Acme Packing Company
When the Philadelphia Eagles finished the 2022 season ranked 2nd in defensive DVOA, much of the credit rightly went to a historic pass rush — 70 sacks, the third-most in NFL history through the regular season. But the coverage data tells an equally important story about how Jonathan Gannon built that defense, and it reveals a coordinator whose scheme evolved meaningfully over the course of the year in ways that go beyond the box score.
The most basic finding confirms what film study already suggested: this was a zone-based defense at its core. On early downs, the Eagles played zone coverage more than three times as often as man (42.48% to 12.26%), with Cover 3 alone accounting for roughly one in five snaps — comfortably their most-used single call all season.
This wasn’t incidental. A Cover 3-heavy approach is the schematic signature of the Fangio-tree defenses Gannon came from, prioritizing depth and disguise over individual matchup wins. The selection of Cover 4 and Cover 1 as secondary options, rather than more aggressive looks like Cover 0, reinforces that this defense was built to prevent explosive plays first and create havoc second.
What’s more revealing is what they avoided entirely. Cover 2 Man didn’t appear on a single early-down snap across 824 plays. That’s not a statistical quirk — a defense that runs six different coverage shells over an entire season doesn’t accidentally skip one of them 824 consecutive times.
It points to a coordinator making a conscious philosophical choice, likely because Cover 2 Man asks corners to sustain difficult trail-technique man coverage while still respecting deep halves’ responsibility — a demanding teaching point that may not have suited Gannon’s personnel or his risk tolerance.
Perhaps the most significant trend in the data is the clear directional shift from the first half of the season to the second. On early downs, man coverage cratered — falling 41%, from 15.5% in Weeks 1-9 down to just 9.2% in Weeks 10-18.
Cover 0, the most aggressive man-coverage call in the playbook, nearly disappeared entirely, dropping from 2.5% to a mere 0.47%. Third down followed the same arc: blitz rate fell 22% from the first half to the second (21.05% to 16.41%), with two separate weeks — 9 and 13 — featuring zero third-down blitzes at all.
This pattern is worth noting because it cuts against a common narrative about good defenses needing to “evolve and adjust” as the season progresses. Here, the evolution ran toward simplicity and restraint, not complexity.
One interpretation is that Gannon found his players were more effective executing fewer, better-rehearsed calls than mixing in higher-variance, higher-risk concepts — a defense optimizing for consistency over surprise as familiarity within the system grew.
Another explanation is one of survival and game-script: the Eagles spent much of the second half protecting leads, and conservative zone shells are simply the correct call when you’re playing with a cushion.
The Week 8 performance — a season-high 29.63% Cover 3 usage following the bye week...
