.” Wait, what? The Cowboys had their timeouts and they have a good kicker? That’s part of the reason? Unless the Eagles are calling spike plays or kneeldowns, there’s no scenario where they can run four plays in under 17 seconds and the Cowboys have a chance to kick a field goal. 2) The ‘Can’t Choke ‘Em Out Like We Used To’ Award 🙁: The Eagles’ run game As noted above, the Eagles tried to run it a lot once they got a lead. That would have been fine if they’ve been choking teams out with the run game like they did all year in 2024. But they’re not that team anymore. They’re just not. Barkley carried 10 times for 22 yards. “We have to do a better job of putting teams away, and we didn’t do that,” Barkley said. “I definitely didn’t help. At the end of games last year I was a big part of that. I have to figure it out for the team.” The Eagles put a lot of mileage on Barkley in 2024. Including the playoffs, he got an astronomical 482 touches. That was the third-highest number of touches in a single season since 2000. Barkley aside, there have been 17 players who have had 430 or more touches in a single season during that span. Here are those players, with their yards per carry during their heavy workload season, and their yards per carry in their follow-up seasons: As you can see, there’s a clear pattern of drop-off the following seaosn. I’m sure the Eagles have no regrets with their usage of Barkley last season, and neither should anyone else. I mean, they rode him to a Super Bowl. But, Barkley had 5. 8 yards per carry in 2024. He has 3. 8 yards per carry in 2025. Yes, the offensive line isn’t playing as well as it did a year ago, but Barkley himself also seems to be feeling the effect of that workload. 3) The ‘Things That Require No Talent, Unmastered’ Award 🚩: The 14 penalties the Eagles committed One of Sirianni’s mantras this season has been “Master the things that require no talent.” The Eagles committed 14 (!) penalties. Some penalties happen as a result of players competing and trying to make plays. Those are going to happen. But the Eagles also had a bunch of dead ball or procedural penalties that were unforced by the Cowboys. • Cam Jurgens had a false start that helped kill a drive. • Matt Pryor lined up incorrectly and was called for an illegal formation penalty, wiping out a 20-yard pass to Goedert and helping kill a drive. • A. J. Brown had a false start that helped kill a drive. You simply can’t have three drives at least partially killed by completely avoidable penalties. 4) The ‘Take This Game, Please’ Award 🎁: The Cowboys The Cowboys were an absolute mess to start this game. • On offense CeeDee Lamb had multiple drops, and KaVontae Turpin fumbled without an Eagle defender even touching him. • On defense, the Cowboys’ secondary couldn’t cover one of the most coverable passing offenses in the league. • Their special teams units committed an idiotic roughing the punter penalty that gave the Eagles a new set of downs that led to a touchdown. This game should have been a blowout. It’s not like this was some good team that played well. It was a mediocre team that was playing badly. But the Eagles let the Cowboys stay in it, and eventually Dallas played better and stole a win. 5) The ‘Wasted Performance’ Award 🚮: A. J. Brown and DeVonta Smith Brown looked as good on the eye test as he has all year, in my opinion. He had 8 catches for 110 yards and a TD. Smith also made this ridiculous catch: He finished with 6 catches for 89 yards. They both probably could have gone for over 150 apiece if the Eagles’ offensive staff kept feeding them. 6) The ‘WTF Are You Doing’ Award 🫤: Xavier Gipson Forget the fumble, which was obviously an egregious mistake in that situation. But why are you even fielding this punt?! I’m not normally a “Cut him” guy, but, I mean, cut him. Like, why is this guy on the roster over Britain Covey? 7) The ‘Too Many Bailouts’ Award 🤷‍♂️: The Eagles’ defense The Eagles’ defense is likely to take criticism for this loss, but the reality is that they produced two turnovers (four if you include the Cowboys’ two turnovers of downs) and held one of the most potent offenses in the NFL to 24 points, despite the offense’s inability to a damn thing from the middle of the second quarter on. How many times should they be expected to bail out the offense? 8) The ‘Unsafe’ Award ⚠️: The Eagles’ safeties Reed Blankenship injured his thigh, could barely walk off the field, and did not return to the game. Later, Andrew Mukuba got injured, and he was on crutches and in a walking boot after the game. The Eagles only have one other safety on the roster, Sydney Brown, who the Cowboys immediately attacked after he entered the game. If Blankenship and Mukuba can’t play Week 13 against the Bears, the Eagles’ starting safeties will be Brown, and, uh. Michael Carter? Cooper DeJean? Someone not currently on the 53-man roster? The Eagles also lost Adoree’ Jackson in this game with a head injury. Jackson has come under fire from the Eagles’ fan base, because he gives up more plays than DeJean and Quinyon Mitchell, but the Eagles clearly missed him when he left. Michael Carter played in nickel as the slot, and DeJean moved outside. The Cowboys then repeatedly tested DeJean deep down the field, often successfully. The Eagles suddenly have major concerns in their secondary. 9) The ‘Slide’ Award 🛝: The Eagles, in the NFC Heading into this weekend the Eagles were atop the NFC. As of this writing, the Rams are kicking the Buccaneers’ asses on Sunday Night Football, and are almost certain to overtake the Eagles in the NFC standings with a 9-2 record. If the Rams close the deal (as the Eagles were unable to do), they would be the new leader for the 1 seed in the NFC. The Eagles would drop to second. If the Eagles lose to the Bears Week 13, they will fall even further to the 3 seed, and it also might be time to start to worrying about just winning the NFC East. 10) The Quick Turnaround Award 🔁: The Eagles and Bears The Eagles’ next opponent will be the Bears, on Black Friday. The good news is that the Eagles will have a chance to very quickly put this disaster of a game in the rear view mirror. The bad new is that they suffered a bunch of injuries and those players might not have adequate time to heal. But that game is suddenly of major importance, (a) just to right the ship, and (b) for playoff seeding purposes.
https://www.phillyvoice.com/handing-out-10-awards-eagles-cowboys-game-2025-2/