PHLY Philadelphia Eagles Podcast - Can Jalen Hurts conquer his Tampa Bay demons with a short-handed Philadelphia Eagles offense?

Episode Date: September 27, 2024

Football Friday is here, as the Eagles prepare for a trip to Tampa to play Todd Bowles’ blitz-happy Bucs. Most likely without A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith, can Jalen Hurts hold up against a defense that has given him trouble in the past? And on the other side of the ball, does Vic Fangio have a plan for Chris Godwin in the a lot?Deniz Selman joins the show for his insight and annoyances before Zach Berman makes his presence felt with authority while Bo Wulf tries to remember the show’s sponsors. Come on in, the water’s warm. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the PHLY Eagles show presented by Bet365, where it's never ordinary. Whatever the moment, it's never ordinary at Bet365. Nealder, yes. Going to be a good show. Bull Wolf, the professor, Dana Sallman, in studio here. You'll notice we've got an empty spot in the middle here, occupied by a book, the franchise, Philadelphia Eagles. A curated history of the birds. well, maybe somebody else will be joining us in the middle there as we get going.

But until then, let's get down to business day. It's how you feeling about this bucks matchup? Oh, I'm feeling good. This is nice. We can lean into each other here. Yeah, it's a lot of room. Yeah. It's very nice.

We should play like a flick football. Do you ever do that? Yeah, it's a good idea. Yeah. If we run out of things to talk about. If we run out of things to talk about, which I doubt that we will. Yeah. Good job nailing the bet three six five.

Let's hope it's not like Bryce Huff's performance last weekend. when he did a great job on the first play of the game, setting the edge. Yeah, that's all. Okay, fair enough. You know, before we get going, I just want to hit this at the top. Do you have that clip that I sent you, Julia?

Oh, it didn't go through. All right. Well, well. Oh, dang. Bryce-off-esque. There's a second play. About to get benched. Whiffs.

Play number two. Okay. Instead, then, let's just get to it. I see Brandon Graham waiting outside the door. You want to start with the Buck's offense against the Eagles defense. Yeah. And the state of the Eagles defense. Yeah, definitely when we want to talk about the defense.

We kind of talked about the defense in a very negative light last week because it's really what they deserved. Remember, they were 31st in DVOA after the game last weekend, or the week before against Atlanta. And it's like everything turned the opposite of what it had been in this game. And we were talking about a couple of specific things that the defense was doing poorly. awful on early downs. I talked on the show about how the Eagles were dead last in the league at getting to third down, like just giving up first downs on early downs left and right.

And third down and red zone was sort of propping them up as not even being quite as bad as they had been. Propping them up to 31st. Right. Exactly. And also awful against the run, awful against the outside zone run by the Falcons, this game, and perhaps it was helped by the Saints insisting on staying in

21 and 22 personnel and more on that in a second. Fangio was able to... There you go, that's good. Fangio was able to... And obviously, you know, Zach talked yesterday about how hard it is to write good content on the website compared to Fran. It's hard to say anything smart on the show

after, you know, I gotta like need like a little Tanya Donnelly situation with Fran to... Anyway. Tanya Donnelly? Yeah, it was a bad, bad rap. Who is that? Not Tanya Donnelly. What was the...

Tanya Donnelly is the lead singer of Belly. That is not the person I meant at all. Okay. Who was the ice skater? Who hired... Oh, Tanya Harding? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, you're gonna...

You're gonna Goulouly, Fran? Yeah, man. Well, no, no, no, I'm not going to. I'm just saying if... If something were to happen? No, I think the better solution... One of my favorite stories from childhood is... The better solution is to have...

Sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead. No, no, I mean, childhood. Well, I think I've told the story on the show before, but my... Shout out to my buddy Greg. who was in Spanish class in high school. They had to perform a scene in Spanish.

Some, you know, could be from a movie, could be from whatever. And he and his friend, one of them was pretending to ice skate. And the other one came on, like, whacked him with a paper on the knee. And the whole scene was just him writhing on the ground. Porque! Porque! Porque! Which has always stuck with me, one of my favorite things.

Oh, man. That is great. All right. Tanya Donnelly, man. I'm getting old. Belly, I mean, if you guys don't know Belly, you should check them out. They were awesome from 1993 to 1995. Back when music was good, again, feeling old here.

So, Fangio was able to use. So, anyway, like Fran already said on the show, like he's already said everything on the show, Fanjo was able to use those five-man defensive lines, even in nickel. So he did so seven times a nickel. Three, all of them involved three real defensive tackles, as you said on the show last week. What a prediction. Milton Williams playing really just his own position. And then having Zach Bond tuck in, you know, like, so he's tucked inside.

So he's really playing defensive tackle on a five-man line. But personnel-wise, there's only one defensive end on the field. All seven times that defensive end was Brandon Graham. More on Brandon Graham in a second. And Zach Bond is always the guy who makes the five-man line happen by being the other edge. six times, sorry, 13 times in the game, he used six-man defensive lines. Okay. That's with Zach Bonn adding as a sixth when they're in base.

So that is 20 total times in the game where the defensive line ends up having one more person on it than the personnel would suggest. And you could tell that that was something that really worked, I mean, against the Saints run game. It wasn't just getting those numbers out there. And if you think that the four-man defensive line wasn't going to, stopping the run before it wasn't right we don't know if it was good in this game because guess how many of the saints 27 runs in the game came against a four man defensive line two three but it may

as well be two because one of them was a coward's draw on third and 22 and the other two were both on the last drive so kind of like a two minute situation so basically all three were situations where they probably should have been passing so basically fan geo prevented the saints from ever getting even a chance against the four man defensive line and it'll be interesting to see how that continues against other teams. And in terms of poor performances on early downs, historically good performance. Unbelievable.

On first down in particular, the Eagles did not allow the Saints to convert a single one of their 20 first down snaps into a first down. It's the only time that's happened in the NFL this year. It only happened nine times all of last year. That's 1.6% of the offensive performances. 21 yards for the Saints on those 20 snaps on first down.

I mean, that's a little over one yard in case you know, per play. Just a touch. Just a bit. And then the longest game that they had on first down, the whole game, was six yards. And that came on the next to last play of the game against essentially a soft zone. Four yards was the long before that. The last time that a team didn't do better than that in a game.

Garrett Gilbert. 2017, I think it was the Raiders. Oh, the Raiders. Yeah, I was going to think of maybe the Luke Falk game, but no. No, I don't know. But I mean, like the point is it was not just a rebound from. in that 2017 season. No, no, no, no.

This was like not the Eagles. This was in any NFL game. So this was like seven years ago. There are 550 or so offensive performances a year. So it was like 4,000 offensive games ago that this happened last. So this was like a historically good game for the Eagles on first down in particular. Another thing we talked about is in the negative light last week, Jalen Carter. I don't need to talk about how awesome he was in this game.

You guys covered it already. But Jalen Carter stocked down game last week. said. I mean, like just the exact opposite of that in this game, best game of his career easily. The one game it gets compared to is Tampa Bay last year. Right. Jalen Carter played 21 snaps in that game. Well, I want to talk about this. He was impactful, but he only, he was, he was a part-time player. He didn't start. He didn't. He wasn't even one of the three defensive tackles on the field and base last year when the game started. So he was a, he was a bit player. He had a great game back game, but this was different. I mean, he's playing a lot of snaps, and he was awesome. He is playing,

and we talked about this, what to expect. He's playing 80% of the snaps. Right. Through three weeks. That's a lot of snaps. Yeah. We were wondering if it was going to go up to the Fletcher Cox level. It's gone beyond that.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, he was at about around 50 last year. And we were thinking, I think how he said, like maybe it creeps up to like 70, 75. He's at 80 right now. He's got to be late to some more meetings and miss the first drive. I know. They haven't played a ton of snaps total on defense. So if you look at just pure snap count relative to the rest of the league, he's 11th among defensive tackles, which is not crazy.

Still Christian Wilkins. God, that guy is unbelievable. Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, something to monitor as we are monitoring like the Sequin Barclay usage is just how many snaps. Yeah, we talked about Christian Wilkins and how much Fangio played him last year. You said he's still at the top. He's still number one. Okay, so maybe it was just him.

Right. Yeah, he just doesn't, he refuses to come off the field when they call this number. It's him and Max Crosby, our one two among all defensive linemen. Right. And for a defensive tackle, you would think you would need even more. I don't know. I'm not sure which one is. I've never played either one. But we've been sort of poking around at press conferences with Nick Siriani about this. Like the, you know, what is the key to getting Jalen Carter motivated? Do you think you take some credit for that? Giving him a stock down performance. He was watching the show and thought like he had you pictured? I hope so. We know that Jalen Carter is emotional. We saw him at the end of the game. That was awesome, by the way. The two thumbs down. I heard people, I heard people kind of make. fun of him for that like is you know it's like such a little kid thing to do but on the film you can see that on the johnny wilson drop the entire saint's sideline is doing the two things so he was

reacting to that so the it's the saints players on the sideline after the rookie wide receiver in his big moment drops the pass and a huge situation in the fourth quarter second and 16 big time spot there and the entire saints bench is doing the two thumbs down so jalen Carter noticing that from the other side line and then getting his revenge at the end. So that was awesome. So good. Yeah. And having to be held back by Dom and Clint Hurd. I mean, I get so much from watching the film. I like love it. But that was my favorite moment. I think that's the best inside. You've ever given. Well, thank you. Okay. Now I see that Fran is in the chat. So let's, let's play this, uh, this clip that we do have. J. Joe, my friend, little background,

got his start in the media in the early 2000s covering football in the fantasy world. This led to that. He became the head video guy at Temple University where he worked with Al Golden and eventually Steve Dazio chose to walk away from Temple in July of 2011 and eventually became a seasonal employee for the Eagles. There he started as a production assistant before being hired full time after that 2011 season. Well, as you'd imagine, hard work pays off and things took off for Fran. After starting to produce X and O's content for the team website, TV partners in social media, he grew to start writing scouting reports and developing film breakdowns. In 2014, he started

the journey to the draft podcast. He did what? Eagle Eye in the Sky podcast that ran all the way until earlier this year. He started it? What? I mean, pretty brazen.

