By: Kylan Watson

After beating the Detroit Lions last week, the Philadelphia Eagles travelled to Dallas for their final matchup against the Cowboys of the 2025 NFL Regular Season. The Cowboys scored 21 unanswered points to take this game from the Eagles after they did not score in the final 41 minutes of this contest. Dallas used this late game power outage and 14 penalties to beat Philly 24-21 to keep their postseason hopes alive.

The Eagles dominated this game throughout the first half they were tearing Dallas’ secondary up like a holiday dinner. Scoring 21 points by half time and it looked like they were about to massacre the Cowboys on their home field. AJ Brown (8 receptions for 110 yards and caught one touchdown pass) and Jalen Hurts (completed 27/39 passes for 289 yards, completed one touchdown pass, and two rushing touchdowns) re-discovered their offensive connection and scored the first three touchdowns for the Eagles in this contest.

This was the best showing the offense has had so far this season and then Dallas made second half adjustments, and they dominated the Eagles in all phases of the game. The Cowboys defensive unit shutdown Philly throughout all their drives in the second half and kept them off the board, which allowed Dak Prescott to find his form and connect with George Pickens and CeeDee Lamb on three pivotal deep balls that turned into points for the Cowboys. Even though they turned the ball over on downs two times in this game Dallas still was able to show some toughness and take this game from the Eagles.

Credit to Dallas instead of folding they were able to take full advantage of the Eagles weak secondary opposite of Quinyon Mitchell and 14 penalties they committed in this game and put points on the board. The only thing the Cowboys did not do in this game was score points on multiple turnovers that the Eagles committed in this game because of the stoutness of Vic Fangio’s defensive unit.

The Eagles have some big problems on the offensive side and two of them have nothing to do with Kevin Patullo. The first issue is that, unlike last season Philly’s offensive line is not healthy enough to impose their will on games and that has turned a vaunted rushing attack into one of the worse run games in the league. Secondly, the Eagles commit way too many foolish penalties which kill drives and take points off the board. Philly has been one of the most disciplined teams in the league under Nick Sirianni but in this game, they committed 14 penalties that resulted in 96 yards for the Cowboys. Two of Dallas’ offensive drives were kept alive by multiple foolish pass interference penalties that resulted in points for the Cowboys. You cannot be a championship contending team and commit that many penalties and win games. Their undisciplined play finally cost them a game.

Luckily for the Eagles, they have a short week to and can re-establish themselves against a Chicago Bears team, which has become one of the best teams in the NFL over the last few weeks. Philly is banged up in their secondary with injuries to both Andrew Makuba and Reed Blankenship.  Chicago should challenge their safety depth with deep balls like Dallas did in tonight’s game. The Eagles might have to play more zone defense to cover up their weakness on the back end and that makes putting pressure on Caleb Williams even more important. The Eagles could not put Prescott on the ground enough times in this contest and against the more elusive Williams that will be pivotal to helping the Eagles win on Friday afternoon.

In addition, they will need to move away from running the ball and use up tempo offense to get in rhythm or bring in Tank Bigsby to really get the run game started. He has been able to bring energy to the Eagles run game and he needs to be used more in the offensive scheme. Also, Philly will have to become a disciplined team again because the team that has shown up the last few weeks cannot win a super bowl committing nine plus penalties a game like they have been doing over the last few weeks. Implementing these things into their game plan on Friday afternoon should put Philly in great position to win their ninth game of the season.