Mike Sielski: Jeffrey Lurie couldn't celebrate the Eagles or himself against the Cowboys. What now for his team?

Mike Sielski, The Philadelphia Inquirer on Oct 26, 2026

Published in Football

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PHILADELPHIA — If Jeffrey Lurie had known Monday would be so awkward, if he could have foreseen that the Eagles would be the focus of such scrutiny and so many questions, who knows? Maybe he wouldn’t have agreed to stage and take part in a ceremony to celebrate himself.

But the show, such as it was, had to go on. So a red carpet was stretched from the Philadelphia Eagles’ sideline to midfield at halftime of their 38-21 loss to the Dallas Cowboys. And the lights inside Lincoln Financial Field went down. And the giant videoboards behind the end zones lit up to list the 51 previous inductees into the Eagles’ Hall of Fame. And white flags with LURIE stripped across them swayed in the nighttime breeze as the man himself — clad in a pine green Eagles jacket, accompanied by Donovan McNabb and Brian Dawkins — strode to midfield and prepared to thank all the people who made his induction possible.

It was a brief speech.

“To Eagles fans everywhere,” Lurie said, “it’s been an honor and privilege. I feel incredibly fortunate to be sharing this experience with the greatest fans in the world.”

There was little booing, if any, and he did have the good sense and decorum not to linger too long at the microphone. Still, the whole affair was cringeworthy, uncomfortable, for all the obvious reasons.

Back in August, when Lurie signed off on a selection committee’s decision to induct him into his own football team’s Hall of Fame, he might have done the humbler, more honorable thing and said no. Even in a different set of circumstances — if the Eagles had somehow been unbeaten through six games, if Jalen Hurts had been blood clot-free and in the midst of the best season of his career — it would have self-serving for Lurie to be standing in the center of Lincoln Financial Field, basking in a feting thrown by the franchise he owns. Hell, one can only imagine the air of arrogance that would have filled the stadium Monday if the Eagles had been having another terrific season.

No, they’re instead having one of their strangest and most disconcerting campaigns in years, the kind of season that can, should, and probably will inspire significant change within the organization. It’s not merely that the Eagles have lost five straight games, that Lane Johnson’s retirement and a succession of injuries have left them shorthanded, that new offensive coordinator Sean Mannion has provided little evidence that he is or will be a play-calling wiz, that coach Nick Sirianni has made some dubious in-game decisions, that the defense has been generally underwhelming and was again Monday. Those are ancillary problems compared to the stigma that Lurie and his franchise now bear.

Hurts’ health scare and the public handling of it have fractured the veneer of cool intelligence and crisp professionalism that Lurie has taken care to cultivate over his three decades of ownership. It doesn’t matter what Lurie and the Eagles’ leadership team’s intentions were, whether they followed proper procedures once Hurts felt the first shock of pain in his calf, or whether Sirianni could have blocked the barrage of questions directed at him last Monday. What matters is that the Eagles have lost the benefit of the doubt, and some public trust, that they’re doing everything a little smarter and a little better than everyone else in the NFL.

Now everything is in flux. Everything is up in the air. Will Hurts be healthy enough to return this season? To play football again? Will Sirianni survive as head coach? What will this team look like a year from now? Two years from now? The Eagles are in a transition phase, and there’s no telling how long it will last, and given those realities, the timing of Monday night’s mini-party for the man in charge could not have been worse.

“Throughout my career, I’ve had the good fortune of working alongside some extraordinary people whose contributions have been instrumental to our team’s success,” Lurie said in a statement that the Eagles released Monday morning. “To our coaches, players, and front office, to everyone who has proudly represented this organization, I am deeply grateful for your dedication, commitment, and shared pursuit of excellence.”

That chase has been relentless over the last 10 years, and in that time it has resulted in two Super Bowl victories, a third appearance in the big game, eight playoff berths, five division titles, and a status as a premier franchise in America’s premier sport. Surely, when the people who picked Lurie to be the guest of honor at his own party Monday night did so, they envisioned something more joyful, more satisfying, more fitting for the franchise the Eagles have been for so long. But these Eagles aren’t those Eagles, and one has to wonder when they will be again. Glancing at those videoboards, at his face in his stadium, with a football team he doesn’t recognize, Lurie had to be asking himself the same thing.

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