Pretty brazen. Chris McPherson, Boe Wolf Erasure. I don't know. I think France got some stuff to answer to next week. Not good. All right. Let's talk let's talk Brandon Graham. The ageless. Unbelievable.

Unbelievable. I mean, Brandon Graham was incredible in this game. I mean, we can talk about like Bryce Huff and how bad he was, just played 18 snaps and all that. Nolan Smith,

disappointing. He's supposed to be a first round draft pick. He's not able to really steal a lot of those snaps away from Huff. But Brandon Graham in this game, his usage, his impact, just ridiculous. He played 35 snaps, the most of,

of any of the edge rushers. Seven times is the lone defensive end on the field because he's the only one Fangio trusts against the run. Four times he's playing as an interior pass rusher in the speed pass rush package because Fangio likes him better than the actual defensive tackles to rush the passer. And then down the stretch,

after sitting for the first three plays after halftime because he's not technically the starter. Oh, sure. He played on 22 of the last 26 snaps in this game. That spans five drives. 22 of the final 26 snaps. And Jordan Davis can't play more than three snaps in a row.

This guy is in his 15th season, playing almost every snap of the entire half in a variety of roles. And is he just out there? Is he just taking up space? Look, I have these film notes that I take every week. I have like one line per play. Okay, one line per play.

I don't have a lot of room on here to write what every single player is doing. This is just from the second half. the times that I wrote BG's name in my notes. BG gets past the left tackle, funnels the cutback. BG slants inside and draws both the left tackle

and the tight end to lead to the stop. BG bullrushes the left tackle into the running back. BG chases down and tackles the wide receiver on a checkdown. BG contains the boot against the tight end. BG splits two tight ends like they're not there.

BG bulrushes the tight end into the quarterback. By the way, Tampa Bay Tests their tight ends to block the defensive ends one-on-one. They'll be. be fine against. They'll be, well, Keith was injured. We'll see.

So they'll be fine blocking Bryce Huff, but not BG. And then on the last play of the game, BG splits the right guard and the center for a quarterback hit leading to the game winning interception. Just ridiculous. It's unbelievable. And I keep thinking back to, I have told this story before too, but the story that I did a couple years ago, shadowing Carly and Graham for the day, like what that was like. And that was the day, that was the game that said.

Saints game where Josh Sweat gets, you know, that scary neck injury, right? So BG has to play way more snaps than he was expecting to play. And I looked it up, but it is actually the most snaps he's played in the last three years. But then he's with his family on the field after the game and they're all, and they're all celebrating. It's like, your boy is tired. Like he was white. Right, right.

He had to play that many snaps. And now he's almost playing that many snaps, like close to a weekly basis. It's nuts. It's crazy. I know he was talking in the locker room this week about how he's possibly going to think about playing next year when he definitely says he wasn't before let's calm down a little bit yeah sure there's a lot of things we got to come down about i'm gonna knock on wood here because the opposite of what we were talking about happened and like everything last week so let's hope that

that's not the case with him but yeah just just awesome and it's so fun i mean like for a player like him i mean if he was like a second year player you would say like what a great first round pick he is you know like like he's just he's awesome like it's totally worth the pick and he's in his 15th year and we can say like what a great first round biggie was you know what i mean like just just unbelievable now on the flip side you said we could talk about bryce huff are you are you harboring any hope last week i said i didn't want to talk about brys off okay and then i talked about him for a long time this week i'm just going to say i don't want to talk about it like he's got to earn the right to be talked about that was that was god-awful limiting explosives explosives yeah so rachit shahid was killing people deep uh in those other games

he had no catches in this game really good job good combination of pass rush again we talked about jalen carter brandy graham doing grading the pass rush but also really good usage of the safeties by fangio in this game starting with the typical too high basically the decision tends to be are you staying in cover four where they both stay high or are you rotating to cover three where one of the safeties comes down towards the flat i thought in a lot of situations this week and thanks to true media i have access to the charting of whether bf thought it was cover four or cover three there were so many plays this week where you couldn't really tell if it was cover four or cover three and pff was just flipping a coin like they were calling half of them cover three and half of them cover four and the reason is because the safety rotation typically from reed blank and chips shout out to zach by the way for asking how did you feel about this answer was it given that answer he didn't give a lot there i think he was a little surprised by yeah um yeah i feel like if he had preparation he would he would have a better

answer he said sometimes we've done left and right and now we're doing this we think it's best He said it wasn't necessarily going to stay that way. By the way, what we're talking about is that... What's your speculation here? Yeah, Reed Blankenship is playing more to the boundary, and C.J. Gardner-Johnson is playing more to the field, and what that typically means is that Reed Blankenship is the one who rotates down on those safety rotations,

and C.J. ends up in the post. In this game, there were multiple plays where the Saints are running their typical kind of digs, crossers, overs, that they had been killing people with. usually it's Olave. Shehid's running the deep route. Olavee's running the inbreaker, where Reed Blankenship would do like a half rotation, where it seemed like maybe he's supposed to rotate all the way down, but instead of doing that, he was waiting halfway for that crosser to come to him.

And there were multiple times where it came right to him. Carr didn't throw the ball for that reason, and either in a sack or a checkdown or whatever, and then you can see Reed Blankenship just celebrating after the play, that he was able to eliminate that route. So I thought it was a really good job of eliminating that because that's a route that's hard to eliminate out of either cover three or cover four And when I was starting it, I was almost writing it as like cover three point five like it's like it's right in between like you're transitioning from the four to the three But that safety ends up staying in that part of the field that would almost like a robber like where you would normally have that void and so is your

Supposition that the reason that they have switched those roles is because read Blankenship is making up for what he might lack athletically with a little bit more awareness? I honestly thought it was because CJ Gardner Johnson was so bad against the run rotating down in Brazil. And that's the last time we saw it the other way around. That was my honest guess as to why it was. And it doesn't always end up with him at the post. But, yeah, I don't know.

In man coverage, a lot of times, Reid ends up in the post. We saw the interception on the last play he was on the post, for example. All right. Well, the good news is that Zach Berman has arrived, which means it's time to talk about boners. And you might think I'm joking, but I'm not. Zach is here, and so it feels like you, the audience, from an awareness and excitement perspective, is fully aroused.

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p hl y eagles at checkout zbiotics is backed with 100% money back guarantee so if you're unsatisfied for any reason they'll refund your money no questions asked great to see you great to see professor selman how is your commute quick i was listening to the yeah i was i called my wife to say hello um and was thinking about the show uh was just listening to an interview that i did on on the way over here just to make sure that in case you You said, what scoop did you get? I was actually not working for the locker room scoop today. I was waiting out AJ Brown.

So does that mean you've come without a scoop? Well, I'm very mine. I want to call it a scoop. I mean, this is more like when you go to an ice cream shop and they give you the taste testing. Okay. That's not a scoop. That's like the little spoon. And like Larry David says, you can't abuse it.

You know what? You know, when I go to, when I go, my wife loves frozen yogurt and she'll, like, taste test like four of them. I'm like you're violating the rules. What do you think is the high? Three? No, I think one. Oh, I think I think two is absolutely within. You think you can do two taste tests?

Yeah, because if you don't like the first one, I feel like you can go to a second. So you taste test the exotic flavor. And if the exotic flavor is not to your liking, then you go with the staple. I think the limit is how many different things you're going to have in your actual order. Interesting. So if you're having like the medium with two different flavors, I think it's okay to taste two things. Yes. Yeah. Now, you should probably order one of the two things you tasted in that.

Otherwise, it seems like you're... I think if you go to the second, then you are sort of beholden to at least ordering one of the two. Yeah, like, if you're tasting the tiramisu and the strawberry cheesecake and then you order vanilla, yeah, exactly. Like two scoops of vanilla, that's not cool. The violation is if you taste test, then you don't get anything. And you're like, nah, I'm good. You can't do that. Well, yeah, I mean, that's borderline, like, jailable.

So unless you're in, like, six, seventh grade or something, yeah. So Cooper the Gene was... Hold on. This is exclusive. I just want to be clear. Cooper the Gene is with the Eagle, is the punt return of this week. Cooper Gene is with the Eagles. You're already here first.

Breaking, breaking, breaking. Cooper Gene is the Palm Return this week. The Eagles had Darren Sproulson town working with Cooper the Gene. He worked with him the past two days. Okay. Showed him some new techniques out there. Cooper DeGene is great admiration for the fearless punt return style of Darren. in Sproles. But Sproles and Cooper the Gene have been working together this week.

That's a good little nut. In preparation of Cooper to Gene going this week. But yeah. Were you guarded around other people to get that done? No, no, no. No, I was around AJ's locker. I wanted to talk to AJ. I needed to chat with Brandon Graham about something real quick. I shook Brandon Graham's hand, but it was right after the, you know, he applied body lotion or whatever.

Okay. So my hands smelled like Brandon Graham's body lotion or hand lotion, whatever it is. And it's a really strong smell. So what does it smell like? Like, probably like a cocoa butter type I would guess. We're talking. So I pop some blue chew. Let's get going.

So I tried to. I tried going down there to, you know, we have hand sanitized by the elevator. That did not suffice. That's why you popped in there. I popped right under the bathroom to wash my hands because it's a very strong smell. Yeah. But maybe that's the key to his ageless wonder. Yeah.

