PHILADELPHIA — I’s become fashionable to pile on first-year offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo. He’s the target of local and national self-styled experts, none of whom, you might note, works for an NFL or college team.

Certainly, no matter how close his friendship with Nick Sirianni, Patullo won’t survive next week if the offense again struggles and the Eagles don’t beat the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday. The offense averaged 22.3 points, down 4.9 points from the Super Bowl team of 2024, and 311.2 yards, down 56 yards from last year.

If you know anything about the Eagles front office, without a deep postseason run, that sort of performance simply will not stand.

Howie Roseman spent $128 million of Jeffrey Lurie’s money on that side of the ball, more than twice what they spent on defense. No matter how badly the players have executed, a quick playoff exit will spell the end for at least Patullo, and probably quarterbacks coach Scot Loeffler as well. No player on the team has regressed as much as Jalen Hurts.

But if the day after the wild-card game turns out to be Black Monday for Patullo, his defenders, if they exist, should have some ammunition. Because regardless of the plays called, the real problem lies with the players running them. These are not failures of scheme or sequence. These are failures of execution, focus and maybe even heart.

Is it age? Right tackle Lane Johnson is 35, but A.J. Brown and Saquon Barkley are just 28. Then again, in the NFL, high-usage receivers and backs age in dog years.

Is it fatigue? Maybe. The Eagles enter Sunday having played 38 games in the past two seasons, more than any other team. Including playoffs, Barkley had 482 total touches last season, second-most in NFL history.

Is it injury? Maybe. Offensive linemen Cam Jurgens, Landon Dickerson and Johnson, who have 11 Pro Bowls among them, have been limited or absent all season. Brown battled a hamstring issue in training camp and through at least the first eight games, and he managed the lowest yardage total of his four-year tenure in Philly — but just 76 yards lower than last year.

In fact, as much as folks want to criticize the Eagles’ passing game, it actually averaged 6.4 more yards per game this season (194.3) than it did in 2024 (187.9).

The brutal truth is the passing offense hasn’t been the same since center Jason Kelce retired after 2023, despite Jurgens making the last two Pro Bowls.

Are there other factors at work?

Was last year’s passing offense a casualty of Barkley’s 2,504 rushing yards, which is an NFL record, playoffs-inclusive? Or was it because the passing game wasn’t sharp in 2024, either? After all, Hurts threw for seven more touchdowns and 321 more yards in 2025.

Two things appear to have happened in 2025.

First, the line got banged up and older.

Second, opposing defenses more steadfastly forced Hurts — and, of course, Patullo — to beat them through the air.

You can’t blame Patullo for the stagnation of Hurts’ game. His processing remains slow, his footwork remains clunky, his arm strength no better than average.

But what Patullo will be blamed for, fairly or not, is that he did not make more of Lurie’s $255 million man. It won’t matter that Patullo’s predecessor didn’t, either.

Kellen Moore was hired to maximize Hurts’ abilities the way he’d allegedly done with Dak Prescott as the Dallas Cowboys’ quarterbacks coach or offensive coordinator from 2018 to 2022 — emphasis on allegedly.

Prescott’s passer rating during Moore’s five seasons was 98.8. His quarterback rating was 55.2. Since Moore left, it’s 99.4 and 73.4. Justin Herbert’s passer rating of 93.2 in 2023, Moore’s single season as the Chargers’ OC, matched Herbert’s career-low.

Just saying: Maybe Moore wasn’t the reason the Eagles shined as brightly as they did. After all, four healthy potential Hall of Famers on any offensive line can cover up lots of shortcomings.

Nobody likes watching Patullo call passing plays that give Hurts limited options and require too long to throw. Nobody likes watching running plays that, given the defensive alignment, appear doomed on conception. Those are on Patullo — but those also are infrequent. Besides, no OC nails every call.

Nobody likes watching Hurts deal with pressure in his face from up the middle on every third dropback because his center and guards get blown off the ball. Nobody likes seeing tight end Dallas Goedert rounding off his routes.

We’ve also seen Brown give up on routes and short-arm passes, seen Barkley hit holes soft, misread blocks, and run out of bounds when he didn’t have to, and we’ve seen Hurts miss wide-open receivers, sometimes two on the same play. He clearly has no interest in running the football much anymore; he ran 105 times this season, one-third less than his average over the last four seasons.

Sure, some of that is Patullo.

But a lot of it is a worn-down Hurts and his quickly aging cast.

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