Eagles' RB Questions Team's Connection With Bold Claims

Kenny Gainwell raised some eyebrows when discussing the Eagles' collapse last season.

Nov 5, 2023; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; Philadelphia Eagles running back Kenneth Gainwell (14) / Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports

PHILADELPHIA - The Eagles' 2023 collapse is behind them but the fallout is still being debated.

Fourth-year running back Kenny Gainwell, currently penciled in as the backup to Saquon Barkley, was the latest to address a collapse that turned a 10-1 start to an 11-7 finish, including an embarrassing 32-9 playoff loss at Tampa Bay.

Appearing on the Javien University podcast, Gainwell pointed to a disconnect in the organization.

“I think it was a connection piece,” Gainwell said. “Teams like [the Kansas City Chiefs] are well-connected, upstairs and downstairs. Front office and locker room. When you have a connection, everything just clicks. But when you’ve got guys that aren’t talking to each other, you never know what’s going on.”

The critique was somewhat damning for an organization that prides itself on its culture and a head coach in Nick Sirianni who uses the term "connection" as a foundational piece to his core coaching philosophy.

Since the loss in January to the Bucs, the Eagles have hired two new veteran coordinators in Vic Fangio and Kellen Moore, and embarked on what GM Howie Roseman described as a "mentality offseason."

"We had kind of a philosophy. We wanted to have a mentality offseason," Roseman explained.

"We wanted to bring in people here who had a chip on their shoulder because we felt like we had a little bit of a chip on our shoulder," Roseman continued. "Not in a bad way. Just in a way like we felt like we wanted to do whatever we could to put ourselves in the best possible situation for this year because we had a bad taste in our mouth the last year.

"We wanted to bring in as many people. I say we because it starts with us that had that kind of same feeling. It started in free agency bringing in the free agents that we brought in, and we were looking for people in the draft who had that."

Gainwell, meanwhile, believes the 2023 problems are easily fixed.

“If we all sit down and talk to each other and find out what’s going on, or we find out what we need to do on the field to get this thing going, then we’ll be good,” he said. “Because if we played really hard at the beginning of the season, we need to continue to play hard at the end of the season because at the end of the season is what really matters.

“If we get to the playoffs and we’re not playing good, and we’ve still got our head down because we just lost five games, what do you think we’re going to do in the playoffs? It’s scientific, bro. If you’re moody every day, you’re going to be moody tomorrow and tomorrow. You’ve got to work on it. You’ve got to continue to work on how to get better each and every day.”

Gainwell's "connection" description has gotten the headlines but his words point to more of a confidence problem.

The Eagles were under the weight of immense expectations entering the 2023 season after coming up just short of the Chiefs in Super Bowl LVII. Despite the 10-1 start, it seemed like few Eagles were having fun and there was a certain feeling that a constant chase of style points overwhelmed the accomplishment of winning.

Once the wheels came off against NFC rivals San Francisco and Dallas in Weeks 13 and 14, heads were down as Gainwell described it and confidence was shaken in a league where the margin for error is exceedingly small.

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