So, but yeah, he accepted. and in his hand, he shook the hand about something. And then, uh, in anyways, um, but I was mostly waiting around AJ and Lane's locker. And the reason I should say I was waiting around AJ and Lane's locker, uh, is that A.J. Brown was, did you mention this to the top of the show? No. No, go ahead. A.J. Brown was back at practice today. Now, we don't know how much he practiced, but this is the

first day he's been out there since the injury occurred. Uh, he was stretching. So, uh, and then we get kicked out on Fridays once because they get right into the team drills, but he was in, he was in helmet and in uniform. So this is going to be interesting to monitor. Also, Lane Johnson out there in helmet, working out. Saw Lane in the locker room. Lane's not permitted to talk right now by NFL rules because he's still in the concussion protocol.

But the fact that he was out there means that he was in the, he's in stage four of the five-step protocol. So the only thing remaining is being cleared by an independent. neurologist, presuming that happens before he gets on the plane tomorrow, I imagine he'll be good to play this weekend. Well, and it brings up a super chat from real time with Prince Blue who says you smoked Siriani with your question today of will they fly? All right.

So I want to clarify this. And it wasn't that. It was Lane Johnson specifically. Okay. I didn't ask about Devante. And Nick Siriani thought I was trying to trip him up, like, you know, like finding a different way of saying, are they going to play? And that, look, I have too much respect for Nick to try to like, like circumvent, you know,

if I wanted to ask that, I was specifically asked, I'm not trying to, like, trick him up there. I was asking about this specifically because, in theory, you could be everything except clear by the independent neurologist. But if you're waiting, if you're waiting until Saturday night, let's say, to be cleared, that would have to happen down in Tampa by an independent neurologist. So the reason I asked is because there have been occasions I've been. I believe where someone has not fully been cleared, travels, and it gets clearance down there. So I asked because I know if you asked about Devante or ask about Lane specifically, he says, I can't comment on the concussion protocol. So I wanted to know, are they, is, is Lane going to fly?

Because I, Lane is clearly farther ahead in this process than, uh, then Devonte. No, I did see in the chat. I don't want to, I don't want to upset you here, Zach. AJ's talking? No. Oh, worse. Dave Zangarro already mentioned on his podcast that Darren Sprouls was working with Cooper DeGene this week.

I was just going to say I saw a photo of it yesterday. Yeah, I posted a video of that, but I spoke to Cooper about it. So this is the thing. Dave and I both had that observation at practice yesterday. Okay. Availability yesterday before practice, right? Not after practice. So this is the first time Cooper de Gene has spoken about that.

So the exclusive here is not that he's been working with it. the exclusive is that Cooper dejean has respect for Darren Spils' fearless style. No, that he's working for two days here. Okay, because Wednesday's practice, we weren't there either. Oh, the scoop is then that continued to the second day. He's here earlier this week, okay? Listen.

And there's a reason. There's a reason Wodge handed you that sports writer of the year award, baby. And that is it right there. And that he has. And then he taught him different techniques. Wait, to be fair to Zach, to be, to be fair to Zach, I thought he only needed to provide the scoop if he didn't show up for the show. And he's right here. I mean, we have to hand it to him.

That's fair, but he did go to locker room first. Okay, yeah. And, you know, I brought my backpack to a locker room, okay? Wow. Now are you. And so they were all saying. So when like the other writers were saying, bring your backpack here, I was like, I got to bowl. quickly. I should just drop it off in the car.

Yeah. I don't understand. You walk by the car on the way to the locker and you're going to drop it off in there. There was another reason why I had to do that. I don't want to discuss it on the show. Are you like are you donking like narcotic drugs

into the locker? No, I had something in the bag that I was bringing into the locker room. Okay. Wow. Blue Choo delivery. I didn't want what I, it was not Blue Chute, although I appreciate Blue Choo's sponsoring this episode. No, there was something in the bag that I did not want to get wet

that I was bringing into the locker. Oh, man. Okay, so definitely not Blue Choo. No, not Blue Choo. Has Blue Choo called yet, Julia? Did they actually watch this show? And they said, feel free to have fun. Okay.

We have another super chat quickly before we get back to the matter and that is from Chase, Daniel, Plainview. Does Day, Darren, Spills, hate Britain coming. So Brick Covey and Darren, so Britain coming, Cooper, the Gene sit next to each other at meetings every day. I mentioned that on the, on the other. I ask Cooper the Gene the back story about this. Okay. I'm so happy to have you back in studio. So this is breaking news.

This year. if you want to know why Cooper the chief six next to bring coffee every day like did the coaches did the coaches help Britain to do this did Cooper actively seek out the Eagles punt return segregated you know because I I do not consider that

because I asked Michael Clay Michael Clay said it happened organically but like for instance Darius Lay's lockers next to Quinnion Mitchell Darius Lay specifically asked for that right or it was assigned that that way Cooper the Gene walked into the meeting one day, and it was the only seat open.

And he sat there and he sat there ever since. So that is the exclusive backstory for why Cooper the Jude sits next to Brin Covey. That's good. No, Sprouls and Covey like each other very much. Yeah. We don't know that. Yeah, it was an over-sale. No, well, I mean, you do talk to people behind the scene sometimes.

Okay. Right? you look eye to eye with some people sometimes and you have nice conversations, yes. Okay, all right, fair enough. All right. Let's get back to the matchup here, DeNez. And closing things out on the Eagles defense

against this Bucs offense for the reasons that we've talked about heavy 11 personnel, this is a much different challenge than they saw last week. Yeah, exactly. The Tampa Bay is sixth highest in the league in 11 personnel. The one thing I've been looking at more this year,

again, thanks to true media, is 11 personnel on first down. And Tampa Bay is actually middle of the road in that, 55% on first down. And so we will see, and just looking at their film as well, like you'll see a lot of 12 personnel on first down, a little bit of 21 with their rookie running back, Bucky Irving, who was injured. I'm not sure what his status is,

but he's sort of like a Joker out there. I guess the Eagles would treat him as a wide receiver. But at the end of the day, like run games across the league look similar. and at some point, especially against an offensive line like this that hasn't been good, the Eagles are probably going to need to show that they can stop the run out of a four-man defensive line.

I don't think you can just always have a five-man line, especially against teams with better past-catching threats and that kind of thing. In terms of the way Tampa Bay plays, Frank got into a bunch of this yesterday, but quickly, sorry, on those four-man fronts. We talked about BG. What do you expect them to do in these four-man fronts?

Do you think we'll see, like Josh Schwett is holding up fine. Yeah. Nolan Smith against the run, okay. At least he's playing hard. Yeah. Do you think we'll still see more of this Milton Williams thing with Zach Bonn and the overhang? What are your expectations? I don't think we'll see Milton Williams unless the plan is specifically to have Bonn be basically the edge on the play.

And then looking back and watching those seven snaps on film of the three defensive tackle, one defensive end personnel, again, Milton Williams wasn't really, it's not like he was a wide nine out there. Like he was he didn't really have to set the edge or anything like that. Bond was setting the edge. He just had to kind of hold up. And the alternative to that is having like a Josh sweat tuck inside. And that's what that's what Gannon did all the time. And it was a disaster. I mean, they were just like running all over him.

Uh, double teaming Josh sweat and just like destroying, you know, like easily getting to the linebackers that way and stuff like that. When that's Milton Williams, you're not going to be able to do that. In the four man lines, it's just, I mean, you got to go with the guys who are there. Right. Like it's going to be a lot of Nolan Smith. out of Brandon Graham. Okay. Back to what you were saying about the way that the Bucks play on offense. Yeah, fourth week in a row out of four games that the Eagles are facing an offensive coordinator from the McVeigh-Shannahan school in Liam Cohen, who was with McVeigh for a bunch of

years. But watching them play, you wouldn't know. Yeah, it's weird. I mean, not all. Like, they're not doing, I mean, they do a little bit of the, a little bit of the play action boot stuff, but not very much at all. In terms of how they've played, they're middle of the road in almost every stat. I mean, they're, they're kind of low in DVOA, but they're middle of the road and like all the other, all the other advanced metrics. It's kind of boring to watch, honestly. It is. And also, like, not super informative to watch them play against Denver. Denver is the highest man and highest blitz percentage team in the league on defense by a mile on both. And so they were facing a lot of men and a lot of blitz last week. They were also down by a lot in the game.

That was a horror show over. Yeah, it just didn't look good. Their offensive line has been bad. And hopefully. DJ Jones was really popping for me. It was all over the place. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and that's the thing. You wonder if, yeah.

Hopefully, Jalen Carter can do the same. Yeah. An interesting thing to watch about Jalen Carter. He's been playing almost exclusively, like on the left side, like the left defensive tackle spot, kind of essentially following in the footsteps of Fletcher Cox, who was on that side his whole career. Last year in the game, again, he only played 21 snaps,

but he was beating everybody. Like, he was lining up everywhere. where he was just basically lining up, like, wherever the starter, like, wasn't in the game. This week, he's going to play a lot against fellow second-year player Cody Mock, who has not been great so far this year. So hopefully he'll have a nice game. Zach, what did Nick Siriani say about just Todd Bowles and the prospect of playing against this defense that has had his number every time they've met for the most part?

Yeah, he goes back to different years playing against this defense, has a lot of respect for the way they come at you. I think that was the sentiment. He was giving different experiences in the past going against this defense. Yeah, I mean, they killed them last year. Basically, like almost costing his job. So this is the fifth time that the Siriani Hertz combinations playing against Todd Bulls.

They are one and three in those previous four games. This is the third time they're playing in Tampa in basically a calendar year, or not a calendar year, in a year. It was late September last year, so right around this time. By the way, I'll give you one other little piece of color. I want to call this a scoop, a little nugget. Okay. So Nick Siriani, we spoke last week about Nick Siriani being in the locker room.

