Sports

Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni faced a decision with 33 seconds left in Monday night's game at Lambeau Field.

Sirianni's team was up 10-7 and facing a fourth-and-6 from the Packers' 35-yard-line. They could have kicked a field goal, punted or, with the Packers out of timeouts, gone for a first down that would have ended the game. Sirianni opted for door No. 3 and the Eagles dialed up a deep pass to wide receiver A.J. Brown.

Sirianni said he didn't like the field goal because of the wind and the Packers still could have won with a touchdown if they made it. He also cited a similar pass to Brown that helped them run out the clock in a win over the Vikings earlier this year and said he wasn't second-guessing the decision because the pass was incomplete.

"Don't regret that at all, wanted to be able to end the game," Sirianni said in his postgame press conference. "It didn't work this time. Sometimes that happens, but I've got a lot of faith in sending those guys back out there in those scenarios. We had a very similar one that we are all high-fiving about against Cleveland last year, right? Very similar, very similar, that we went vertical on and A.J. and Jalen made a great play. It didn't work this time. Kind of similar-ish to the Minnesota game. So when they work, we're high-fiving. When they don't work, you are going to go back and say, 'Hey, was this the best thing that we should have done in this particular case?' And we'll be hyper-critical of ourselves there, but I know how much trust I have in Jalen and I know how much trust I have in the guys that are out there and he threw it to A.J. in that particular case, and A.J. and the offensive line and everybody that goes into that."

The Packers picked up 18 yards on a pass to wide receiver Bo Melton, but Brandon McManus' 64-yard field goal try at the whistle came nowhere close to going in and the Eagles were able to do their high-fiving a little later than Sirianni drew it up.

With the Packers trailing 3-0 in the fourth quarter on Monday night, they faced a fourth-and-11 at the Eagles' 40-yard line. The analytics said to try a 58-yard field goal. Matt LaFleur decided to punt. That decision came back to haunt him.

The punt went for a touchback, so it netted only 20 yards of field position. And the Eagles marched down the field and scored a touchdown on the next drive, to take a 10-0 lead. The Packers would later score a touchdown of their own to make it 10-7, but they lost by that score when they missed a 64-yard field goal attempt as time expired.

Ultimately, LaFleur turned down a chance at a 58-yard field goal to punt, then had to try a 64-yard field goal at the end of the game. We'll never know if Brandon McManus would have made that 58-yarder, but he's made longer kicks than that before (his career-long is 61 yards), and in today's NFL, 58 yards is well within field goal range: NFL kickers are 18-for-29 (62 percent) on field goals between 57 and 59 yards this season.

LaFleur was surely worried that if the Packers had missed the 58-yard field goal the Eagles would have capitalized on their good field position, but the Eagles scored a touchdown on the drive after the punt anyway. A miss wouldn't have been any worse than the punt was, and a make would have given the Packers three more points in a game they lost by three.

Punting is rarely the correct decision when losing in the fourth quarter. The analytics actually said going for it on fourth-and-11, while not as good a choice as attempting a field goal, would have been a better choice than punting. If you're losing in the fourth quarter you need to score, not give the ball to the other team.

LaFleur gave the ball to the Eagles, and the ultimate result was sending his kicker onto the field to try a 64-yard field goal. He would have been better off trying a 58-yard field goal when he had the chance.

The Eagles and Packers were tied 0-0 at halftime on Monday night. That doesn't happen very often.

Monday night marked the first time in almost two full years that an NFL game has been scoreless at halftime.

Oddly enough, the last time an NFL game was scoreless at halftime, it happened twice on the same day: On December 10, 2023, the Jets and Texans were tied 0-0 at halftime, and the Vikings and Raiders were also tied 0-0 at halftime.

Overall, though, it's a rare occurrence: In the last 10 years, only five NFL games have been 0-0 at the end of the second quarter. Scoreless halftime games are about a 1-in-500 occurrence in the NFL, or around 0.2 percent of games.

Unsurprisingly, 0-0 halftime scores have become much less common as NFL offenses have grown more sophisticated and rules favoring the offense have been passed. What was once commonplace in the old days of the NFL has now become the rarity that was on display on Monday night, a first half in which neither team could get on the scoreboard.