The Eagles’ defense is carrying a load that’s getting harder to ignore.
Yes, this group has room to clean things up on its own. It’s supposed to be elite, and so far this season it hasn’t played like it. But the bigger issue is that the offense isn’t giving the defense much breathing room, and the numbers from Sunday’s 25-14 loss at the Linc made that plain.
Philadelphia’s defense was on the field for 79 snaps, while the offense managed just 64. The Eagles also lost the time-of-possession battle 34:48 to 25:12. That kind of imbalance has shown up before this year, and it helps explain why the defense keeps wearing down late.
That strain has shown up most clearly in the fourth quarter, where 42% of the points the Eagles have allowed have come this season. When a defense keeps getting stuck out there, the finish line starts to move farther away.
Cooper DeJean addressed that reality after the game.
“Nobody is going to be perfect for that many plays and you’ve got to be able to deal with ups and downs each and every play,” Cooper DeJean said on Sunday evening. “The biggest thing is effort. Just putting in your best effort and communication and doing your job each and every play to the best of your ability.”
The workload has been heavy for a while now. The Eagles have reached 70 or more defensive snaps in five of six games this season.
Last year, that happened just six times in 17 games. In the 2024 Super Bowl season, they only had three games with that kind of defensive volume.
Right now, Philadelphia is averaging 71.7 defensive snaps per game, which is the highest mark in the Nick Sirianni Era.
2021: 66.3
2022: 65.1
2023: 68.4
2024: 61.6
2025: 66.2
2026: 71.7
That doesn’t excuse everything the defense has done, but it does put the bigger picture in focus. The unit has to get off the field, sure. At the same time, this is bad complementary football, fueled by an offense that has been banged up and inefficient.
Through Week 6, the Eagles rank 28th in points and 30th in yards. Against the Panthers, they added five more 3-and-outs and now lead the NFL with 24. Those empty possessions are lasting just 1:27 on average, which is hardly enough time for the defense to catch its breath.
The result has been a brutal pattern: Philadelphia has had possession for 28 minutes or less in all four games during this losing streak, and that has forced the defense to spend 32 or more minutes on the field in each of those contests. It’s the Eagles’ longest stretch like that since a six-game run in 2015, when Chip Kelly was fired.
That sort of imbalance can create a split in a locker room. The Eagles have managed to avoid that kind of fracture under Sirianni, but a season like this can put that bond under stress.
Sirianni was asked about that on Monday, and he leaned hard into the value of the relationships built before the rough patch hit.
“This is why it's so important,” Sirianni said. “There are ups and downs in every season.
Obviously, we are in a rut right now. I don't think there's any question [about] that.
We're in a rut. This is why you work in the offseason to come together, because every team is going to go through ups and downs here and it's important to have that relationship and build those relationships so when you go through down times, it doesn't tear you apart.
“You're banking all those reps of togetherness and the things that you're working on there to pull you through these tough times. In tough times, you have to double down on the things that you can control, the things you can control [are] all the things that we talk about on a daily basis that you've heard me say ad nauseum.”
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