Nick Sirianni was not in the locker room today. He was right outside the locker room having an important conversation with someone. I'll give you three guesses who that person was. Oh, this is great. I love this. Now, the way that you said person makes me think of it. It's not a player. Uh, any, you said, you know, your bar for important conversation is a little lower than mine.

Yeah, it, it, it was not like a laughing it up conversation. It was, I mean, it was more like, oh, no, it wasn't, it was like a, I mean, I wasn't eavesdropping, but it looked like a football conversation. Like football people talking about football things. Oh, football conversation. Okay. John Ferrari. No. That's the assistant. for those wondering.

Alic Halliby. No, that's the other assistant GM for those wondering. Last guess. Were you both taking three guests? Julian Lurie. No, that is the director of strategy for those wondering. That's the owner's son. Yes.

What gave it away? I'm going to go. You want a hint? Yeah, sure. He's a member of the media. Tom Brady. No, why would he be here? That would have been.

That would have been. That would have been a scoop. I would have tweeted that out right away. Trust me. He's not allowed. Yeah. It was not allowed in the facility. Yeah.

I don't know. Tony Dungey. No. Last one. So, I'm going to tell you. Jason Kelsey. Jason Kelsey,

the two of them chatting. Yep. Outside the locker room. Wow. And you didn't get you. I feel like you could have done some amazer drop in there. Yeah. I wondered what the,

you know, if you do the slow walk there, maybe you bend down the tire shoe. Sure. Right, like right there. My shoe wasn't untied. It would be kind of weird. I think that would be kind of weird.

Yeah, that, and against the law, probably too. But, no, yeah, there's different things you could do. I respect both of them. I wasn't going to eavesdrop in the conversation. Now, how do you know it was a football conversation then? I suppose I don't. But maybe a little context clues of it. Grunting?

No, I think like hand motion. Right. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. All right. We're going to get going to the other side

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now to your front door. Visit Ace Hardware Home Services Online at WD, www.Asehardwarehomeservices.com to get you started on your next project. All right, Tanez. Let's talk about the Eagles offense against this Bucks defense. You want to start with the passing game and some of the things they did last week, given what the Saints were taking away. Yeah, to follow up on our conversation last week, we both kind of said and that the passing game looked a bit stale against Atlanta.

It wasn't as fun to watch as it had been against Green Bay. And one of the reasons for that is Atlanta is such a heavy zone team. And we said on the show that against the Saints, you expect to see more a man. You should see more Robs, crossers, things that were fun. And boy, did we see that, right? The two of the biggest plays of the game came on that mesh concept. And in terms of looking forward a little bit, with no AJ, if AJ Brown doesn't play, and no Devante Smith pretty much clearly is not playing.

It was interesting to see after Devante Smith got hurt, so in the late part of the game, some of the things the Saints were doing. So on that 30-yarder that Fran discussed in detail on the show, with the mesh play, this was the one-handed catch one. Yes. The fourth and five, fourth and whatever it was, yeah. That one wasn't fourth down. The fourth-down is a different one, yeah.

I'm going to talk about that as well. But yeah, yeah, the 30-yarder that came on the field goal drive, the missed field goal drive on the one before. Saints are playing man coverage with two spies that it came to Jalen Hertz and a three-man rush. I'm not sure if that was just like a blown call. normally don't see that but they clearly were concerned about jalen hertz getting out of the pocket that was a clear concern that they had the other clear concern that they had was dallas

goddard i mean like they were dedicating double teams to him fran talked about this a little bit the 60 uh the the long reception the 61 yard or whatever that wasn't the most important play in dallas scott's career yes well yeah other than the like yes i swear i was at a super bowl where dallas scottert was making ridiculous like highlight catches like what are we talking about It was week three. All right. Thank you. Sorry.

I know the Eagles lost that game, but I mean, anyway, the, those last two past plays of the game. Dallas Scott are being double teamed by two of the three safeties that they have on the field. And they're only rushing three, and they have a spy. So, like, I mean, you know, Dennis Allen and Todd Bowles are not from the same exact school, but they both have similar kind of exotic defenses given the situation. And it was interesting to see Dennis Allen's approach to this. He was like, let's make sure we keep jailing in the pocket. Let's either spy him or mush rush him.

They were doing that the whole game. And let's double team Dallas Goddard in man coverage. Now, calling man coverage on 3rd and 16 kind of questionable. Jim Schwartz would never, you know, like. And then that's because, of course, you can get picked like we saw they did in that game. Tampa Bay is not going to do that. They are, what are they, 16% man on dropbacks that ranks 29th. And they are just 23% man, even on late downs.

And that is 30th. they are not a team that you're going to expect to see play a lot of men, so we're not going to get as much of those fun man beaters that we did last time. A lot of zone blitz with Dodd Bulls. Okay. So which have got our Super Bowl catches? The one on the sideline that they reviewed for some reason.

It was a clear obvious. The 17 yard around 3 and 14. Most obvious catch ever that they reviewed for like 30 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. That was And they finished with a field goal on that drive, right? Look, I mean... Okay. Look, if you're only going to go by the result of the game, like... You can't just go by the result of the drive. The

importance of the play in the moment. I mean, that, that catch gave the Eagles an exponentially more higher chance of winning the Super Bowl than the one on week three did. That's the point of the game. A 661 yard on third and 16 when you are losing. I think every play of the Super Bowl is like almost as important as a whole game of the regular season. All right, fair.

I mean, we don't need to go down my rival. In this game, who is it going to be if they take away Dallas Scottard, right? So that's a question. Other than the three guys who were left on the field last week, Jahan Dotson, Johnny Wilson, Paris, Campbell, you've got John Ross, who's almost definitely going to play in this game. Do you think, Zach, do you think that if the Eagles have to elevate somebody if AJ Brand doesn't play, that it will be John Ross for the practice squad?

I think the reason they brought John Ross back is because he is the veteran. He was here during training camp. The other three practice squad ride receivers, Kyle Phillips, Danny Gray, and then the receiver from Georgia Rose. Jackson, Rosemary, Saint. Yeah. Something like that.

Something like that. Marcus. Marcus. Donigree. Yeah, none of them were here during training games. I do want to say, though, let's not rule out the possibility that A.J. Brown plays, because AJ Brown's kind of, I think he's pushing the play and we'll see what happens. Well, I mean, there is obviously such an enormous difference in this game.

Exactly. If the Eagles have their best player on offense versus if they don't. If people are wondering why A.J. Brown went from like almost definitely not playing to suddenly practicing today. It's because he learned that John Ross was assigned number 38. The uniform number 38. Now, technically, you are eligible to catch passes if you are wearing 38 as a wide receiver. But functionally.

I'm pretty sure there's a 15-yard penalty for poor taste on every time you target a guy wearing 38 playing wide receiver. So John Ross, fatal flaw to play him. That's why. I also, it's funny to me that. like John Ross in the Eagles mind is not worthy of a practice squad spot but if they need a guy to play in a game Then he's better than the guys who they have on the practice squad Yeah, I think the value of him knowing the offense from the summer is that much I think he was the Josh McCown Like Zoom wide receiver

He was functionally on the practice squad even though he was at home like waiting for the call like if you in case you actually Did you was sitting in on Zoom meetings? Yeah well I don't know about that but I don't think my favorite He's like listen you guys aren't gonna put Marcus rose me Jackson into a game like let's be serious so this is the thing about the 38 okay because I've heard that I've heard this disgust um by disgust is right

by the by the jersey analytics folks he can unless he changes unless he changes unless he swaps numbers with someone on the current practice squad right there are no eligible numbers for him unless the Eagles took out not unless they gave him nine or something like that there's

there are no numbers between zero and 19 this is the problem with zero 19 Four quarterbacks. Like Will Greer is taking up 13. Well, this is a problem with Graden Man wearing 10, honestly. Yeah, that's true. Brady Man should be in the 30s to open that spot. Like, Braden Man should be a 38, you know, just open that spot up.

There should be more than 99 numbers under 100. You know? Well, I mean, Jack Stoll. I guess there's 101. Jack Stoll was the first player to play in a game wearing 87 since Bruncelic retired. And as I said the other day, Brancelik gave him the blessing, gave him the thumbs up. Amen. That bridge has been mended.

A super chat from somebody says Cliff Kingsbury and Brian Johnson have a more productive offense than the Eagles. Any worry about the killing more higher? That's from Chase Daniel Plainview. Well, let's just say this, okay? I was mocked incessantly. Incessantly. That crack commander's coaching staff. I was like mocked as if like.

Basque in the glow for another two weeks. The first day that I've ever. That's how long it's going to last. Like the first day that I've ever encountered football is the day that I said Dan Quinn and Cliff Kingsbury might be a decent combination here. And Joe Witt, Jr., who was very well regarded in the NFL. Oh, hell, yeah, that puts them over the top. And seven field goals against the Giants later. And I was also, I was also mocked for, like, acknowledging that the Steelers might have a good coaching staff when they are three and O right now with Justin Fields.

I mean. Take that shirt off. Take a whiff. I was complimenting you actually as their offensive coordinator, right? Don't go there, Blue Jew boy. We moved over from the wide receiver combination. From a practice squad elevation, we're assuming regardless of A.J. Brown status, John Ross is going to be elevated. They don't need anyone else besides Paris Campbell.

And there's no other position. And I imagine they're going to want five receivers for this game just because even if A.J. Do you need five? None of them are returning kicks. No, but if AJ played and got hurt, you want a fourth. But what if Lane Johnson can't play? Don't you need a real swing tackle, like a Jack Driscoll? Like, you're not going to have Darian Kinnard to be the swing tackle in this game.

