PHLY Philadelphia Eagles Podcast - Eagles Film Review: Fran Duffy explains how Jalen Hurts TURNED IT ON in comeback win

Episode Date: September 22, 2025

Down 26-7, the Eagles let Jalen Hurts air the ball out to A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith and Dallas Goedert while the defense held tough in the red zone and Jordan Davis became a mountain of a man on field goals. That led to the best offensive half in some time for the Eagles before Davis then saved the day on the final play. Fran Duffy joins EJ Smith and Bo Wulf to break it all down. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

podcast live from the Expected Mobile Studio and presented by Fed 365. And actually, we are here to get into the grabby grabs with Fran Duffy and E.J. Smith. I'm Boe Wolf. And the day after, the Eagles came

back from a 26 to seven second half deficit to take out the Los Angeles Rams. Thanks to Jordan Davis' game winning play, we are here to talk about it all with the two of you guys. How are you doing, Fran? Doing great, guys. Yeah, it was a fun game to go back and be able to watch.

Obviously, the first half was not as fun if you're looking for like a good sound Eagles football. But we'll talk through some of the things we saw from the first half and the second half. EJ, how are you doing? And make sure that everybody checks out the piece on all p.hly.com, the early bird where you talk to Jordan Davis's trainer. Great hustle out of you, even though you did not verify his name because there's no way his name is real. I mean, I have to take the guy in his word. His name is Jeremiah, Alphabet. It's not my fault that his last name is Alphabet, okay?

Jeremiah Alphabet. Come on. I'm doing well. You know, I'm excited. What? He famously coined the ABCs. Yeah. He coined the ABCs.

Yeah, come on. Somebody said his nickname is Sue. That's not a bad nickname. That must be a tough name. I didn't ask him if that was a tough name to grow up with. But, yes, I talked to Jordan Davis. trainer about some of the work that went in behind the scenes. And I'm excited to talk to Fran about some of the, some of how that manifested itself on the field that maybe goes beyond what we saw

on the broadcast copy yesterday. Happy to see some PHLY supporters club members in the chat using those custom emojis. You can join that group as well. If you want to be a real one, true sickle-level stuff. And I got to tell you, you know, if you become a diehard, not only do you get to read EJ's early bird that also includes like bonus draft. prospect content from Fran. It also means you get a discount on merch. And we got a Victory Monday brand new t-shirt for you. How about the turnaround on this bad boy by the good people in the Ph.LY offices?

A slim Jordan Davis running with a ball. I mean, what a perfect turnaround. A Victory Monday. Beautiful. Get your hands on that one. That's a hell of a shirt right there. I know. Yeah.

It's impressive. All right. We got a lot to get to. I want to hear a little bit about Jordan Davis. and Fran, I feel like you can like, this is, it's not quite as impressive as coining the Jordan Davis game as EJ did, but I do feel like you were, uh, you, you were, you were very early on this season that this looks like a different Jordan Davis. So I feel like, I feel like next to Jeremiah Alphabet, you deserve like the third most credit. I think, honestly, like, you're just

going off with the tape shows, right? And I think when looking at Jordan Davis, again, going back to what we said after week one is that it's not that he's making different types of. of plays than what we saw in previous years, it's more that he's just making them more often. He is more consistently showing up. And it is in every single phase, you know, point of attack in the run game, holding up double teams. He's doing all that stuff, but still being able to impact the quarterback.

Obviously, you get the, you know, you get the field goal block at the end of the game, which we have not seen, but, you know, just being able to make those plays throughout the course of the game, late in the game. I mean, my guess is is that this is the most that he has played in a three-game stretch. like, I don't know, since a teenage, since being a teenager, like, that would be my guess. He's out there on a full-time basis. It's third and ten, and Jordan Davis is out there. Like, it's impressive.

