Acme Packing Company
I probably don’t need to tell you that the Green Bay Packers have a big game against the Philadelphia Eagles this Monday night. As I try to do every week, I took a look at how the Packers could attack this Eagles defense. I tend to start with numbers, then watch some film after that. I try to watch at least the two previous games from the Packers’ opponent, then use numbers for a more targeted approach. So let’s get to it.
Just from looking at the numbers, the Eagles’ defense has been pretty middle-of-the-road this season. FTN’s DVOA – a metric that accounts for strength of opponent faced – has the Eagles as the 16th-best defense in the league this year. They’re 15th against the pass and 25th against the run, which is a little shocking given some of the dudes they have up front. (Last season, they were the best defense in the league per DVOA.)
NFL Pro tells the same sort of story, so I don’t really need to list them all here. I will, however, dig into a couple of numbers from NFL Pro. In looking at the Matchup Comparison, the biggest advantage the Packers have on offense is their play-action game. On the season, the Packers have the 5th-ranked play-action offense, while the Eagles have the 30th-ranked play-action defense (Eagles defense is allowing +0.28 EPA Per Play on play action snaps). On pure dropback snaps, the Eagles are the 8th best passing defense (-0.22 EPA Per Play).
On the season, the Packers are using play action on 29.1% of their pass attempts, the 5th highest rate in the league. Against the Panthers this past weekend, the Packers only used play action on 18.4% of their dropbacks, their lowest rate of the season. The reason for that may be due to the Panthers’ defense being the 4th best defense in the league against play action this season (-0.12 EPA Per Play). On the season, the Packers’ two highest play-action rates came against the Bengals (40.6%) and the Commanders (38.2%). Both those teams are in the bottom third of the league against play action on the season. Given the Eagles’ weakness, I would anticipate a relatively high play-action rate this week.
However, it’s not all play action. The Eagles’ defense has shown themselves to be capable against the vertical play action game (off run concepts like Inside Zone/Duo). Where they’ve had issues is with the horizontal play-action game.
That play-action approach would pair well with a more gap-scheme oriented run game, which the Packers started leaning into more last week. Even if the runs in the pulling run game can be downhill, the horizontal motion of the pullers can get the linebackers widening horizontally or pulled up to the line more than they are off inside zone/Duo.
While we’re talking about the running game, we can talk about using the RB in the passing game. While the Eagles are the best team in the league against tight...