Well, no, Fred Johnson is the swing tackle. No, I'm saying if Lane doesn't play, Lane's inactive, I'm saying. So then you would have Darying. I don't think they're going to activate. I would imagine Daring Kinnard and Tyler Steen are. Yeah, I mean, I guess you have Bechton and Steen as versatile players who can play guard or tackle. I just think Jack Driscoll might be more useful. Interesting.

Than John Ross? No, no, no, John Ross would be elevated, but I don't think elevating two guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Campbell's going to be elevated. A Campbell's one elevation. Oh, right, right, right. So then the other ones out of John Ross or Jack Driscoll. Right, that's right. You can only do one of them.

Okay. Yeah, so then I would say I was leaning toward Ross. That's right, because they put Stole on the 53 not Campbell. I was like so sure they were going to do Campbell that I'm still thinking about. And so I think the reason that they did stole is because they're going to need a third tight end this season, whereas after next week, after the bye week, I imagine AJ and Devonthe are back. So they might as well just get stole on now as opposed to, yeah, putting Campbell on the 53. And also in the conversation here about do you need a fourth or fifth wide receiver is will they lean a little bit into 21?

Will Shipley be involved in a passing game? We haven't seen him since Brazil. We haven't seen 21. You think they left in there? It's possible. I mean, I've seen him on. I saw him bring a kickoff out for some reason last week. But I think one thing that we haven't heard enough people talk about,

when Sequin Barclay came here, we were saying like, oh, you know, of course he's a good running back, but you can also use him in the passing game. And we haven't seen that. I mean, he caught that cool wheel route in Brazil. Since then, he's basically, he's got one screen and a bunch of checkdowns, basically. And a couple of flats, flat routes. Who should be pounding their chest now?

This is not something that, what is this? saying this is Zach and I're just litigating old arguments I suppose all the other days when we let's sleep I'll keep doing that Since the arrival of AJ Brown The Eagles have targeted running backs

29th most in the league Just 15% of the time And Callan Moore has never been the offensive coordinator of a team that's been ranked higher than 19th in that category Which is interesting because the targeting running back The supposition or the characterization is that maybe like Tony Pollard was

was a huge part of the right but in terms of in terms of the numbers it was 19th is the highest it ever got and that was in 2020 the last couple of years kellen moore's offenses have been in the bottom like like 26th in each of the last two years in that number now that number a lot of that is how much do you check it down to the running back it's not necessarily the design of the offense sometimes it's just how often does the quarterback check it down but when you watch the film of the eagle's offense

basically since seriani's gotten here no matter who the running back is the running back's job in the offense is to stand next to the quarterback scan for blitzers and then release into the flat or release like over the ball. Like that's basically all the running back does. And you watch other teams like the Saints get someone like an Alvin Kamara more involved by having a tight end be that designated sixth pass blocker. And you almost never see the Eagles do that. Like they'll max protect where the tight ends are blocking.

You'll leave Calcutera or stolen to block or whatever. But they will almost never have the running back running a real route while a tight end stays in the block. And with Sequin Barkley being your running back, And the guy who's going to run a route being Jack Stoll, right? Doesn't it seem like maybe sometimes you should have Saquan be part of the actual route concept and have the, you know, Jack Stoll be blocking? Sure. And also running back screens.

I mean, you have to be old. It's crazy. To remember the Eagles. Yeah. You just run all the cards. Like under Andy Reid, it was so fun to watch like Brian Westbrook, you know, Shady McCoy, like running those running back screens. The elephants on parade going down. down the scene.

It was awesome. And with all the athletic offensive linemen that have been here, we haven't seen this. I mean, you see the, you see, we've seen a lot of bubble screens to the wide receiver with Kwez Watkins blocking or whatever. We saw a lot. We've seen tight end screens, hardly any running back screens. There have been like two this whole season with Kellynne Moore as well. So I remember poking around about that.

Like why they don't do this anymore. And the answers come back is just that like to do it right, you take so much time. It's like, you know, the opportunity cost of making sure that that's good means you're not spending enough time on other stuff, which I don't know that I buy. I was going to say, maybe we can have a segment on the show where I ask Fran questions like this. So one theory that I've heard toward that, and please dispel it if you think it's not valid, is that...

IT. Okay. Is that RPO's can sometimes run counter to screens, like in terms of what the assignment would be for both the old line and the running back. you're going to the line with the possibility of a running play or a passing play. And just the way you would have to deploy the O line and the running back in a screen situation is difficult to do if you're going to the line with an RPO. Does that add up?

I mean, yes, on the RBOs, but they run like five, six RPO's a game. Like, what about the other 55 plays? You can't call a running back screen? I do think that aesthetically, a well-execis, The consecutive running back screen is like the coolest playoff. Oh, it's awesome. It is so pretty to watch. It's just the best.

I could say perhaps they don't do it because of the, you know, the threat of an illegal man downfield penalty, but they have that covered already. Since you mentioned RPO's. And by the way, Fran covered that in his article on all pHO on that comment. What did it? What did it? He's like, I think I might be the other one interested here, but it was good. Tanya Donnelly.

So the RPO since you mentioned it, that same side, inside zone bubble RPO they ran it three times of the game and this is another fun thing when you watch the film back and you see that they ran the same play in the first half and it didn't amount to anything they ran like a bubble screen to john dotson for like six yards or whatever and then they ran that again and and he handed it off for four yards and then that became the 65 yard touchdown the saquan that won the game uh just kind of fun to to see that play they're going to it uh going back to it for the third time um in that big situation where are you guys at on john dotson underwhelmed so far i just like like there's so much focus on bryce huff being a a bust

they gave up a third round pick for this guy i know he hasn't been in quite as long but he's not doing anything and and the to buttress your point there's opportunity without and they play two games without a jay yeah right they play on that final drive yeah like the play of the game last week well that's true yeah i give him credit there for sure that's why i'm curious to see this this weekend because Kwez Watkins would have tackled that guy and gotten an OBI I'm just saying that yeah they need

more from Dotson and and Dotson said you know Dotson spoke this this week you can see this on PHLY.com about the opportunity that he has but I am I am curious to see I have been underwhelmed Nick Siriani said that what they really like about Johan Dotson is his hands his ability to catch the ball but the ball

has to come to him to really catch it I mean he had two targets this past or get three targets this past game. Three targets, two catches. Really wasn't doing much there. And like half of his targets have been those bubble screens. Yeah, Jehan Dodson said... Pretty low bar, if your favorite thing about a guy, is that he has hands. Jehan Dodson said the best part of his game is his ability to decipher defenses.

That he's really good at navigating the field there and that he can play each receiver's spot. That's what he said. Eagles Entertainment, which, by the way, has been falling apart since Fran left. I mean, they're posting locker room scrum videos with no sound on YouTube. Get out of here. guys or anyway um since bow left as well sorry well i don't want to longer long to longer ago um but they they had a one of those unscripted things last week and they the role meeting right yeah that was crazy to me like nick syriani is talking about everybody's role which i know he loves to talk

about and he always talks about he has that role meeting every year and he's like this passing game runs through a j davante and dallas like he says that all the time And then he's like, Sequin, your role is, you're our first, second, and third down back. And then at the end, I don't know why they left us in the final edit. John, we're happy you're here. Like, it's crazy. Like, go watch the unscripted thing. That's exactly what he said.

He said, John, we're happy you're here. And then he said something like, we'll figure out your role as we go or something like that. Well, that's because the meeting happened. You brought him in to be the third wide receiver. You play 11 personnel more than half the time. He's going to be on the field. Like, like how can you say, you're wearing a role? happy you're here. That's your role. In his defense, the meeting occurred once Dotson got to the

building, right? Yeah, but you knew he was going to be ahead of Paris Campbell on the death chart at that point. Yeah, that's true. That's true. By the way, Nick doesn't share anymore the origin of that meeting, because I don't think it goes over as well anymore. Go ahead. The origin of that meeting, he got it from a conversation with Doc Rivers. And I don't think Doc, you know, when he first introduced that when Doc was the coach at the Sixers. And the approval rating wasn't. that high then, but it wasn't what it was at the end. I was worried it was something even more unto work. Yeah, yeah, I was a little worried.

I mean, the Sixers show is going on right now, and they probably don't want... Don't switch over just yet, but you can't a little bit. Make sure you become a diehard, hit that like subscribe button, all that good stuff. This is so fun. I miss being in studio. We miss having you here. Seriously. I miss enjoying it.

We've got more to go. Yeah. We're not done quite yet. American session. Yes, let's talk a, we've talked a little bit about the big blitzes. Yeah. Talking about yesterday with Fran. The Eagles have not seen them much at all.

this season, only six, according to the true media charting. Yeah. We expect him this week. How do you expect him to do? Yeah, well, we saw a couple last week. It's a big difference. We can get a little bit of an indicator from last week. Early in the game in the play that Fran discussed at length yesterday

when Alante Taylor actually got there on the nickel blitz. Later, they ran a similar blitz. And Seguines on the field this time. Right? Well, yes, but also, I mean, well, the one I'm thinking about, out was the zero out to Britain Covey where he broke his shoulder. But I mean, it was a great checkdown to Britain Covey against the very similar blitz. All the credit in the world to Britain Covey at his size for making it disfar into his career before breaking his shoulder.

That is true. Yeah, there you go. Really? I mean, his bones aren't more brittle because he's smaller. I mean, you know, like I think. But he also has a way, like he gets crushed. Yeah. Like.

And he gets up quickly. I respect that about it. Yeah, you don't let him show you. What a tough SOB. Yeah, but his bones aren't more brittle. As a matter of fact, the expected life span is longer than, yes. I don't even know like where we're going here. He's actually walking around all day long with short guy life expectancy stats in his head.

It's true. You think you're better than me, but I'm going to live longer than you. It is. Also, the main fear, during a football game, it's not that the players are going to die, like, during the game because of old age. I mean, like, I'm just saying, let's stop treating these short guys. Yeah, I just don't appreciate the supposition that. That guy is more likely to be around in the fourth quarter.

