The Philadelphia Eagles have a championship-winning quarterback and head coach. Four games into the 2026 season, however, they are struggling to produce an offense that looks worthy of either description.
Sunday’s collapse against the Los Angeles Rams should continue to raise questions about where the Jalen Hurts-Nick Sirianni partnership is heading.
Philadelphia lost 24-20 after building a 20-10 first-half lead, dropping to 2-2 and leaving fans with another frustrating performance to dissect. A team that won the Super Bowl in 2025 should have a clearer offensive identity than this.
The injuries deserve acknowledgment. DeVonta Smith was unavailable, and Saquon Barkley exited early with a hamstring injury. Those losses clearly sting against a defense as talented as the Rams.
Still, the Eagles scored 20 first-half points, with Hurts throwing two touchdown passes to Darius Cooper, even if one was extremely lucky. They then produced nothing on the scoreboard after halftime. The Rams adjusted, and Philadelphia failed to deliver an effective response.
Hurts finished 12-for-27 for just 93 passing yards. The Eagles went 0-for-12 on third down and managed only 172 total yards. Those numbers reflect an offense that is not going in the right direction.
Hurts deserves criticism for his execution. A quarterback with his experience cannot be excused from every missed opportunity because teammates are injured. But treating this as exclusively a quarterback problem would let the coaching staff escape responsibility for the situations it creates.
Coaches determine what happens during the course of the game. Players must execute those assignments, but the assignments themselves need to give them a reasonable chance. When the available personnel changes, the plan must change with it.
That is where Sirianni needs to provide answers. Losing Barkley and Smith should reduce Philadelphia’s offensive ceiling. It should not leave the Eagles incapable of converting a single third down or scoring throughout an entire half.
Article Continues BelowSirianni’s fourth-quarter decision to go for a touchdown on fourth-and-goal from the 2-yard line also deserves scrutiny. Hurts’ pass to Cooper fell incomplete, and the Rams subsequently erased the lead. Aggression can help win games, but the choice carried consequences for an offense already struggling to finish possessions.
Football requires constant adjustments. An approach that creates opportunities early can become ineffective once an opponent identifies its limitations. Those adjustments come from the coaching staff. Philadelphia needed an answer when Los Angeles took away what had worked, and the scoreboard shows how poorly the Eagles responded.
This does not establish a personal rift between Hurts and Sirianni. Their offense looking disconnected is evidence of a football problem, not proof of a fractured relationship. But the partnership will face increasing scrutiny if the same failures continue.
Hurts has started two Super Bowls and helped deliver a championship. Sirianni has overseen that success. Their history gives Philadelphia reason to work through this stretch rather than rush into a franchise-altering decision after four games.
It also raises the standard. The Eagles have already demonstrated what they can accomplish together, making it harder to accept repeated performances that fall so far below that level.
There is time to recover. The priority should be building an offense that can function with the players available, while demanding better execution from Hurts and better adjustments from the staff.
If that improvement never comes, Philadelphia will eventually have to decide which part of this partnership needs to change. Another disappointing season would make that question difficult to avoid. For now, Sirianni and Hurts need to show that their championship connection still produces answers when a game starts slipping away.