Eagles-Commanders Film Review: This offense feels like it’s on the verge of being special

Analyzing Philadelphia’s offensive performance from their Week 11 win over Washington.

What a huge win that was for the Philadelphia Eagles. I had a lot of time to get into the Washington Commanders film over the weekend, so I have a lot of takes this week! Let’s go.

Offense

I will immediately get a couple of controversial takes out of the way. I’ve read a lot online, and the consensus appears to be that…

1. Jalen Hurts was bad in this game.
2. The running game was excellent, which is why the Eagles won.

I disagree with both points above, and I’ll try to explain why throughout the article.

Let’s start with the first 3rd down of the game. You know a quarterback and receiver are on the same page when they make a play like this. The drag route AJ Brown runs is fantastic against man coverage but pretty useless against zone coverage. AJ Brown does an excellent job slowing down to find an opening and Jalen Hurts throws an excellent ball. The ball is right on AJ Brown rather than in front of him, which allows AJ Brown to turn upfield, avoid the defender, and pick up the first down. This is one of those impressive plays which looks easy, but there’s a lot of good here.

This is such an interesting play to break down. The first time you watch this, it looks like a bad miss on 3rd down by Hurts. He has DeVonta Smith running wide-open across the middle of the field but chooses to try to win with his legs instead. However, after watching it again, I don’t think this is fully on Hurts. Firstly, there seems to be an issue with the timing of this play. Hurts takes a deep drop, which means that the quick throw to DeVonta Smith isn’t as open as it should be. This should be a quick drop and throw. Secondly, check out the safety coming downhill. By the time Hurts hits the back of his drop, that safety has seen DeVonta Smith coming across the field. If Hurts throws this ball, it would result in a huge hit. I can understand why Hurts doesn’t make this throw. He probably should still throw it but this is why the All22 matters. It’s not as bad of a miss as it looks.

I wasn’t going to bother posting this one until I noticed the unbalanced line! That’s cool. Lane Johnson is lined up next to Jordan Mailata, which is a big reason why this works. The Eagles don’t normally line up like this for a tush push, so the Commanders should have realized something was up. It may not work as easily the next time!

I wasn’t going to post this either, but I thought some of you would ask for it. Usually, I know what the offense is trying to accomplish with a trick play. I have no idea what this is. AJ Brown doesn’t fake a block or anything, so the cornerback isn’t going to let him behind. Maybe the play is to get it to Dallas Goedert on the wheel route? Either way, the risk-reward on this one feels all wrong. Let’s not do this again.

Can anyone remember when Jalen Hurts couldn’t throw to the middle of the field or beat the blitz?

We’ve all forgotten how bad this offense was against pressure last year. I don’t love everything about Kellen Moore’s offense, but he’s made this offense incredibly effective against the blitz. Washington sends 5 here, and Hurts knows exactly where to go with the ball. I just wish there was more quick game stuff like this, even when the opposition isn’t sending pressure.

Like play 2, I assumed live that this was an awful play by Jalen Hurts. It seemed obvious he had to get the ball out. There are 2 wide-open Eagles receivers in the end zone?! However, once again the All22 does show a slightly different picture. Earlier on, I noted an issue with the timing of Hurt’s drop back and the play that was called. Here, there is a huge issue with the depth of route by both AJ Brown and DeVonta Smith. They run right into each other. It could have been quite nasty. If you keep an eye on Hurts’ eyes, he drops them when the receivers run into each other. It’s easy to point out that Smith is open later on, but I think Hurts has already given up on the play by then. I think he could have tried to keep his eyes down the field while stepping up in the pocket, but it’s fair to point out that he wasn’t expecting Smith to come open after he saw him run into his teammate. This one is mainly on the play design and execution and not the quarterback.

Ooh, yes. I love this call on 3rd and 2. I wouldn’t say it’s a traditional ‘Tight End Leak’ call, as a ‘Leak’ play normally has the tight end sneaking out the opposite way to the receivers. However, it has very similar characteristics. This is a risky play on 3rd and 2 as these types of plays require excellent protection up front, but when it works like it does here, it’s incredibly hard to stop. I’m a big fan of this type of play.

This is an outstanding play call. It looks like a checkdown, but I feel this was designed to go to Saquon Barkley if the opposition brings pressure. The Eagles run four verticals, which can be frustrating, but I don’t mind it with the short option like this. Hurts doesn’t take long at all to eliminate what isn’t there, and he throws a nice touch throw to Barkley. Then it’s down to Barkley, who makes the safety miss and gallops for a big gain.

So, I’ve already pointed out some examples where I think offensive design was more of a problem than Jalen Hurts in this game. I think most of us, myself included, expected these Eagles’ outside wide receivers to dominate Washington’s secondary, just like they did last year. But it didn’t happen. I was impressed by Washington’s cornerbacks, and I think AJ Brown and DeVonta Smith didn’t create much separation. I don’t write that very often!