He's not Rudy out there. He's a professional football player, right? I mean. I got, I got your back. I got your back. Oh, man, that is so good. I think you to do that interview with Britt and Covey, just talk about lifespan. Do you walk around this locker room knowing I'm going to live longer than all these monorpe?

I mean, you know, there's, there's more to a person's character than their height, okay? Where there's more of a person's being than their height. I'm just saying that. No one questioned this character. Absolutely, nobody was saying that. All right, let's keep rolling. They sent a bunch of overload blitz is where they brought two guys off the edge. It's hard to start to follow that up.

And on one of them, it was the fourth and long one where it wasn't quite the push Putush territory. Both Will Harris and Willie Gay Rush from Jalen's right. It's a cover zero big blitz. Eagles had eight guys in protection. You'd think you'd be able to block six with eight. But they slid the protection completely the other way.

And both of those guys were unblocked in Jalen's face. And it reminded me of Jason Kelsey talking a few weeks ago. I don't remember if it was with Jalen on that ESPN thing or on the radio or whatever. He was talking about how when the quarterback makes the protection calls, and these are Kelsey's words. said even when he's wrong, he's right. I've been thinking about this ever since he said it, and it makes so much sense to it. Yeah, because he knows where the pressure is going to come from. He knows who's going to be unblocked, and he was very wrong on this one. I mean, there are two guys coming

from his right, and the protection goes the other way. They have eight guys blocking four guys. Right. It looks hilarious on film. Eight guys are blocking four guys, and two guys are coming free from his right. And what does he do? He hits the quick flat to Dallas Goddard on a curl flat concept to the side where the blitz is coming from to convert on a fourth and one where they're playing man coverage and the guy on Dallas guttered it starts in the post on that play so it doesn't have time to come down. That is a perfect read of the play,

perfect read of the coverage, perfect understanding of who's going to be open, and that is one of the ways to beat the blitz. You don't necessarily have to protect it correctly, just having that outlet. And Fran talked yesterday about how in the playoff game last year, Eagles are running four verts

against these cover zero blitzes and no one's turning around. Exactly. And it was just disastrous. This year overall against the blitz, Jalen Hurts, his fifth, an EPA per dropback, and he's 11th against no blitz. So he's been doing well against the blitz.

But again, as we've talked about, he was good against the blitz last year. It was against the big blitz that he wasn't. Right. And it's a small sample size of big blitz every year. Even with the Eagles facing more than anyone else last year, it was still only like 68 snaps or something. Big picture. Go ahead.

Yeah, Jalen Hertz, as you would imagine, was asked quite a bit about the Blitz this week. And what he said, and I should give that, Tim, I'm sorry, Tim McManus has a nice story up about Jalen today. But he said that he said, I think I'm wiser, I'm older, more and more seasoned in some area. And I think that helps and the different things I've learned with the new staff, talking about why he's prepared for the Blitz this year. There you go. And he like interrupted the next question to say the thing about the stuff. I thought it was interesting.

You really wanted to say that part. Yeah, because I was asking the next question. And do you think that that is a, I didn't want to say it was you, Zach. Yeah, yeah, that's fine. Do you think that that is like a shot at Nick? Is a shout at Brian Johnson? Is it just a puffing up of Kellyn Moore? How do you read that?

Probably a credit to Kellynne Moore. And I think, yeah, maybe a little shot at Nick. And it's also defensive himself. Exactly. Right? Like I preach that we needed this. We got this. And so.

So that's why if you're reading between the lines that yes and no, that I spoke about on oh 100% I had exactly the same interpretation as you as I had explained so when I when I asked him about like last year's game being personal you know or like that that that memory when he said yes and no I don't know I can explain why but yes and no I think it's because he kind of absolves himself from the way they played last year is I could be wrong in saying that but that's kind of my interpretation where I think whereas I think the playoff game three years ago he really took that yeah the heart you know and you heard Tampa Bay saying he can't

He can read. I think last year it was just like there's no answers here, man. Help me. Help me. Yeah, I don't think he thought he had a chance last year. Exactly. Yeah. Big picture, Buck's defense.

Now, their stats are tough because they've been missing Vita Vaya. Yeah, he's supposed to be back this week. He's obviously changes the entire structure of their running game. But what do you see from them on top? Yeah. I mean, I had a swooper about one of these things yesterday. Todd Bull sent nine big blitzes at Jalen Hertz in that playoff game last year. Eagles were only successful on one of them.

the nine. Correct. He also used a highly unconventional, and I cannot emphasize enough how unconventional this is for the NFL. This is like that thing you do in like eighth grade football. 6-2-3 defense with just one safety on the field and six real defense of one. It's so disrespectful. On 14 snaps, all 14 snaps, I went back and checked, all 14 snaps that the Eagles were in

12 personnel in the game. They used 6-2-3 as the defensive personnel, and it worked. I mean, the Eagles ran at six times against that. only successful on one of the six and passed it eight times only successful on two of the eight. Now those two were both touchdowns but still I mean for the most part it was successful the whole game they stayed in it the whole game

and by the way four of the nine big blitzes came out of that package and three of them were just the 60 lineman rushing. It's funny to get a big blitz when you have only de lineman rushing but they had 60 linemen out there and then cover zero behind it. How often when you hear the word

delinmen do you guys think deline them? never never but from now on always just hits my ear sometimes I used to run into D-Line I'm in the neighborhood a lot the way I used to run into Zagher up you apologize I wonder if she well

I'm a big guy and I just run into my normal interaction with people on the street as I run into them so I apologize in advance yeah but don't you dare think that she's got more brittle bones than you just telling you short people drink milk as well so yeah okay just not as much closer to the other Oh, man.

Keep wrong. It's getting weird. Todd Bulls said that Antoine Winfield and Kalagicansi are both out earlier today. But it looks like Vita Vaya is going to play. I had a former student of mine at Wharton. I was talking to him after class once. And he said the way he talked about going up against Vita Vaya, like you can tell that the way the offense prepares for that game is so different.

than the way they prepare against like a normal, you know, like, like run stuffing defensive tackle. He was like, yeah, basically game plan, especially when Kelsey was the center. And it shouldn't be that different with Cam Jergens. You really have to make sure he doesn't just dominate the center. He's the first player, Jason Kelsey mentioned. There was an interview, similar to what Professor Selman just said, I don't know which interview. It was. WIP.

It was Ryan Rischel show. But I remember listening to him. And he was kind of asked, like, would you go back and play? and he's like, I can't take on Vita Vaya right now. Like, that's the first name he mentions is Vita Vaya. Yeah, it's interesting. He was, I think it was the WIP hit this week when he was talking about the Aaron Donald's success they've had and how, like, they were so committed. Like, they are going to double him on every play to the extent that, like, we would rather have a running back blocking a defensive end than have Aaron Donald be one-on-one.

Like, they build the entire game plan around that. I think it's the same with Vita-Bayer, right? Like, that's how Stout approaches things. Like, we're going to try to solve this first and foremost and let's, let's see. somebody else beat us. Yeah. Vita Vaya is awesome. I mean,

like they still drop him into coverage on those, like, exchange blitzes and stuff. I mean, it's very funny to watch. And, yeah. Now I know that comparison is the thief of joy. But, like, Vita Vega's awesomeness does kind of make you feel like a little bit

sad about Jordan Davis, I feel like, because, like, the idea is that he would be that, and it's just not, it's not that. Yeah. I mean,

the age he is, the number of snaps he still plays, all that kind of stuff. and yeah i mean Jordan Davis is he ran a fast 40 you know okay uh now before we go you were saying before deniz i was you were a little bit annoyed about something and i think that annoyed danes is like the best version of danes from a content standpoint so what is uh what is your craw this week on nick seriani and gillan hurts i mean i don't want to promise too much here i'm not nearly as annoyed as last week julia's like the frame of the camera like let me get them

make sure i get this last week i was so annoyed. I asked Bo if I could jump on the show on Tuesday so I could talk about how annoyed I was two times. And thank you for letting me vent twice last week. Honestly, the thing I'm annoyed about this week is I understand that you talk about the head coach and the quarterback and Siriani talked about that in the presser today. By the way, if you haven't watched a Siriani presser day, Bo asked him a question. It's a great question. And he talked about how much he loved his wife for about 15 minutes. I mean, like it was the longest Friday presser he's had. I'm sure about this.

When he got there early. He got there early. Okay. Yeah. And it was just, yeah, it was funny. But he talked about how. I found that touching and genuine. Oh, I did too.

And by the way, and I feel the same way about my wife. This is one of the, I was wondering, you came on the show, Zach. You mentioned your wife like three times. I was wondering if you were inspired by, by, by, by the way, I don't know.

I don't know that this is going to get to what you're talking about. But speaking of Nick Sierraani's wife, the analogy that he said the other day about like explaining his a part of the like jumping in and making a play call every now and then as being like his wife telling him what turns to make as the front seat driver. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Was to me, in my life experience, the worst possible analogy he could have made because the only time I am guaranteed to get like just furious.

Yeah. Is if someone's telling me how to drive from the front seat. Same. That is the worst thing you can do to me. Absolutely. I'm like, talk about anything else. don't talk about the driving while I'm like. Like, yeah, no, absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So, like to me, if that's what it's like for Kellyn Moore, than like, Kellett, we're going to quit. Yeah. That was brutal. All right, go ahead. Yeah.

So I think that this week, a bit too much as being made of Siriani. Like, I know it's a little bit of leftovers from the week before when he completely botched the end of the game against Atlanta and the team lost the game. Like, I understand you have to talk about that. I was talking about that. I was really annoyed by that. And this week, the end of half sequence was horrendous, right?

