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LONDON — Nick Sirianni took his team's players into the visiting locker room at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and told them what any head coach would rather not admit: this loss was his fault.

The Philadelphia Eagles, his defending NFC champions, had just been stunned by the Jacksonville Jaguars, 19-17, on Cam Little's 57-yard field goal with time expiring — a gut-punch finish that dropped Philly to 2-3 and handed them a third consecutive loss.

But the Eagles, as their coach knew, should not have lost this game. Two mistakes in those final seconds allowed the Jaguars to steal the victory.

The Two Mistakes That Cost Philadelphia

Mistake No. 1: Poor Clock Management on the Game-Winning Drive

With 25 seconds left and the Eagles down 16-14, young quarterback Jalen Hurts led his team to the Jacksonville 34-yard line. The Eagles were within easy kicking range of Jake Elliott, who had already drilled two 50-plus yarders in this game, and it was time to start running out the clock.

Instead, the Eagles' offensive players and the play-callers in the booth made two passes on first and second down, with the first being incomplete and the second a seven-yard gain from Makai Lemon on an out route which stopped the clock. The Eagles then ran the ball on third down and lost three yards before the Jaguars used its final timeout. Not enough time ticked off the clock, and the Eagles should have run the ball on either first or second down to set up Elliott for a walk-on kick as the clock ticked toward the five second mark.

Mistake No. 2: The Kickoff That Should Have Been a Touchback

Even after Elliott booted a 48-yarder to take a 17-16 lead with eight seconds remaining, the Eagles still had one last-ditch option: a touchback on the kickoff which would have placed the ball at the Jaguars' 35-yard line with no timeouts left and just one play to get into field goal range.

Instead, the Eagles opted for a normal kickoff, and Ameer Abdullah fielded Elliott's line drive at the 8-yard line and raced 53 yards to the Eagles' 39-yard line with one second left on the game clock.

That was enough time for Little to kick the game-winning 57-yard field goal.

Elliott, unsurprisingly, admitted the Eagles' fault on the play.

"We decided to keep it in there and try to make a tackle," Elliott said. "I just went out and did what I was told and wish it obviously turned out better. It sucks. You come all this way and you think you're in the driver's seat to win a big game, and now we're feeling pretty down".

A Coach Who Shouldered the Loss

The Eagles' head coach took full responsibility for the defeat to the Jaguars.

"I didn't make the right decision, and I lost us that game," Sirianni told reporters. "What hurts there is the guys fought so hard, and then I don't make the decision that I should make at the end of the game and I cost us that game, and I put that one on me".

Sirianni, who was clearly emotional when speaking to the press after the game, did not attempt to defend his decision to kick off to the Jaguars or the series of clock management decisions that led to the fateful play.

"At the end of the day, I didn't make the right decision. There's no other way around it," said Sirianni.

Players Respond to a Heartbreaking Defeat

Not surprisingly, Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts was philosophical when asked about the 25 seconds which changed everything.

"I'm prepared as a quarterback to not worry about those things," said Hurts. "I'm honoring the play call, honoring the things that are coming in the game. When I'm up at night, yeah, I think about them. Should I have said something or should I have took a step back and said, 'Wait?' Ultimately, there's a commitment to that and going out there and executing. And this was one where it did not work in our favor".

The Eagles' heartbreaking loss to the Jaguars was particularly frustrating because the Eagles were without a half-dozen injured players, including Saquon Barkley and DeVonta Smith and Hollywood Brown. An injury bug seemed to afflict the Eagles throughout the game, as linebacker Jeremiah Trotter Jr., one of the Eagles' top special teams players, was ejected on the opening kickoff after a scuffle with Jaguars' Bryan Thomas Jr..

And the Jaguars had already scored a touchdown on a kickoff return which was nullified because of a holding penalty, a sign to Eagles' fans that their depth problems on special teams would be exploited. But the Jaguars came out and did that, and more.

A Concern for Sirianni

For Nick Sirianni, this is a growing concern.

The Eagles have now lost three straight games, and they've done so with increasingly alarming clock management and decision-making in the fourth quarter, especially with the game on the line.

This is the second time in three weeks that an NFC East head coach has had to admit that he made some very poor decisions with the game clock, costing his team a victory. The Eagles were coming off a Week 3 win in London against the Cowboys when Brian Schottenheimer, the Cowboys' head coach, admitted he made some very poor late-game decisions during the loss to the Ravens in Rio de Janeiro.

Sirianni needs to get his house in order, because the margin for error is getting much smaller for him and his Eagles. They are just 2-3 in the NFC East this season, and a four-game road trip through the Carolinas and New York's Metropolitan area looms. A loss to the Jaguars was always likely, but another one will be far more costly.

"It's gonna hurt for a while," Sirianni said of the defeat to the Jaguars.