Fifty-Seven Yards and a Three-Game Hole

PHILADELPHIA — There was one second left on the clock when Cam Little’s right foot came through the ball, and from fifty-seven yards out in a stadium an ocean away from South Philly, the kick had plenty. Jaguars 19, Eagles 17. No flag, no do-over, no flight long enough to outrun it. The Birds are 2-3, they’ve lost three in a row, and the season everybody around here circled in August is now a genuine question.

Let me say it the way we say it in Camden: this is the part where you find out what a team is made of, because the easy part is over.

How it got here

Think about where this was two Sundays into the year. A gritty opening win over Washington. A road win in Tennessee. Two-and-oh, the whole region feeling good, the talk-radio lines full of people arguing about seeding. Then the bottom fell out — a 27-7 flattening in Chicago, a fourth-quarter collapse at home against the Rams, and now a buzzer-beater loss in London that stings worse than any point spread. Three straight. And the third one came in the ugliest way the sport allows: a kick you can’t do anything about.

You want to know how you lose a game like that? You score seventeen points against a team you should beat and you let it come down to someone else’s leg. That’s the Eagles right now — a team that does enough to stay close and not enough to put anybody away. Jalen Hurts answered for it afterward the way a captain should, no excuses, no deflection. But Hurts isn’t the problem here, and anybody who watched the tape knows it.

A waiting room for a depth chart

The problem is that the Eagles are trying to win football games with a waiting room where their depth chart used to be. Landon Dickerson — the anchor of that offensive line, the guy who sets the tone up front — is on injured reserve. So is Tank Bigsby in the backfield. Saquon Barkley and DeVonta Smith were ruled out before the trip. You cannot ask a team to protect its quarterback and finish drives when the men who do that work are in street clothes, and you cannot cross five time zones and expect the bodies you’ve got left to suddenly play like the ones you lost. The injuries don’t excuse the record. They explain it. There’s a difference, and the people in that locker room understand it even if the standings don’t care.

The injuries don’t excuse the record. They explain it.Samuel Banks

Here’s what I keep coming back to. This region doesn’t demand perfection from its football team. It demands that they fight, that they look like it matters as much to them as it does to the guy who took a vacation day and spent his own money to watch them lose in England. For stretches of these last three games, that fire hasn’t been there. That’s the thing that has to change before the scheme does.

Carolina at the Linc

And now the schedule hands them exactly what a reeling team both needs and dreads: a home game it has to win. Carolina comes to Lincoln Financial Field this Sunday at one o’clock. On paper, it’s winnable. On paper, so were the last two. The difference is the Linc, and the difference is what a 2-3 team hears when the crowd decides whether to get behind it or turn on it. Seventy thousand people are going to show up Sunday wanting a reason to believe. The Eagles have one job: give it to them.

Three in a row is a bad stretch. Four in a row, at home, against a team you’re supposed to handle — that’s a season starting to slip through your fingers. The Birds still have time to fix this. They are running out of excuses to wait.

Based on reporting from the Philadelphia Eagles, The Philadelphia Inquirer, NBC Sports Philadelphia, and the 2026 Eagles season record.