It just got awful. I mean, like, the fake tush push on fourth and one with, you only have one time out. Like, all you're buying out of it is a shot at the end zone. A time stressed, no time out shot at the end zone when all the defense has to do is prevent the end zone. Well, that's why I imagine he called that play because the theory behind it is you think you can score from there. I don't think so. They ran that play against Washington. First of all, it wasn't the first time they ran it.

Like, they ran it against Washington. and actually scored a touchdown when they should have taken a knee at the end. I don't know if you guys remember that. But that was basically the same play as that. And when explaining it Wednesday, he actually referenced scoring against Atlanta at the end of the half in 2021 and the Rams at the end of 2023 when they got the pass interference, like extra play, tush push at the buzzer of the half.

And he said they could do it again. Again, anecdotal evidence, like, just awful. Like, why would you base it on that? Like, to do that at that time. He wants to say publicly what happened on that play, but I don't think what happened on that play absolves them either, which is that there was a player error in terms of lining up incorrectly. Sure. And that they couldn't use another timeout because they can't call timeout successively. But I don't think that absolves them from making a decision that I don't think was a sound decision.

But he didn't want to throw the players under the bus there. But I think what happened there was they thought they had a good play in, Goddard wasn't lined up correctly, and that they didn't. lined up correctly and that they had run the play without them. Well, they don't. If Jalen Hertz recognizes that, that they're not, they don't have the right look for it, then you just take the penalty. Yeah. And take a field goal.

Good point. That's a really good point. Yeah. Because I, it's fourth down. Like, you can't play around with like. That's a really good point. You're right. And you should see that Dallas is lined up incorrectly and that it's not going to work.

I mean, like, you know, I don't know. Whatever. If you know the play is not going to work because of that misleadement thing. Believe it or not, this was supposed to be the start of a defense of Syria. Okay. Yeah. I'm sorry. No, that's great.

That's great insight. No, that is really good insight. And it did look off, and I'm very excited to go back and look at it again. But the other thing he didn't do this week, he didn't double down on that. Like he said, you know, I know we have the whole thing about the driver's seat and, like, I made the call and all that kind of stuff. But he didn't say that he kind of said he put everyone in a bad position and all that. I thought it was fine. I also thought it was the only tactical error of the game.

And the WIP-type, you know, attacks on Siriani, like, yeah. Seth Joyner, all these people. Like, they're going to criticize it every time he goes for it on fourth down and doesn't get it. And so they're criticizing the one in the third quarter where he goes for it and doesn't get it, which I thought was perfectly, perfectly. Yeah, I mean, the play call was questionable. It didn't look like the best play to get a first down. But going for it in that situation was fine.

I don't think you can just say, well, it's three nothing. And so, you know, it's a low scoring game. Okay, maybe to some degree you say that. But I don't think that just means you kick a field goal every time. otherwise you end up like the Giants last night. Like you just kick field goals on every drive. I did think, and I said this to Anthony earlier in the week, I did think the 60-yard field goal was a fine decision,

but it felt disconnected from the third down. The plays before it warrants. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's the second down too. I mean, neither of those plays looked like it was designed to get closer. Look, we all know by now, like it's been three and a half years that Siriani can be a little bit of a, I don't want to use the word exactly because it's used in bad ways, but like he's a little bit of a clown, right?

A little bit embarrassing. A little bit embarrassing. I mean, no, no, he is. I mean, like, I think you have to be, I think you have to be open with that. Like, I think you have to be okay with the fact that he will say things and do things that can be a little embarrassing. The way that he was in Kansas City after the win last year. Things like that. It's just like things that most head coaches don't do, right?

And in a way this year, we've talked about this. He seems to be looking for something to do. You were talking about your scoop with Darren Sprouls earlier. I mean, last week, Nick Siriani was catching punts before the game with Britt and It was so easy to make the joke, like, well, at least he's looking for a role for himself. And then Covey goes down. I was wondering if he'd put himself in. But at the end of the day, his team lost that heartbreaker at home.

He had 99% win probability and blew the game, in part because of a mistake that he made, whether he owns up to it or not. And then they had to turn around and play a game on a short week on the road against the team playing the best football in the whole league. And they were ready to play. Yep. Like on a play-by-play basis, they dominated the game. and they were ready to play.

The people who played poorly the week before, outside maybe of Bryce Huff, came back and had better games. And when you look at that and compare it to the last year and the losing streak, completely different. That's true.

I mean, the team was not ready to play after losses last week. Lost the San Francisco, they were not ready to play in Dallas. I mean, like, that was not the kind of thing where it was like, he got them ready to play.

They rebounded from this loss. It just kept snowballing and snowballing and snowballing and honestly, I was worried that that was going to happen again and it absolutely didn't and the fact that this was a technically a comeback win in the fourth quarter people are painting this game as if it's like

a like a miracle comeback win the Eagles dominated the game like the part that was a miracle was that they needed a last second touchdown drive like like not that they got it but that they needed it was the miracle in this game it was buried in his answer today about Paris Campbell Zach about

that and it was it was two sentences that he said that I jot it down and I found it because it to me is like the the thesis of Nick Siriani's entire coaching philosophy. He said a lot that we discuss probably is more about the X's and O's and not about the relationships, but I'm not so sure that the relationships aren't more important in a lot of the cases. And that is exactly the way that he approaches it.

And that is why he is the head coach. I love that you pointed that out. You're right. And that is for all, you know, I had a conversation with Shield on Shield show when he asked me kind of like, like, what's Nick's superpower, if you will? you know, he doesn't really have one. What edge is he bringing? Exactly.

And I said it's his, like, it's the relationships in the building, the ability to connect as he would frame it with the players, with the coaches. And the biggest shortcoming last year in addition to the offense was the fact that that team didn't seem ready to play, that he didn't have answers down the stretch. And I think, I think Dennis put it well in terms of their ability to rebound last week. I think Nick viewed that as a reflection of his. coaching and that's why he was so emotional in the postgame press conference. Now the flip side to this is I imagine you think Jalen Hertz is getting a pass.

Actually, no. I had a similar defense of Jalen Hertz, but interesting that I'm going to ask you why I thought that the thing with Sieriani that I just want to follow up on in the same presser, he talked about how he loved his wife and how he loved Paris Gamble. Like he said, he said, I love Paris Campbell. And it just reminded me like how many NFL is devaluing the word. love? No, no, no, not at all. That's not what I'm thinking. I was just thinking, like, how many NFL coaches say things like that, you know, like Bill Belichick's not talking about how he loves anybody.

You know what I mean? Like, and I, and I think that, because he doesn't. Well, sure. Lawrence Taylor. He loves Lawrence. Taylor. Yeah. And Teddy Bruske. But when you said that, yeah. But when you, it's like very select. Okay, okay. You have to be like a Hall of Fame. Yeah. No, but. Or a punter. But. When you look at the, Zach, you had the, you talked to Soutland about Fred Johnson, right? Yeah. And it was so cool to read that. Like, because Stoutland is talking about how he told Fred Johnson like, like, I love you, you're talented.

Like, you can be really good. And that he didn't think that anyone had spoken to him that way. And I asked Fred about that. And Fred said the only other person who has is Brad Davis, who coached him one year at, Florida's now LSU's O-Line coach. Right. And, you know, Siriani talks about how he's an education major and he's a teacher and all that. And as someone who's also a teacher as a profession, I can tell you, like, it is so important to understand, like, what students need to be pushed hard and what students

need to just be encouraged, right? Because they haven't been encouraged before. They've gotten to where they are because they've always been the best at everything. They've been the best at every level. Like, I teach at Penn. Like, those students were, like, pretty much all the best in like you know the best get in their class like going up there and the same thing is true in the well okay not all of them though okay I didn't see that but but yeah most of them and then they get and then they get to my class and they see where it's that you know like and now now that everyone can't be the best in the class there right and so you you have to be told for the first time like it's okay that you're not starting it's okay that you're not that's what I tell my students it's like you can't all

be starting left tackle you know like this guy's the starting left tackle. But no, I mean, I think just hearing that really reminds you of the emotional intelligence thing and like the reason he got hired. So yes. Well said. By the way, real quick, you mentioned fourth downs. You mentioned Penn. I read a good piece today at the Wharton Sports Analytics and Business Initiative. There's there's a number of, well, the authors here are Ryan Brill, a PhD candidate and Abraham Winer and faculty co-director, but it's fourth down conversion frequencies are higher than you think. And it gets into that some of the biases that coaches use. to rationalize not going for fourth downs,

I thought that was a good piece. And Sunset Chaz, a great listener of ours, linked that. I'm looking forward to what I want to call him a great listener. I'm a big Sunset Chaz fan. He's one of my favorites. Sunset Chaz was out in Arizona for Super Bowl. Hope to see him in New Orleans. There was a question in the Discord for you.

