The Eagles have one of the most well-constructed offenses in the NFL from a roster and schematic perspective. They have the league’s best offensive line, two legitimate receivers outside, one of the best tight ends, a big-play threat at running back and an MVP-caliber dual-threat quarterback. Their scheme perfectly suits their talents, and they have ways of beating anything a defense throws at them.
The problem? The meticulous creator and conductor of that scheme is gone. Former offensive coordinator Shane Steichen is now in Indianapolis. And although the Eagles’ scheme is still sound, they are void of new ideas, and they haven’t evolved enough.
Last season, Steichen expertly found weaknesses in defenses and relentlessly attacked them. A good example of this came in the NFC Championship game. The San Francisco 49ers’ defense aligned its nickel and strong safety to the strong side of the Eagles’ trips formations (three receivers to one side), so they just kept calling runs to the weak side. And when the 49ers adjusted, the Eagles had an answer ready for their adjustment.
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This season, we haven’t seen that sort of purposeful attack. The Eagles just seem to be playing their greatest hits over and over again, and some of the new ideas they’ve introduced aren’t very effective. Again, the plays are sound, and the Eagles are talented, so the plays work. But they aren’t getting the explosives that they were last season.
What was the Eagles’ formula for creating explosive plays? Creating a numbers advantage on the ground with their option attack. Force the defense to play single-high defenses and put an extra defender in the box. Against single-high, wide receivers A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith have one-on-ones on the outside. Against Brown, if corners play press, he’ll win on a fade. If they play off, he’ll win on a slant. Smith will route you up with the whole tree.
For the Eagles, everything starts with the run game. Although it is still efficient, it’s no longer explosive. Last season, the Eagles ranked 13th in explosive rush rate (8.8 percent). This season, they rank 23rd (6.8 percent). Because their run game is less of a threat, they aren’t getting as many one-on-ones outside, and their explosiveness in the passing game has taken a dramatic hit. Last season, they ranked second in explosive pass rate (17.1 percent). This season, they rank 20th (13.1 percent).
NFL defenses are now defending the Eagles’ spread offense the way college teams have defended spread offenses for years — with quarters coverage. Overall, defenses are playing quarters and Cover 6 (Cover 2 and quarters combo) against the Eagles 10.4 percent more than they did last season. It seems counterintuitive to try to stop a running offense with two deep safeties, but with quarters, the safeties are a big part of the run fit; they are just doing it from depth. And when teams pass against quarters, the defense still has the benefit of limiting explosives with two deep safeties.
Of course, this is oversimplifying matters. Playing quarters requires a lot from safeties, but the numbers don’t lie. Teams have changed the way they’re defending the Eagles, and Philly hasn’t evolved to respond to it.
Teams also know exactly how the Eagles want to attack them and are more prepared to defend their base concepts. As mentioned, in last season’s NFC Championship game, the Eagles gashed the 49ers with their pin-and-pull concepts with center Jason Kelce pulling and lead-blocking for the ball carrier. In their week 12 matchup this season, the Eagles ran it four times for seven yards before they had to abandon the run because they were down by double digits in the second half.
Week 12, 13:49 remaining in the first quarter, first-and-10
On the Eagles’ first attempt running pin-and-pull, the 49ers stuffed it for a two-yard gain. The 49ers were in quarters. Safety Ji’Ayir Brown was likely reading the offensive line for a pass or run key.
As Kelce pulled, linebacker Dre Greenlaw quickly reacted to meet him in the hole. Fred Warner, who was the backside linebacker, had to drop to play the bubble screen in case Eagles QB Jalen Hurts threw it. Because the defense was in quarters and not Cover 2 — Brown would have to get depth to play half of the field in Cover 2 — he quickly triggered to defend the run.
Greenlaw stalemated Kelce in the hole, and Brown became the extra defender. This was a great example of how quarters defense plays out against a spread run. One of the linebackers was free to play the pass option, while a safety was in a position to become an overlapping defender. Because the offense is in shotgun, run plays take longer to develop, so safeties have time to come up from depth.
The increase of Cover 4 and Cover 6 the Eagles are seeing has dramatically hurt their efficiency in the play-action game as well. Last season, the Eagles ranked 11th in success rate on play action. This season, they rank 25th.
Week 12, 3:38 remaining in the third quarter, second-and-8
Here, the Eagles ran a play-action concept with a pulling guard to give the illusion they were running pin-and-pull against the 49ers’ quarters coverage. It appeared they were trying to get the 49ers’ Brown to trigger like he did against their pin-and-pull run play so they could slip a vertical behind him.
Brown did a good job of reading his keys and didn’t bite on the play fake. And even if he did, because he was coming from depth, he had time to recover.
The Eagles like to get vertical on their play-action concepts, but it’s hard to attack the seams against two-deep coverages. The Eagles have to add concepts in the playbook that do a better job of attacking the types of coverages they are seeing now.
