On Second Watch: Jake Elliott's Struggles Are About More Than Missed Kicks For Eagles

PHILADELPHIA - For three seasons, Nick Sirianni had no decision to make with 3:05 left and a 22-16 lead.

Facing a fourth-and-eight with a potential 54-yard field goal looming, you send Jake Elliott onto the field to make it a two-possession game and send the upstart Carolina Panthers back to the Queen City.

The Elliott of 2021 through 2023 was the most dependable long-distance kicker in football, making 15 of 17 from 50-plus yards over that span. The version Sirianni would have trotted onto the field Sunday afternoon is 0-for-5 this season and already misfired from 52 yards in the third quarter.

However, the worst part of the Philadelphia kicker’s struggles isn’t at the micro level of poor performance, it’s the effect it’s having on the Eagles’ psyche.

The DNA of this franchise dating back to the Doug Pederson era has been aggression and the Eagles were the leaders on the curve when it came to stressing the opposition until the 12-1 Detroit Lions copycatted the idea and supercharged it.

Perhaps it’s apropos that at 11-2 the Eagles are a step behind the Lions. If Sunday’s actions are a precursor, the franchise with its foot on the gas will pull away further.

For a brief moment on Sunday, Sirianni turned into a 1970s coach trying to play it safe against a 3-10 opponent with a lame attempt to draw Carolina offside on a fourth-and-8 from the Panthers’ 36-yard line before being the antithesis of Roy McAvoy and laying up with a delay of game penalty.

To their credit Braden Mann and Avonte Maddox executed “scared” as well as possible, pinning Bryce Young and those overmatched Panthers at the three-yard line with 97 yards to traverse in 2:58 with only the two-minute warning serving as a pseudo timeout.

Young still had 52 of those seconds to play with when the young quarterback caught the Eagles’ defense in a zero-blitz and found a streaking Xavier Legette for what would have been a 32-yard touchdown to likely put Carolina on top with the PAT and 44 seconds remaining.

Legette dropped the football and the Eagles ultimately survived.

Sirianni did his best to protect the fact he’s lost confidence in the kicker, pointing to the weather and Mann’s recent success pinning opponents deep when asked about his decision

“The wind was a little bit more than people think there,” the coach climbed citing wind gusts that reached 16 mph at rare times but wasn’t enough to eschew him from the 52-yard miss earlier that was wide right and had nothing to do with distance, albeit on the opposite side of the field.

The coach then pivoted to Mann.

“We hit those two backed up punts last week against Baltimore, and we did a great job of putting them backed up; almost got a safety,” said Sirianni. “Bryce Young got out of there. I thought Bryce did some good things. But he ended up getting out of there, but it was more about the wind being a little bit more than I think was understood. I mean, you could feel that.

“And then just the success that we've had in the plus-50 punt game.”

Actions speak louder than words. All of that is true but does anyone believe Sirianni wouldn’t have put the 2021-2023 Elliott on the field under those same circumstances?

The Eagles persevered to win their ninth straight game and clinch their fourth consecutive postseason berth with some help elsewhere. That said, just as good decisions don’t guarantee good outcomes, you can survive bad decisions with a dropped pass.

Smart organizations learn from their mistakes.

The cost-benefit analysis was trying to get Elliott right by showing trust in the biggest spot of the game and risking putting the No. 1 defense on a shorter field with the same four-down obstacle vs. signaling a lack of confidence to a player you're likely going to need in an even bigger spot with larger stakes down the road.

Aggression should have won the day. Instead, Elliott’s struggles have taken the Eagles’ off course from a core conviction, something that’s much worse than any missed kick.

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