It's been really impressive to watch through three weeks. And EJ., he said the same thing to you in that piece, that he doesn't want to be a splash player. That has been his guiding light. Yeah, no, he said he wants to be an every down guy, you know, somebody who can impact the run, impact the pass, obviously make plays on special teams. I thought it was refreshing and interesting to hear him talk. about being on the field goal block unit. You know, he's been on the field goal unit for the last few years is like the the edge protector there. So he talked about how a lot of guys will play

on that special team's field goal block unit and just check a box. You know, it's kind of an opportunity to take a play off and just sort of fill space. But it's obvious that him and Jalen Carter, Fran, I love the clip you posted on social media that shows just how quick Jalen Carter was off the ball on that final field goal attempt there. But yeah, he talked about how there's effort there for them. There's detail from, you know, the Eagle Special Teams, both the Special Teams Coordinator Michael Clay and the assistant special teams coordinator Joe Penunzio, who Jalen Carter calls Joe Peasy. Did you catch that? And my colleague, Jeff Nyberg's piece, former colleague, Jeff Nyberg's piece, Joe Peasy there. Yeah,

listen, old habits die hard. But yeah, no, I thought the level of your ex-college. What's that? How would just stork rank your ex-colle? I'm not going to do that. Although what I will say is, you know, Olivia's got to be down there now. You know, that's, yeah. Yeah, she's got to be down there for sure. The Jordan Davis thing is it's so important for this Eagles team because, you know, this team that we, we know is so star studded, you know, if, if Landon Dickerson is not playing up to his normal level because he's banged up.

And, you know, until the second half yesterday, the passing game is not holding its end the bargain. And, you know, if Quigionan Mitchell is just very good and not all pro level, like, where do you get that stuff back? Jordan Davis has ascended to a different tier. And he is, he is now like sort of among that star category if he keeps this up. And I think you really do have to credit. I mean, Jordan Davis gets the most credit, Fran, Jeremiah, Alphabet, all these guys. But I do think the Eagles deserve a little bit of credit here because it was not an easy decision to exercise his fifth-year option. I didn't think that it was the right decision, given the way that they had talked about the money that they

needed to save and spend. And they were betting on this leap coming. And it has come. And they deserve some credit for the self-scouting there. And Bo, you've been all over the fact that this is a position at defensive tackle that can be a little bit of a slow burn for guys. When you look at the Dexter Lawrence's and the Jeffrey Simmons and a lot of the top players at that position, you know, Chris Jones wasn't Chris Jones right out of the box coming out of Mississippi State, right? I think the fact that we have seen this arc of development for some of the elites in the league, and it's not to say that Jordan Davis is going to be one of those guys, but the fact that, you know, it's now like year four, and we're starting to see this jump, good on the Eagles for getting out ahead of that.

All right. We will get a little bit more to Jordan Davis when we break down the defense later on, Fran. But we're going to start today with the offense. And what a tail of two halves it was. And so as you went through it, I guess how bleak was the first half? in your eyes. It wasn't great. I think that when you look at it, you know, everybody always wants like that silver bullet, you know, it's like, oh, like it's this one issue, right? And as always the case, like it's more than one thing. It's a lot of little things mixed in. You saw starting offensive

lineman losing one-on-one. You saw backup offensive lineman losing one-on-one. By the way, I don't think Matt Pryor was terrible in this game. Obviously, that that sack was bad. But I don't think that it was like, oh, Lane Johnson's out. Matt Pryor's in. Offense. bad. Like that to me, like that is not, I think that's kind of, you know, that's convenient to me. I think the bigger thing was, uh, again, you go back to some of these where it's, uh, receivers, like all running to the same spot. You had, uh, you know, the one bad, you had a bad ball. You had somewhere it was like, all right, like, is it a little bit conservative play call? They couldn't run the ball throughout the course of the, uh, the, really most of the afternoon,

but, uh, especially in the first half, like could not get anything going on the ground. So it's a little bit of everything and none of it was good. All right. Well, let's get into it. You want to get into the spacing issues first? Because I know we all saw it down by the red zone before they scored the touchdown when Dotson and Devante Smith are in the same area. That was not the only example of that happening. No, and that's what we'll go to the first one, Julia, if you want to go to spacing one. You know, again, typically what you we sometimes these happen where it's like, all right, like, you know, maybe like something kind of through the DB off or sorry, sorry, sorry, threw the receiver off, maybe the way that a defensive back kind of leveraged the play and it forced the receiver to be a little bit deeper or a little bit more shallow than what he was hoping for.

Sometimes it's like, I don't know. I think this guy might have just run the wrong route. And I don't know that that's exactly what happened here with Jahan Dotson, but this goes down as a target for Dotson. To me, it seems like this past was actually intended to go to Devante Smith. And if you look at the reaction between Devante and Jehan and then even Jalen after the play on the broadcast, you can kind of, you know, you kind of figure out. Yeah, it looks like Dotson was not the intended target there on this play. And I thought like, okay, because I actually referenced this on the post game show yesterday. I was like, oh, you know, you saw this in the first half.