Danes about the models and the presumption that teams would be less aggressive down three than six. If teams are more aggressive now, are we underweighting that? I feel like that's probably not the case, but you tell me why. Wait, sorry, underweighing which part? Being like the assumption that if the opponent is down three, that they're going to be less aggressive,

is that too far based on like old, how things were in the past? Right, exactly. Interesting. That's one where I think the best thing to do would be to just look at the history of that coach. You know what I mean? Like rather than looking at a general history. Right. Because it's going to be different if you're going up against 2017 Eagles with Doug Peter.

versus yeah and I guess all the examples like and also you're going super far back like offenses weren't as good and so the chances of converting on fourth and four would be different than they would be two years ago yeah for sure one of the great things with true media the data goes back to 2000 and I was looking at the series conversion rate like used to be like the average for the league used to be in the low 60s and now it's over 70 just how many time how many series got converted in first down part of that is teams go forward on fourth down and part of it is just the rules are more pro offense all right your jail and hurt take yeah i mean i'm a little bit annoyed by some of the jalen hertz rhetoric this week as well i don't think

you think he's getting a free pass who's giving him a free pass no no i thought i thought that you were framing it as like uh nick were too hard on nick and not hard enough on jalen oh no no okay i see well okay well this is part of what's annoying me i think that the standard wip topic this week and by the way if you're wondering if i actually listen to w i i listen on times two speed to the podcasts of the people like of like when somebody is on the on WIP and just from that you can tell what the shows are about okay and the narrative has been is it Jalen's fault or is it Nicks fall is it more nicks pro is it more of a Nick problem or more of a Jalen problem what's the problem the team is 29 and 10 in the last 39 games with these guys like like people are acting as if the team is is in some sort of free fall and I understand

there was a collapse at the end of last year but to talk this year about who the problem is is a little bit of a, I don't know, like, I think it's just like a false premise. Jalen Hertz is a turnover machine narrative is going to continue as long as he continues turning it over. I understand that. But when you look at what's happened in this game and he had the fumble, that was bad. And that was it. I mean, the interception is on Devonty Smith.

Fran said it. I'm not, Fran said it. I'm just going to defer to him. I thought the same exact thing when I watched it. He has to cross the safety space there. And the coaches for calling that play. Yeah. Maybe.

It wasn't the same play. His route was similar, but it was a completely different formation, different play entirely. If you're a diehard and you watch Friends thing, you will see that. But I just thought it was on Devante Smith. But the interception that he, like, okay, whatever, look, here's the problem. Well, I know, but that's the thing, is that, you know, we can keep picking apart. This one's not all on him. This one's not all on him.

But the arc of since last season is long enough that. Maybe it's a good thing for Jalen Hertz, that he can have his 10th career, fourth quarter, comeback drive. in the league's loudest, most hostile stadium, where the Eagles had him won in 17 years, without Lane Johnson, without A.J. Brown, without Devante Smith, without his starting right guard, and all anyone can talk about is that he threw an interception in the first half. I mean, that means he's come a long way.

And that's good. I mean, like, if your quarterback can do that, and if he's 29 and 10 in his last 39 starts, and you can go back in history and find that no Eagles starter has ever had that record over any span of 39 games, any one of them, Then you can scoff at Siriani calling him a winner. I'm looking at Chubo.

Okay. What's his record the last 10 games? Like, 3 and 7. Okay. You know what he was before those 10 games? Doesn't matter. 26 and 3. What do you mean?

It doesn't matter. Of course it matters. He was 3 and 7 because he had the worst defense in history. Okay. You're making a lot of excuses for him. That's fine. And that's exactly what has to happen because he's being criticized too much. Like, if no one was criticizing him,

I would be like if this guy is supposed to be the end. MVP, like, shouldn't he be higher than, you know, 16th and EPA per play or, you know, all the other things? But it's, I'm just pushing back against the narrative. I think the narrative is, is a little bit too much. You know, like, find the new slant. Like, the quarterback is not the topic this week. Like, it just, it just isn't.

Like, I mean, he has a new offensive coordinator. All of Zach's advice. Write the quarterback. Write the quarterback. I think the quarterback's always the topic. That's fine. Always the topic. Fine.

But I agree with you in, in terms of, I don't think there is, like, a complete appreciation for what Jay-Wena has done during these past three years, that like Nick's defense of how much J-Wen wins, I think has a degree of validity that might not be appreciated in this sense. I had the same takeaway as you did from the last game that I thought what was most noteworthy about the Saints win was the fact that, and it's how I led my column, it's how I led the show, that, or my appearance on the show, rather, that they were down, AJ, Devonte, Lane Johnson, and Mackay Beckton, and they won that game. And I was surprised that for so many people, not necessarily our show,

but that the discussion point was Nick Sirian, his fourth down decisions. And, like, I felt like the fourth down decisions got so much helium that, and the fact that, like, A, they won the game and B, that defense looked awesome against the top offense in the NFL, probably didn't get as much attention because there's such hyper focus right now on what Nick Siriani does on fourth down.

I mean, I definitely agree with you on too much talk about the fourth downs. In this past game, in this past game. I think the foul game is more valid. No, I mean, the fake push, we should be discussing. Sure. It was also horrendous

volunteers that he's one who calls it. Like that recreates the narrative. I don't consider that one to be a fourth down decision. That's like a clock management decision. And he's been bad at clock management. at the end of fives, basically the whole time. And still has Jalen. Yes, Jalen should have more awareness.

And that's one of the things that I do get upset with Jalen about. I think the interception at the end of the Atlanta game, I agree with Zach, that he did get a little bit too much of a free pass for that. That's a situation where there's enough time that you should probably just throw that ball out of bounds and live to see the next play. And he said so himself in the presser the next week that, you know, looking back at it, I probably should have, you know, done it. If you just step back and look, the chat's getting on me about talking

about quarterback wins. I'm allowed to talk about quarterback wins if people are going to talk about quarterback losses. Like if people are like, oh, he's three and seven in the last ten, who's talking about quarterback wins? I mean, like, I just want to say, like, how many of those losses were with Matt Patricia running the defense? I mean, if you were the quarterback and you knew Matt Patricia was running the defense, you would also be throwing interceptions. Like, I mean, like, because your only chance is to throw a touchdown on every pass. So I just, I just think that for him to have the record that he does and the ability to win some of these close games that he does, while he's hopefully improving and all that.

And also it's not like he's historically a guy who turns the ball over a lot. Turnovers are kind of like sacks in that they're very rare. And so the turnover stat's going to be very noisy. You know that that's true for teams. Like what do you do when you look at defenses from the year before? You look at which defense has got the most turnovers and you say, well, they're going to regress to the mean. It's not that different for quarterbacks. I mean, like, I know you hate PFF.

they have that turnover worthy play percentage thing of course it's completely subjective it's just some guy in his basement like deciding whether it was turnover worthy he's always been very good at that metric he's not getting a lot of luck from like dropped interceptions and things like that he does have too many turnovers he should stop turning the ball over but i don't think it's like a fundamental flaw that's going to prevent him from i don't know like going to the super bowl and being the best player there like i mean which he did like a little over a year ago i don't know i'm just a little little a little little little, little, little, little, little bit annoying. Okay. Major point. And the chat's all been brainwashed by, by the mainstream narrative. It's fine. Oh, uh-oh. That's all right. Uh, what a show it has been. It's fun. Full 90 minutes. Good to have Zach back in studio. Bad news about uniforms this week. Yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry. Eagles have to wear midnight green this week because Tampa Bay is wearing white. In the Siriani era, 25 and 6 wearing anything else. but in the Midnight Greens, 13 and 15.

So if you want to worry, don't worry about the quarterback. Worry about those midnight greens. And it's going to be sweltering. And the way that Raymond James Stadium is constructed is that the visiting team is in the sun, the home team's in the shade, right? So that's the forecast now is not rain. It's on Sunday. Okay.

I mean, my thoughts honestly are with everyone down there, I'm reading all the coverage. But it's the rain supposed to get out Saturday. and then a little bit in the Sunday, but Sunday is supposed to be one of those, like, you know, really sticky, humid, sweltering days. So I think it's supposed to feel like 99

at the stadium that day, and the Eagles are right in the sun at 1 o'clock. Now, what are the plans for the Berman's big weekend? We're going to get a nice steak dinner. We'll watch some college football. They'll be at the game. I will be covering the game. I hope, you know,

I'll probably, I'll meet them for dinner Sunday night. But yeah, they're going to be enjoying, look, they're football fans. They're going to be watching college football. I imagine, you know, they might place a bet here or there on some of these games. Bet 365. Bet 365. Although I don't think Bet365 is in Florida.

But they can put their bets in here in Pennsylvania before they get on the flight, have their spreadsheet of all their bets. That is the way to do it. Yeah. Okay. You have a crystal bald ego prediction for this game? Yeah. So honestly, the AJ thing kind of, um,

plays with me here because I was surprised the Eagles were favorites in this game. I know Tampa Bay's banged up, but I thought this offense was really going to struggle without AJ and Devante. I've been saying it all week. So I had the Eagles losing this game even as road favorites without AJ. I had this being a 20 to 17 game. But with AJ, I'm going to give them a touchdown, and I'm going to make this a 24 to 17 win.

So, or I'm sorry, a 24 to 20 win. So I am going Eagles win if AJ plays Eagles lose if AJ doesn't All right can I do that is that permitted Just because I think I I think there's there can it cannot be overstated like how AJ and the most important player on the team yeah not the quarterback and is there any chance just gamesmanship There is a chance there is a chance that he's out there they put him questionable who travels with the team and it's like you know we're playing it safe to buy weeks there there's also the thought that which I don't subscribe to I was speaking to some others about it it's like let him play he can recover during the buy but no if you reaggravate a hamstring injury it becomes a six week deal right and so I think he only plays if they think he can't play but I have heard that he's hit that he wants to play that he's been pushing to play I don't know if that's a reaction to Devante or just as it is but I don't think he would have been out there today if there wasn't a chance that he would play it would be very funny if we had the inverse this week of when AJ went down before the Falcons game,

where they put the entire game plan together without AJ Brown in mind, and he plays the whole game where they never throw him the ball. He's like a decoy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He runs clear outs and catches one bubble screen. I'm sure you didn't even throw it to me.

All right, that'll do it for the PHLY Eagles podcast. What an episode. What a day it has been. Thank you to Bet365 for being our presenting sponsor. We will talk to you on Sunday, full game day coverage. Kickoff show at 1230,

halftime show at half time and the post game show afterwards with fran duffy jamy lynch viny curry and myself and zach checking in from raymond james stadium thanks to everybody who uh watched and commented all that good stuff this week make sure he die hard all that good stuff thank you julia we'll talk to you on sunday and as always we love you