This is one of those 3rd downs where I wish the Eagles would get a bit more creative, but they end up with AJ Brown one-on-one with the outside cornerback. He gets no separation, and I’m unsure if Hurts is throwing this away or just putting it away from the cornerback. Either way, it highlighted a frustration of mine with this week’s offense. It never felt like the passing game was in rhythm. It’s easy to blame the quarterback, and he had some misses, too, but I didn’t think the receivers played particularly well either. I would have liked the passing game to be less streaky by week 11, but it does feel like this offense is just a little bit too hit-or-miss. I don’t think Hurts was at his very best but I didn’t come away from this game thinking it was all on him.

There’s just something missing from the passing game on too many drives. I can’t quite decide what it is. Sometimes, it’s a missed block. Or a drop. Or a poor route. Or a poor decision by Hurts. It just feels as if they are not entirely in sync. It’s not bad; it’s just not where I would like it to be. And it is not all on the quarterback.

I haven’t really spoken about the running game too much because it wasn’t very good early on! The first half was pretty poor, especially with inside runs. There was a weird issue in this game that I haven’t seen in a while, and I expect Jeff Stoutland to get it fixed pretty quickly. In the zone running game, one of the Eagles’ best strengths is getting to the second level of the defense. In this game, the Eagles’ linemen were too keen to get to the second level and that led to confusion over who should be blocking the defensive tackle. You can see an example here. This happened a few times, and I expect it to be cleaned up.

Once again, I’m not the biggest fan of the play call on 3rd down. DeVonta Smith doesn’t win his option route. AJ Brown is covered on the comeback. This is another example of Washington’s defensive backs doing an excellent job covering the Eagles’ superstar wide receivers. However, this is where Jalen Hurts is outstanding. He recognizes that no one is open and makes an incredible play with his legs, picking up the 1st down. I believe that a quarterback should have mobility because I think plays like this are vital in the modern game. This was a big play.

I have long said that running the ball is not pretty, but you must commit to it for it to work. Sometimes, it will be frustrating, but you can wear down a defense. I loved the running game down the stretch of this game. The Eagles just wore down the Washington defense. The schematic changes that the Eagles made down the stretch were beautiful. The Eagles struggled to run the ball with their usual concepts, so they decided to try something different! This is ‘tackle-trap’ and you need an extremely athletic tackle to run this. Luckily, the Eagles have Lane Johnson!

I asked my podcast partner Shane Haff for the numbers on the Eagles run game (via our Patreon – where you can ask Shane for stats on anything) before and after Gainwell’s run and he provided me with this…

Before Gainwell’s runs in the 4th quarter, the team had rushed 25 times for 98 yards (3.92 ypc) with an EPA/rush of -0.015, 5 first downs, and a 40% success rate. Counting the Gainwell runs, the Eagles then had 10 carries for 111 yards (11.1 ypc) with an EPA/Rush of 1.026), 6 first downs, and an 80% success rate.

This is a Kellen Moore special, but we haven’t seen it much this year. This will be my ‘Concept of the Week,’ so I’ll talk about this in more detail for a Bleeding Green Nation article later this week, but it’s a fantastic changeup. I’ve seen the Lions run this a lot the past couple of years. I usually refer to this as ‘Crunch,’ but you may see others call it ‘Y-Wham’ or something. Football jargon is fun. I won’t get into the schematics of the play in this article, but you can see that it’s a very different look to the Eagles’ usual runs. I assume it’s just a coincidence that Kenny Gainwell was the back for these two changeup runs, but it could have been deliberate, too. Maybe Kellen Moore wanted to throw the defense off guard, as they may have been expecting a pass. If so, it was a very clever decision.

This is a fantastic look at the impact of motion. The Eagle’s simple motion from the wide receiver distracts the Washington 2nd level of the defense, and they don’t spot Dallas Goedert coming wide open on the sailing route. This is a fantastic play, but it was nearly a disaster as Goedert tried to cut it up the field rather than go out of bounds. This is a big error, and I expect the Eagles’ coaches to reinforce the basics for the whole offense this week. This is what Sirianni means by the fundamentals. Luckily, Grant Calcaterra saves the day.

By this point, the Washington defense was just finished, and it was beautiful to see. The Eagles took advantage of a tired defense by getting Saquon Barkley going.

I know you’ve all seen the highlights of Cam Jurgens already, but just enjoy it once more. The man can move. This is how outside zone is supposed to live. What a beautiful play.

The Eagles’ offense struggles early in games, but it finishes well. Do the coaches deserve credit for this? Or criticism for starting slow? The answer is probably a little bit of both. After the start of the game, these were the Eagles’ final five drives.

15 plays 87 yards = FG.

10 plays 74 yards = FG.

11 plays 76 yards = TD.

5 plays 74 yards = TD.

2 plays 46 yards = TD.

I think that’s pretty good. As always, this offense feels like it’s on the verge of being special but it’s just missing a few things from the pass game. They just need to work on the finer details and execution.

Thank you for reading! I’d love to hear your thoughts, so feel free to comment below and ask any questions. If you enjoyed this piece, you can find more of my work and podcast here.