Bleeding Green Nation
Opponent perspective on Philadelphia’s big NFC East matchup.
The Philadelphia Eagles are back at Lincoln Financial Field this week for a huge Thursday Night Football game against the Washington Commanders. It’s been quite some time since a matchup between these division rivals was so important for both teams.
In order to preview this Week 11 NFC East battle, I reached out to our enemies over at Hogs Haven. The astounding Andrew York kindly kindly took the time to answer my questions about this upcoming tilt. Let’s take a look at the answers. [For my answers about the Eagles, stay tuned to HH.]
As far as strengths, he’s a cerebral QB with pinpoint accuracy on most throws, excellent throwing mechanics, and an advanced ability to recognize the defensive alignment, call protections, and process quickly what is happening around him on the field. In addition to that, he has an excellent sense for pressure and the athleticism to scramble to evade pressure and buy more time to throw or simply make a big gain himself with his legs. I think the biggest thing that makes him stand out from other rookie QBs is his maturity though. In many ways, he acts like an NFL veteran. He’s one of the first players to the facility every day, studies film and practices constantly, stays calm under pressure in games, and quietly commands the locker room.
It’s actually a lot tougher to name his weaknesses. He is thin, so in theory he should be a bit more fragile and he is playing through a rib injury now, but he seems to be like Gumbi and didn’t have an injury history in college, so it remains to be seen if he’s any more prone to injury than other QBs. However, this ties into another issue which is that he needs to be better at protecting himself when he scrambles. Although he has a really good sense of where defenders are and how to evade them, he sometimes reaches forward for an extra yard and takes a hit instead of just sliding or going out of bounds. He’s visibly improved at this over the course of the season and is much better about avoiding unnecessary hits than he was week 1, but that nature is still there. Outside of that, I can’t think of any real flaws. It’s shocking how much he plays more like a veteran than a rookie.
*Kliff deserves a ton of credit. He clearly developed a plan for bringing Jayden along over the course of the season, a plan that started with a very simple RPO-based scheme in week 1, but evolved in complexity as Jayden showed he could handle it. I think he actually brought the plan along quicker than expected because of how quickly Jayden was progressing. He’s also listened to feedback...
