Eagles Beat Writer Thinks Team Will Be Dumpster Fire in 2024

A particular writer in the City of Brotherly Love isn’t exactly feeling the love for his hometown team heading into the 2024 season.

After an extremely hot start to the 2023 season, the Philadelphia Eagles ran out of gas and got bounced in the NFC Wild Card Game this past January. Now, someone is speculating that this negative momentum is going to continue into 2024. As Jimmy Kempski of PhillyVoice writes:

By the time the 2023 season was over, the Eagles were arguably the worst team in the NFL. The offense sucked, the defense was trash, and the coaching staff was incompetent. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a worse single-season collapse in NFL history that did not include some sort of major injury to a quarterback or other major player. Coming back from that will not be easy, and there’s a strong argument to be made that the Eagles’ roster arguably got worse this off-season.

Ouch. Speculation or not, those are some very harsh words, but Philadelphia is typically known to be a tough media market to play in, whether as a hometown team member or as a visitor. So how can the Eagles avoid becoming a dumpster fire in 2024? Let’s take a deeper look…

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Now, keep in mind, that the PhillyVoice piece is more speculation than reality. But, to avoid the projected “dumpster fire”, it all starts with the quarterback. For the Eagles, that’s Jalen Hurts.

Overall, Hurts put together what some would consider to be a pretty spectacular season in 2023, finishing with a 65.4% completion rate, 3,858 passing yards, 38 total touchdowns against a career-high 15 interceptions, and a second straight Pro Bowl nomination. However, his numbers did take a bit of a nosedive in the second half of the season.

Post-Week 10 last season, Hurts only completed 128 of 211 pass attempts (60.6%) with eight touchdowns against six interceptions. While he is one of the more dynamic quarterbacks in the NFL, teams are starting to find a way to figure out his game plan. At least, so it seems.

But Hurts did reach some major milestones last year.

However, Hurts can’t do it alone. He’s got a trustworthy head coach in Nick Sirianni, and a very dependable group on both sides of the ball, including star wide receivers in DeVonta Smith and A.J. Brown and new addition Saquon Barkley.

Are the Eagles still reeling a bit after a disappointing end to last season? Probably, yes. But they are still a top-echelon team in the NFL. They have a lot of talent that can lift them to new heights in 2024, and two new coordinators to set them off in a new direction. They can certainly outperform many expectations. It’s just whether execution can follow from what looks very good on paper.

Source: PhillyVoice

All stats are courtesy of Pro Football Reference unless otherwise noted.

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