PHILADELPHIA – There was plenty of locker room talk in the aftermath of the Philadelphia Eagles 42-19 blowout loss against the San Francisco 49ers at Lincoln Financial Field on Sunday about the possibility of seeing their vanquishers again in the playoffs.
That can’t be the mindset now, not if the Eagles want to prevent losing two regular-season games in a row with Jalen Hurts at quarterback for the first time since falling to Tampa Bay and Las Vegas in back-to-back weeks on Oct. 14 and 24, 2021.
“It’s probably going to happen again,” said Sirianni about a rematch against the 49ers. “But there is so much football to be played between now and then. There are so many other good teams also. So that can’t be in our thought process.”
This team has too many veterans on it to think about the Niners and the playoffs, not with back-to-back road games in two difficult environments up ahead, starting in Dallas against the Cowboys on Sunday and followed by a trip to the Pacific Northwest to play the Seattle Seahawks on Monday, Dec. 18.
If they look past any of that, they do so at the risk of free-falling.
“You gotta think about Dallas,” said receiver A.J. Brown. “That’s the only game we got coming up so far. A lot of things can happen before the end. You can’t look that far ahead, because if you look up, you might get hit in the mouth again. We gotta focus on Dallas, clean up the mistakes, and continue to grow.”
Veteran defensive tackle Fletcher Cox said that it is up to the team leaders, such as himself, Jason Kelce, and Brandon Graham, to keep everybody together.
“I would hope that’s the case,” said Kelce. “We’ve played really good outside of this game and the Jets game. I think we’ve done a good job of staying together and being a resilient team.
“We have some things to clean up. Kudos to San Fran they played a great game. I look forward to getting back out there against Dallas this week and hopefully rebound as a team.”
The Eagles will return to work on Monday and watch film of the pummeling San Francisco delivered.
It will be painful, with plenty of corrections that need to be made and trends, such as falling behind at halftime in five straight games, that need to be reversed.
“It’s simple; we gotta move on,” said left tackle Jordan Mailata. “The loss hurts, but we gotta move on. There are five more games to play, and we have to move on. It sucks, but we have to be real honest with ourselves when we watch the film (Monday).
“We’re coming in. We’re working out. We’re watching the film. We have to be real honest with our effort, and our discipline on executing the game plan on both sides.”
Dallas has won 14 straight at home and the Seahawks, who, at 6-6 heading into next week’s game against the 49ers, will probably be in desperation mode to make the playoffs.
Losses against both teams would give the Eagles their first three-game losing streak with Sirianni and Hurts since the early days of their run together, which would be Sept. 19-Oct. 3 of 2021 against San Francisco, Dallas, and Kansas City.
“(We) have no choice,” said Brown. “Mope around, be mad or be sad at yourself about it (the 49ers loss), but we got a big opponent coming up next weekend, Dallas on the road. We gotta put our big-boy pants on. That’s life. Everything doesn’t go your way every single time.”
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