Three NFL head coaches have returned home after early-season London losses to find themselves out of a job — the 2-3 Jets’ Robert Saleh in 2024, the 1-3 Dolphins’ Joe Philbin in 2015, and the 0-4 Raiders’ Dennis Allen in 2014. After giving away a game Philadelphia, now 2-3, had won on Sunday, could Nick Sirianni be the fourth?
Philadelphia had Sunday’s first game, a London date with the Jaguars, as locked down as you can be without a victory formation. Eight seconds on the clock, kicking off with a one-point lead, Jacksonville possessing neither timeouts nor offensive continuity — this was one of those 99-percent-chance-of-victory scenarios.
You know what happened next. Philadelphia kicked off straight into the hands of Ameer Abdullah, who charged 48 meters (53 yards, in American terms) over British turf to set up a game-winning field goal.
JAGS HUGE KICK RETURN.
They’re in range for one more shot at a field goal!@PHIvsJAX on NFL Network
Stream on @NFLPlus pic.twitter.com/XSWbKBTvW2— NFL (@NFL) October 11, 2026
You can’t spell failure without “if,” and there were “ifs” all over the field. If Philadelphia had just kicked the ball out of the end zone, the Jaguars would have had mere seconds to move the ball down the field and stop the clock. If the Eagles had managed to keep Abdullah tied up and upright for one more second, the clock would have expired.
Moving back up the playsheet, if Philadelphia hadn’t thrown an incomplete pass deep in Jags territory with 25 seconds on the clock, or if the Eagles hadn’t run out of bounds with 21 seconds on the clock, Philadelphia could have run the clock down to 1 second before kicking the go-ahead field goal.
If, if, so many ifs … all leading to what will surely be a long, quiet flight home.
“I didn’t make the right decision. I lost us that game,” Sirianni told assembled media afterward. “No other way around it. Nothing else to say about it. I didn’t do my job good enough in that situation.”
One of the most damning elements of an entirely regrettable and preventable misfire is that the Jaguars did the exact same thing just a few hours before. On the opening play of the game, Philadelphia kicked off to Josh Cameron, who proceeded to scoot 82 meters (90 yards, whatever) for an opening touchdown. That play was called back because of a range of penalties, but the Jaguars learned a valuable lesson that would pay off 60 minutes of game clock later.
“We got the perfect call with the perfect kick,” Abdullah said after the game. “We knew we could hit them in the alleys. That’s the one Josh Cameron had one called back earlier in the game. So we knew if we got the right kick, we had an opportunity.”
Philadelphia Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni took the blame for Sunday’s loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars.
(AP Photo/Alastair Grant)
Unlike Philadelphia, the Jaguars didn’t botch the opportunity to win the game.
So what happens now for the Eagles? This is a team that was already flailing off two straight losses coming into this week, a team wracked by an offensive line in flux, a defense unable to hold its opposition under 19 points, a coaching staff slow to adjust and unable to execute. A week that saw a significant trade (Cam Jurgens) and retirement (Lane Johnson) has Eagles fans wondering if the team has already punted on 2026.
That’s what makes Sunday’s loss so devastating. The Eagles had done everything correctly, right up to that final kick. They’d stymied one of the most potent offenses in the NFL. They’d allowed Jacksonville to beat itself with penalty after boneheaded penalty. They’d managed to orchestrate a couple cheer-worthy touchdown drives — not in the second half, true, but the defense kept the Eagles in the game.
But much like last week against the Rams, the Eagles burped up a late lead in large part because their offense was virtually lifeless after halftime, with five punts and a turnover on downs before what should-have-been-game-winning field goal with eight seconds on the clock.
“We got to figure out our second-half offense,” Sirianni said, “because we’re putting together some nice first-half offense and have a lot of opportunities to put the game away, and we haven’t been able to do that.”
The Eagles should be 4-1, or at least 3-2, and in charge of the NFC East. Instead, they’re mired with equally underachieving Dallas, among the injury-ridden Giants and Commanders, and unable to take control of a tepid division. And as a result, Sirianni’s seat has gone from balmy to nuclear-hot.
Philadelphia hasn’t fired a coach in-season since replacing Chip Kelly with Pat Shurmur with one game left in the 2015 season. Although Philadelphia has been to two Super Bowls and won one under Sirianni, that’s no armor either; the Eagles sent Doug Pederson packing just three seasons after winning Super Bowl LII.
For all the trickeration, all the scheming, all the alchemy and wizardry that coaches and coordinators can cook up, football is at its heart a very simple game: contain the opposition. If you keep the other side from running free, you give yourself the time to figure out how to score. And if you give the other side room to roam, well, bad things happen — both to your team and, if you’re the coach, to your job security.
What now, Philadelphia?