Bleeding Green Nation
Analyzing Philadelphia’s offensive performance from their Week 9 win over the Jaguars.
Right, I’ll get straight to the point this week. I don’t want to waste time breaking down Nick Sirianni’s fourth-down calls in this game. Other people know this stuff better than me, and I prefer to get to the schematic stuff. I am a big fan of aggressive head coaches and always will be. I struggle to criticize Sirianni’s aggressiveness, but I struggled with some of the decisions in this one. I hated taking the PAT off the board when the Eagles had already kicked it to go up three possessions. I was fine going for it on 4th and 1 but disagreed with the play call. The tush push is much easier in the middle of the field than on the goal line. Anyway, enough of that, let’s get to the film. The film is fantastic this week.
The first touchdown of the game is a fantastic call. The Eagles used a lot of motion in this game, and this is one of the benefits. The motion brings the single-high safety down to cover Jahan Dotson. I can’t be sure, but I imagine Jalen Hurts is told to pick a side here, and he goes to the right, which is the right decision based on the Jaguars' coverage. I am pretty sure Saquon Barkley is running a choice route here, which means he can go in, out, or vertically, depending on the coverage. Barkley correctly reads that there is no deep coverage due to the tight end running a post route, so he goes vertical. Hurts reads it perfectly, and delivers a great ball to the corner of the endzone. Barkley runs a great route and also makes a tough catch over his shoulder that a lot of running backs could not make. Is there anything Barkley can’t do?
Watching this game live I became a little frustrated with Jalen Hurts taking sacks and thought he held onto the ball too long. However, after watching the all22 I’m less concerned about this. I enjoyed Kellen Moore’s game plan this week, but he still has these frustrating calls with a number of short curls that don’t give the quarterback an easy option. It’s easy to blame Hurts for these sacks, but he doesn’t have an easy option when you see the receivers.
I didn’t post the other sacks, but I put this out.
I mentioned the use of motion earlier, which is a great example. We haven’t seen AJ Brown in motion much this year but we saw it a lot in this game. This is an excellent way of helping AJ Brown win on an out route. With this motion, you would usually see the receiver run a crossing route, and the Jaguars defender is probably expecting this. This is a great design, a great throw, and a great route. Good football all around.
I could have written an entire essay about the Eagles’ run...
