Logan Ryan: 6-Win Giants Can't Be Mad at Eagles for Benching Jalen Hurts vs. WFT

There were a lot of angry New York Giants fans late Sunday night when it seemed like the Philadelphia Eagles washed their hands of the 2020 season, essentially handing the NFC East to the Washington Football Team.

Giants cornerback Logan Ryan doesn't think anyone has much of an argument in his team's favor. 

"There will be a lot of opinions about whether they were trying to win. You want to play the game to win, but I don't play for the Eagles, I don't coach for the Eagles. It's their team. Winning six games doesn't give us much right to get pissed off about this. We didn't play consistent enough all year to earn it," Ryan told Peter King of NBC Sports.

The Giants would have won the NFC East had the Eagles been able to defeat Washington in the 2020 regular-season finale. Instead, Philly sat nearly every player dealing with injuries and then sat an ineffective Jalen Hurts with the game within a score in the second half.

The loss secured the Eagles the sixth pick in the 2021 NFL draft; they would have selected ninth with a victory. Eagles coach Doug Pederson denied any draft-related malfeasance after the game, saying he was "coaching to win."

Some juxtaposed Pederson's decision to sit Hurts in favor of Nate Sudfeld with quotes from Eagles center Jason Kelce to reporters from last month.

"You see a lot of losing teams sustain losses for a number of years when they have bad cultures. They have cultures where you don't try and win every week. Where you're trying to finish (with a bad record): 'What are we going to do in the draft? What are we going to do in free agency? What can we do over here?' In football, this isn't basketball. One draft pick isn't going to make us a Super Bowl champion. It might be a big start to a Super Bowl championship, but it's always going to be about the team. That's the greatest thing about this sport. And culture, and the way guys fight and the way guys prepare and the way guys go about their business, is a huge reason for success in this league and in this sport. So nothing takes precedence over trying to win a football game."

Ryan did not seem particularly worried about whether the Eagles were playing to win or for draft position. His point that the Giants didn't do enough to warrant the ability to complain is valid; the Giants had lost three straight games before Sunday's win over the Dallas Cowboys. A win in any one of those games would have given New York the