Nick Sirianni's decision-making astounds in victory over inferior Jaguars

Bad teams are easy to spot. I'm not talking about teams with bad quarterbacks, bad defenses, or bad offensive lines. I'm not even talking about teams without any talent. I'm talking about teams where the stench is greater than the sum of its parts, where a group of seemingly functioning players come together to play a brand of football so dysfunctional it's unpleasant to watch.

Bad teams don't just drop passes. They direct them straight into the arms of the defenders. Bad teams don't just fumble punt returns. They do this deep within their own territory, before they are in the game for the first time. Bad teams don't just allow opposing running backs to run through them. You allow them to jump over it. Backward. After two rotations.

The Jacksonville Jaguars are a bad football team. They were a bad team all season. Sunday was no exception. The Eagles' 28-23 win over the Jaguars was a lot. More than anything, it was a reminder of what a truly bad NFL team looks like. It doesn't look like the Eagles, which is good news. The bad news? Well, the Eagles almost lost the game.

” READ MORE: Eagles grades: Saquon Barkley, linebacker earns high grades; Nick Sirianni, not so much

It's a diabolical attempt to square a circle. Nick Sirianni's critics tend to focus on only one side of the equation. That's understandable, especially on afternoons like Sunday. There aren't many NFL games where a team outscores its opponent by 447-215 total yards, wins the turnover battle, and still needs an end zone interception on 1st-and-10 from the 13-yard line 1 minute and 42 seconds not to lose. The last-minute drama was directly attributable to a quarter of Sirianni's decisions. Two failed fourth-down conversions and two failed two-point attempts gave a helpless Jaguars team a potentially game-winning touchdown drive instead of a two-possession deficit. They failed to take advantage. But that's how it is with bad teams.

The result was another victory for which Sirianni will be blamed. We really need a term for this. If a Pyrrhic victory is a victory that comes with a price equal to defeat, perhaps a Sirian victory is a victory that will be remembered as much as how much a trainer did to lose it.

I won't defend the decision-making here. In fact, I disagreed with all four. That's what they did back then, before they failed. Most egregious were the decisions to go for it on fourth down.

The first came with 4:55 left in the second quarter, on 4th-and-3 from the Jaguars' 22-yard line. The Eagles had a chance to take a 13-0 lead against an opponent that seemed unable to put together a long touchdown drive. They tried and failed. Sirianni left three points on the field.

The second instance was even more untenable than the first. With 1:25 left in the third quarter, the Eagles had a 4th-and-1 at the Jaguars' 25-yard line for a 22-16 lead. A field goal would have made it a two possession game. The Jaguars still didn't look like a team that had two chances to score. Not only did the Eagles not make the field goal, they also didn't make the tush push. You passed. It failed. Three points remained on the field. Eight total, with two previous failed two-point conversions.

“We’ve done that pretty well in the past,” Sirianni said after the game. “You always think about everything. You think about who you have, you think about your previous experiences with it. They always look at the analysis. We were pretty good at that. They did a good job today. I'll look at everything. But for now I always do what I think is best for the football team. It didn't work today, but that's how it is. . .When we get a fourth down, when we convert a fourth down, nothing is actually said. If we don't do that, I understand there will be questions. But again, at the end of the day, I really have to have the courage to do that and say if I’m doing everything I can to win the game.”

Look, it's a mindset that has paid off for the Eagles. It's the right attitude to have when playing against a good NFL team. But Doug Pederson is not Andy Reid, Trevor Lawrence is not Patrick Mahomes, and the Jaguars are not the 2013 Broncos. In fact, someone at NBC Sports deserves a lot of credit for bringing the three-hour program “Electric Pink Slip Acid Test” to a national television audience Doug Pederson saved. It takes a lot of confidence to commit to a marquee performance with Sam Darnold and Joe Flacco. In the end it was the right decision. The best thing that can be said about the Eagles' win over the Jaguars is that it didn't keep us awake for long.

” READ MORE: The linebacker partnership of Nakobe Dean and Zack Baun gives the Eagles a nervy win

The Jaguars are like the NFL version of The Expendables 3, full of so familiar names and faces that you wonder how they all ended up in something so bad. They are the opposite of the Eagles. They are the team that never makes the plays.

That brings us to the other side of the equation.

The Eagles are a good team. A very good team. So good, in fact, that it's unreasonable to believe they're being trained by a man who stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night. They make their blocks. They make their tackles. They make plays.

Conventional wisdom says it's because of their talent. Saquon Barkley, AJ Brown, DeVonta Smith – they all have cheat code skills. Which is true. That's what they do. But the Eagles' success is more holistic than the sum of their few elite individual players. There is a holistic level of competence and functionality that a team like the Jaguars lacks.

You saw it early in the third quarter when Jalen Hurts threw a deep pass to Jahan Dotson, who was covered step by step by a defensive back who somehow managed to both break up the pass and allow Dotson to collect the rebound and thus securing the catch in the air behind the defender's back to give the Eagles a first down in Jacksonville territory. You could see it in the game of Zack Baun, who was wherever he needed to be at every level of the field. That's what we've seen in Sirianni's four years as head coach.

It is more than fair to judge Sirianni and the end results of his decisions. But coaching is much more than just in-game decision making and offensive game direction. The final result from Sunday? The Eagles are 6-2.