Hogs Haven
It’s week 16 of the NFL season and the 4-10 Washington Commanders will be facing a 9-5 Eagles team at home at Northwest Stadium on Saturday at 5:00 pm ET. The Eagles started the season extremely strong, going 8-3 to start the season, but lost 3 of their most recent 4 games before recovering with a blowout/shutout win against the Raiders last week.
On offense, the Eagles are in their first year with Kevin Patullo as OC and their fifth year of offensive-minded HC Nick Sirianni. The Eagles offense this year has been very up and down, with six games scoring fewer than 20 points and three games scoring more than 30 points. One of the biggest problems for the Eagles offense has been penalties and negative plays, as this year’s Eagles team currently has the most offensive penalties (47) and the highest zero-or-negative play percentage (33.6 percent) of the Sirianni era. Recently, the Eagles have used more under-center plays and RPOs to play to the strengths of QB Jalen Hurts and run more heavy packages with an extra TE or OL to try to kickstart their stalled run game. They have also used more play action and crossing routes to open up the middle of the field, which has resulted in increased production from TE Dallas Goedert, who has received 17 targets over the last 2 games. Overall, the Eagles offense ranks 22nd in passing yards, 19th in rushing yards, and 18th in total points.
On defense, the Eagles are in their second year with Vic Fangio at DC. Fangio typically runs a 3-4 front and 2 deep safeties to limit explosive plays. He also typically runs a light box, relying on stout defensive lineman to stop the run while dropping most of his players back in coverage. This worked well last year, but ran into issues this year after the departure of DT Milton Williams and EDGE Josh Sweat in free agency and the retirement of Brandon Graham. The Eagles have managed to fortify their DL midseason by trading a 3rd-round pick to the Dolphins for talented EDGE Jaelan Phillips and convincing Brandon Graham to come out of retirement midway through the season, though the defense has remained vulnerable to the run. Overall, the Eagles defense has remained one of the NFL’s better defenses, ranked 9th in passing yards allowed, 22nd in rushing yards allowed, and 5th in total points allowed.
I asked Brandon Lee Gowton of Bleeding Green Nation five questions to better understand the state of the Eagles and what to look for in this game.
1) How has the offensive scheme and play-calling changed under OC Kevin Patullo and how much of the offensive design should be credited to him vs Nick Sirianni vs. Jalen Hurts?
Sirianni and Hurts definitely have significant input on the offense. It’s not like Patullo is bringing his vision to the table without them being heavily involved.
With that in mind, it’s not always simple to parse through who...
