The Philadelphia Eagles lost 19-17 to the Jacksonville Jaguars in London on Sunday after a late-game coaching decision allowed Jacksonville to score a walk-off field goal with no time remaining.
With eight seconds left and a 17-16 lead following Jake Elliott’s 48-yard field goal, the Eagles kicked off conventionally instead of squib kicking. Jacksonville’s Ameer Abdullah returned the kick 53 yards, setting up Cam Little’s game-winning 57-yard field goal as time expired.
The loss dropped Philadelphia to 2-3 on the season, while Jacksonville notched its third straight win. The Eagles played the game without Saquon Barkley and DeVonta Smith, both sidelined by hamstring injuries.
Former Eagles cornerback Asante Samuel didn’t hold back in assessing blame for the loss, placing it directly on head coach Nick Sirianni during an appearance on the “Say What Needs To Be Said” show.
“You lost the game for your team. Of course, the team was going to have his back and say, ‘No, coach, it’s not on you. It’s on us.’ But all the coach had to do was call a squib kick. A squib kick at the end of the game is normal and done all the freaking time,” Samuel said.
Samuel questioned how the mistake could happen given the stakes of the moment.
“Nick Sirianni must have had a lapse in his brain or something and wasn’t paying attention for him to miss out on that situation. There’s no way your team fights that hard for that long, and you let your team down by not making sure the right call is being made,” Samuel said.
Sirianni took full responsibility for the decision immediately after the game.
“I didn’t make the right decision and I lost us that game,” Sirianni told reporters. “And that’s what I said to our guys. What hurts there is that the guys fought so hard, and then I don’t make the decision that I should make at the end of the game and I cost us that game and I put that fully on me.”
Quarterback Jalen Hurts, asked Monday why the Eagles left eight seconds on the clock before Elliott’s kick, said the decision wasn’t his to make.
“It’s not my place, and we’re prepared, I’m prepared as a quarterback to not worry about those things,” Hurts told reporters. “So I’m honoring a play call, honoring the things that are coming in the game. When I’m up at night, yeah, I think about, ‘Man, should I have said something, or should I have took a step back and said, “Wait”?’ But ultimately, there’s a commitment to that and going out there and executing. And so this was one where it did not work in our favor.”
Sirianni reiterated Monday that the game-management call rested with the coaching staff, not Hurts.
“Jalen’s playing. We’re coaching and calling the plays, and Jalen’s got to go execute what we call in that moment, 100 percent. We’re not asking him to make play calls in that scenario. He’s already got enough to worry about to go out and execute. That’s where we were there in that situation,” Sirianni said.
The Eagles now turn their attention to fixing the lapse as they look to rebound from a trip across the Atlantic that ended in a defeat many believe was avoidable.
