The Philadelphia Eagles suffered their first loss of the season on Sunday, falling 21-17 to the Denver Broncos at home. The defeat ended a 10-game winning streak that dated back to last year and marked the team’s first home loss since Week 2 of the 2024 campaign.
Quarterback Jalen Hurts addressed the team’s performance after the game, emphasizing that execution was lacking rather than talent. “It is about us, and how we look into our process and we have to truly take that a day at a time so we can make it as difficult or as easy as it needs to be,” Hurts said. “Ultimately, we just have to have the right mentality going into this week and every week and take [control of] the things that we can control, assess our systems, assess our process, assess all of these things and say, ‘What can we improve on? What’s working?’ Not even what’s working, what’s efficient, what can we improve on, and really evaluate that and grow.
“But I say this again, it’s not a capability thing. We just have to really stay focused on the task at hand, stay focused on the main thing, and be bought into the collective of doing that by any means necessary. So this is a great one to learn from and we will learn from it.”
Tight end Dallas Goedert also commented on a controversial play late in the game when no penalty was called despite apparent contact by Broncos safety JL Skinner. “The game really shouldn’t have come down to that,” Goedert said after the game.
Referee Adrian Hill explained in a pool report: “So our officials saw mutual hand fighting and hand-to-hand combat and did not see action that rose to the level of a foul on that play.”
Goedert added about his team’s performance: “There’s plays to be made out there that we didn’t make and that ultimately decided the game. Offensively, I feel like we let the team down for sure.” He also shared Head Coach Nick Sirianni’s message: “Move on. Don’t let this be a deciding factor in the season. Move on. Let’s get ready to play on Thursday (against the Giants).”
Linebacker Zack Baun discussed his unnecessary roughness penalty late in the fourth quarter which gave Denver an important first down. “Short yardage situation. He was fighting for extra yards and we’re taught to cap off on those type of situations,” Baun said postgame. “I didn’t think he was down. One ref through [threw] the flag. It was a subjective penalty, I think… I thought it could have gone either way, honestly.” He acknowledged mistakes were costly: “A lot of the penalties were honestly just dumb mistakes by us… It’s frustrating, but it’s also something that we can fix.”
Some players viewed Sunday’s loss as an opportunity for growth moving forward in their season. Defensive back Cooper DeJean said: “It’s probably good for us, that this happened… We understand that we just got to continue to get better as the season goes on.” Rookie linebacker Jihaad Campbell echoed those thoughts: “It’s adversity… Every time we wake up there’s a mountain we got to climb… We’re grateful for this loss… I think the biggest thing is just learning from it.”
Wide receiver DeVonta Smith led all receivers with eight catches for 114 yards—a season high—and caught one pass for 52 yards during Hurts’ second-most career attempts at passes over 20 air yards in one game (nine). Smith pointed out areas needing improvement: “We made improvements in certain areas. It can still get a lot better. We shot ourselves in the foot a lot.” Head Coach Nick Sirianni noted efforts toward more explosive plays but admitted shortcomings: “We didn’t make enough plays and we didn’t coach good enough today.”
Running back Saquon Barkley took responsibility for an illegal shift penalty late in regulation which negated what would have been a crucial completion by Smith: “That’s how you lose football games—not being detailed… On that play I gotta own it…”
The Eagles will look ahead quickly as they prepare for their next matchup against division rivals New York Giants later this week.
