Rich’s (Latest) Message to Eagles Fans in the Wake of Philadelphia’s MNF Loss to the Bears

Rich has lost count of how many times he has gently stepped in front of the Philadelphia Eagles fan base to tell it to relax. Sometimes he was right. Sometimes the fans were. After a Monday night loss to the Chicago Bears, he tried again, with a little less certainty than usual.

"I think this is still a playoff team," Rich said. "They're two and one. They're not one and two, they're not one and three." His track record on this is mixed and he owned it. Last year, after the Bears smacked the Eagles, he told fans the schedule was good enough to get them into the playoffs. He was right about that. The fans were also kind of right that the team would not make the Super Bowl.

This time, the second half bothered him. "That second half is concerning," Rich admitted. "Not going to lie."

Some of the problems were self-inflicted in strange ways. Former Eagle T.J. Edwards was right where he needed to be, and Jalen Hurts threw it to him "like he was on the Eagles still." Rich's advice: make sure a player on the other team who used to play for you is not listening to your calls in the huddle.

Then came the sequence that summed up the night. The Eagles were set up to tush push their way into the end zone, and the one person who could stop it turned out to be, in Rich's words, "an independent neurologist." Hurts had been blown up on the sideline and was in the blue tent. Andy Dalton handed off to Saquon Barkley a couple of times, then on third down threw an interception. The Eagles came away with no points from inside the 2-yard line, a spot where they score "99.99999% of the time."

Viewers at home saw something Nick Sirianni could not: the Monday Night Football cameras catching Hurts popping his head out of the tent, clear-eyed and ready. Sirianni explained afterward that he needed that timeout for a score at the end of the half, which the Eagles got.

Rich knows Hurts' postgame answers frustrate fans, because he will never hand them something to hang their hat on. "He will never add fuel to the fire," Rich said, and his counsel has always been to trust the process with Hurts "cuz he's really good at playing." Hurts did take the blame. "I've not been good enough coming out of half," he said. "We have not scored on first drive of half. We've gotten the ball every time." He added that he was not good enough on third down or fourth down either.

There were positives. Saquon nearly reached 100 rushing yards, and the Eagles were finally getting first downs on first down. Operationally, though, a delay of game on fourth and one stood out, and Rich passed along what his old NFL Total Access colleague Seth Joyner said about it. Joyner read the moment as a sign that Sirianni was chiming in on the offense more than he had in the first two weeks, and suggested Sean Mannion calls plays from the booth rather than the field because Sirianni wants some control over the offense and over Mannion's face-to-face time with Hurts. Rich was clear he was paraphrasing and told everyone to check out what Joyner said.

"So I'm just trying to give people an idea of what's being discussed in Philadelphia," Rich said.

The path forward is not scary on paper. The Rams, who also left week three with a terrible taste in their mouths, come to Philadelphia next, followed by Jacksonville in London. "Winnable games on the schedule, people," Rich said. "We're marathoning. We're not sprinting."

He did leave Eagles fans one less comforting possibility. The Bears, and Ben Johnson's scheming, may simply have Philadelphia's number.