Hogs Haven
It’s week 18 of the NFL season and the 4-12 Washington Commanders will be facing an 11-5 Eagles team on the road at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, PA on Sunday at 4:25 pm ET. The Eagles have announced that they will be resting many of their key starters in this matchup, including QB Jalen Hurts, RB Saquon Barkley, WRs A.J. Brown & DeVonta Smith, TE Dallas Goedert, LT Jordan Mailata, LG Landon Dickerson, and DT Jalen Carter.
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 seven 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. Overall, the Eagles offense ranks 23rd in passing yards, 18th in rushing yards, and 19th 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 linemen 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, 21st in rushing yards allowed, and 3rd 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) What were your big takeaways from the Week 16 matchup between the Commanders and Eagles?
So, this was actually the first Eagles game I didn’t watch live since … 2012? Definitely prior to 2013, which is when I started covering the Birds for Bleeding Green Nation.
I bring this up because I wonder if my feelings on the game would’ve been different if I watched live. I felt relatively encouraged about how the Eagles played, even though it was far from perfect. The postgame commentary was more negative than I expected...
