PHILADELPHIA - The Eagles are gettin' nuttin' for Christmas cause they ain't been nuttin' but bad.
Truth be told, they were only bad near the end, when it counted, dropping three straight contests culminated in lackluster 27-24 defeat at the three-win Washington Redskins last Saturday.
That loss, plus the Cowboys' 42-7 romp over the Colts the next day flung the Eagles from postseason contention after enjoying the lead in the NFC East for most of the season.
"Any time you don't make the playoffs in the National Football League, it's disappointing," head coach Chip Kelly said on Monday. "Not happy with the situation we're in right now. We just can't sit here and feel sorry for yourselves. That's not what this group I'm around will do, and I know that."
Kelly had not lost three games in a row during his stint at Oregon and will miss a postseason for the first time since his New Hampshire side was left out of the FCS playoff in 2003.
"Whether we lose in the playoff game or whether we lost in this fashion, they're both gut-wrenching situations," he said. "We're extremely disappointed. We're frustrated. We understand that."
The worst part of the malaise enveloping the Delaware Valley is how so recently things looked as hopeful then as they look pitiful now.
A Dallas Cowboys team most thought would win four games at best and have a candidate for the worst defense in generations rebounded from a wobbly opening day loss to the 49ers and rattled off six straight behind a stalwart front five and the game's best rusher.
The Cowboys were a solid 8-3 before Philadelphia re-asserted themselves 33-10 in a much-anticipated Turkey Day meeting that would determine tops in the division until a rematch 18 days later.
Apart from that, and with the lowly Redskins and Giants awaiting to serve as appetizers for the postseason, Kelly's would-be second in two years with the team, all that stood in the way was the defending champion Seattle Seahawks. And the Eagles, then 9-3 and undefeated at home, had a fighting chance.
Fielding the second-best sacking group in football and a stable backup quarterback in Mark Sanchez, still in for injured Nick Foles, even should the Seahawks have prevailed, said the theories, surely the Eagles would still have the antidote to the Cowboys' resurgence and slip into the playoffs.
But Marshawn Lynch and Russell Wilson would strike pay dirt that day en route to a ten-point victory that found the Eagles outgained 440-139.
"If you don't get as many opportunities, you have to make the ones you get count and we didn't do that," said Mark Sanchez, whose interception late all but sealed the result.
"We expected to do a lot of things better." Philly held the football for 18 minutes that night to the Seahawks' 42.
Their rematch with Dallas went south from the opening kick, literally, after a muff to start the game that put the Cowboys in the red zone and two minutes later into the end zone.
Dez Bryant caught a career-best three touchdowns that night, all against embattled cornerback Bradley Fletcher. The Eagles would mount a 24-0 blitz in the second half, eventually taking a three-point lead, though DeMarco Murray would put Dallas ahead again soon after and for good.
"I just had a terrible game," Fletcher said that night. Philly was out-possessed by the same margin they had been the previous week.
Robert Griffin would not have a terrible game the next week, tagged as the starter when the upset-seeking Redskins hosted Philadelphia. He threw for 220 yards, completing 16-of-23 passes, including a 23 yard toss to Pierre Garcon that set up the game-winning field goal.
"We wanted to spoil their Christmas and send them home," Griffin said of his rivals, "and we did our part."
Even Cody Parkey couldn't cut it that night, slicing two field goals, including on a drive following a Redskins turnover to open the second half. Parkey missed only two kicks all season before then.
"We invented ways to lose this game," Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins said after. "We did so many things to give it away. Two turnovers, I dropped an interception, they run the same play on [the] goal line for two scores, we miss two field goals, we gave up a couple deep balls, we had a couple penalties on third down."
All of which led to their third loss in three December outings. The first two were worrisome and raised questions, but the third seemed to answer them all, and found the c-word slipping from the mouths of many, young and old.
And as with any proper collapse, or choke should you prefer, those witness to the carnage have their own theories.
Tackle Todd Herremanns thought the root of the team's late troubles came from a lack of discipline.
"I think there's a lot of things that we could list that could've went the other way to help us be in a better spot right now," he told CSN Philadelphia.
"I hate to say it because we pride ourselves on being a very disciplined team, and when it comes down to it, the last few weeks, we've been very undisciplined with penalties after the snap, during the snap, turnovers. It's just signs -- when you're turning the ball over and you're having unsportsmanlike penalties and stuff, it's just the sign of an undisciplined team."
Philadelphia committed 197 yards of accepted penalties in their last two contests, including an entire field plus two yards at the Redskins.
Two penalties in the end zone that night set up Darrel Young's two 1-yard touchdown rushes in a third quarter that found the Eagles blanked 14-0.
Unthinkably, they were flagged twice on defense during the eventual game-winning drive.
Their 35 turnovers are the worst in football. Mark Sanchez book-ended his outing in Washington with giveaways, stripped on the Eagles' first drive and his 50th and final pass attempt was intercepted, setting up the Redskins' go-ahead 50 yard charge.
He was picked twice in the second Cowboys' game on a night that saw Brent Celek lose a fumble, as did LeSean McCoy a week earlier.
"The biggest thing for us as a team is we were really counting our days anyway," Malcolm Jenkins said this week. "We were negative-nine in the turnover ratio [through 12 games], so to even get nine wins with that was surprising.
"Once you hit the month of December where everything rights itself a little bit and teams are fighting for survival, you can't win with that ratio."
The Eagles are sixth-worst in football with a minus-8 turnover margin.
"We were really playing on borrowed time," he added, "and that's starting to show up in these games where we're playing really good teams."
Philadelphia will have a shot at a 10-win campaign on Sunday when travel to the New York Giants.
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