Even though they are running a system that has been in place for years, in watching their offense, they look like a team trying to run someone else’s system. The drawback of copying and pasting someone else’s system is that you don’t know how to tweak it when teams throw you curveballs. It’s important to remember that Eagles offensive coordinator Brian Johnson is in his first season calling plays in the NFL. He’s not doing a bad job. The Eagles still rank highly in several metrics, but when you’re playing top competition, you have to be able to adapt, and Johnson hasn’t shown that ability yet.
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As early as Week 1, Steichen already had answers that could have helped the Eagles with some of their problems. Before Colts quarterback Anthony Richardson suffered a season-ending shoulder injury, he was leading the league in explosive play rate. With Richardson, the Colts had the most creative option attack in the league. Steichen was tinkering with interesting concepts out of the pistol.
To counter all of the quarters coverage the Eagles were seeing, getting in the pistol might have helped. In pistol, the running back aligns directly behind the quarterback so he’s getting downhill faster. That makes it a little hard for those safeties to fit the run from depth, and a team could still run all of its option concepts from the pistol.
IND vs. JAX, 2:45 remaining in the first quarter, first-and-10
On this play from Week 1, the Colts lined up in a wing-T (a high school offense) pistol formation with slot receiver Josh Downs playing H-back. The play call was a counter trey with an option for a quarterback keep. Downs went into an orbit return motion to lead-block for Richardson if he kept the ball.
The left tackle and guard pulled, leaving the defensive end to their side unblocked for Richardson to read. If the end was passive, Richardson could hand the ball off to the running back, who would follow his pulling linemen.
The end squeezed on the running back, so Richardson kept the ball and followed Downs to the perimeter for an explosive run.
Later in the game, Steichen called a play-action concept off of the same run look.
IND vs. JAX, 14:00 remaining in the third quarter, first-and-10
Again, the Colts lined up in their wing-T pistol formation with Downs going in the orbit return motion. Wide receiver Michael Pittman Jr. (bottom of the screen) ran a drift route, while fellow WR Alec Pierce (top of the screen) ran a field post.
The play fake got the linebackers to bite, and Pittman got open behind them for a gain of 16 yards. The route concept was a simple one. Every team has it in its playbook, but the formation and motion, which the Colts used earlier on a run, helped to add to the illusion.
Hurts isn’t absolved of criticism for the Eagles’ offensive struggles. His inconsistency in getting to his second or third reads has hurt this offense. Hurts has unique arm talent. He can throw guys open as well as any quarterback in the league, and he knows it. But that ability has stunted his growth as a pocket passer. He tries to force too many balls to his first read, which is usually A.J. Brown going deep.
Against the Seahawks, on third-and-8 in the third quarter, the Seahawks played Cover 6 with their corners lined up 10 yards deep. The depth of the corners would have been enough to discourage a lot of quarterbacks from throwing deep and instead look underneath. But Hurts forced the issue, and the pass fell incomplete. Smith was wide open on a shallow underneath. No one was near him. He would have gotten the first down and a lot more.
After the game, Brown tweeted that he was Hurts’ first read, and Hurts just missed the throw. While that may be true, it’s a low-percentage throw, and the coverage made it an even more low percentage. On the game-ending interception, Hurts forced a pass on a similar play.
Week 15, 0:13 remaining in the fourth quarter, first-and-10
With 13 seconds left on the clock and down by three points, the Eagles had the ball on their 45-yard line. Realistically, they might have had two more plays to get into field goal range. A few weeks ago, Eagles kicker Jake Elliott drilled a 59-yard field goal in the rain with 21 seconds remaining to get the Eagles into overtime.
Instead of calling a play to make the field goal more manageable, Johnson called a shot play. Brown ran an out-and-up, and Smith ran an out on the other side of the field.
The defense rotated into singe-high after the snap, so Brown technically was one-on-one, running a fade. Safety Julian Love had an excellent jump on the ball and intercepted the pass. On the other side of the field, Smith got wide open on an out-breaking route. If Hurts had hit Smith, he looked like he would have been able to get out of bounds at around the 40 to 41 yards line, which is where Elliott hit his tying field goal from in Week 12.
“At times, we’ve seen you can get a pass interference there,” Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said. “We had a one-on-one shot against the Rams, and you can get a pass interference, and now you’re in position to kick it.”
Sirianni would go on to compare the Eagles’ last play to the Seahawks’ go-ahead touchdown. The only problem with that comparison is that the Seahawks had 33 seconds on the clock when Drew Lock threw a go-ball to Jaxon Smith-Njigba. If Lock hadn’t completed the pass, they would have had time to run multiple plays before the game ended. The Eagles called a long-developing, low-percentage pass, which took precious time off of the clock.
The Eagles retained most of their starting offense from last season. They should be better and more consistent this year. Instead, they’ve gotten worse.
The best offensive coaches in the league continually evolve their offense. Look at what Sean McVay has done in Los Angeles. The system he’s running now is completely different than his first offense that took the league by storm in 2017, and it took several reiterations to get here. The Eagles offense is stale. It’s a watered-down version of last year’s juggernaut. There’s still time for Johnson and Sirianni to figure it out, but the playoffs are fast approaching.
(Photo of Brian Johnson and Jalen Hurts by Simon Bruty / Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
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