But honestly, like the route spacing kind of showed up a couple of times throughout the course of the first half. There were three plays and two where it was like it was this one and one other where I was like, yeah, like this was definitely not supposed to play out this way. Julie, if you go to the next shot, there was one other in the middle of the field where again, you just kind of see like both guys over the ball as Jalen hit the top of his drop. This ends up being a sack, but you've got Dallas Goddard, and I believe that's Darius Cooper. It might be, no, it's not AJ. AJ is at the top there. So I'm pretty sure that's Darius Cooper running it right over the hash and both guys settle in the same spot. Right.

And so I'm like, all right, like both those guys probably shouldn't be in that area. There was another one where Goddard was kind of running a crosser as well. But those are the kind of things where it's just kind of sloppy. Is this on the player? Is it, you know, poor coaching? Like, is it a little bit of everything? Is it just a lack of communication? Did somebody not get the right call?

You know, who knows what the answer is? But over the course of four drives, you saw this happen two or three times to start the game. And when you have that paired with some of the other issues, yeah, it's going to look like bad offensive football. And so this is one where it's impossible. Like that can't have been the design of the play, right? No.

But then the question is, is it on the individual? or is it on, you know, the coaches for not getting the message across? And that's what's what's I always struggle with is that like I can't stand but not being able to provide the why, right? Like, you know, because everyone's like, oh, why does this happen? I'm like, I honestly, I don't know. Like, oh, I don't know why that's. Like, because like I said, it could have been that, oh, Darius Cooper got the wrong call or,

you know, John Dotson, you know, he would, they talked about this and he just, he just, you know, he didn't take the coaching point. Or maybe it was that it wasn't coached into it. You know what I mean? Like it's one of those things where you don't really know. what the answer is, but as a whole, they just had to get better. And throughout the course of the game, they got better. That wasn't an issue when you got into the second half of the game. What's interesting is that, like, in the lead-up to this game, we heard so many of these guys talk about synchronization

and communication being an issue in the passing game. And I feel like going into this game, we were a little bit curious what exactly they were talking about because it felt like some of the issues were more rooted in the simplicity of the passing game or some of the stuff that was a little bit easier to trace from our vantage point. But I feel like you really did see that lack of synchronization and communication, you know, really show up in that first half against the Rams. And obviously, I mean, the numbers were terrible after the opening drive, four straight three and outs to close the half, negative three yards combined on those four drives.

Then they obviously have the fumble on the second play of the first position. After the half, I mean, did it look like more of the same to you? you, Fran? Like, we're going to get to, like, how the switch was flipped here. But before that switch was flipped, you know, was it, was it conservative play calling? I know that there was at least one play where the people at the stadium were saying that maybe Gillenherts missed an open A.J. Brown. What did you see? No, you know, it's funny because as I was sitting through, I made my first pass through it. And I was like, yeah, it was a lot of, you know, short stuff underneath stuff. You know, you hit Sequin Barclay in the flat. It's, you know, a curl route and a flat router.

or it's two slants or, you know, all the different combinations and stuff. But then as I'm going through my notes, and I'm like, oh, well, no, they, I mean, they had the, the undercenter, like, post-cross, like undercenter play action. It was a two-man route where you had A.J. Brown run the crossing route,

and he got intersected, you know, right at the catch point. Quentin Lake comes in and knocks it out. Like, that's a shot play. It's a play action shot play. You know, there was the sale route to Jahan Dotson that Quentin Lake got, Quinton Lake was all over the film, the nickel corner for, for L.A.

He was maybe their best player yesterday. But he got that PBU, like that was all right, that's a downfield attempt. You know, they had a number of those built in to those first four or five possessions, more so than what we had seen in previous weeks. So I do think that they were attempting to be more aggressive. They just weren't like the synchronity was not there over those first four or five possessions. Now, you could say like, all right, like this was a little bit, you know, outside of their norm.

They hadn't been playing this way throughout the season so far. It was only a two-game sample, but they hadn't been playing this way. if they just have to get their sea legs under them and then they started they started into a rhythm maybe um but the fact that like uh seeing jalen react the way that he did you know in game right and like kind of like in terms of like you know getting the energy saying like yeah like let's let's continue to play this way uh i do think there was definitely some kind of a sea change there right it feels that way anyway yeah i mean e j you talk to the guys you listen to the interviews the way that a jr brown talked you know let your killers go out there and make plays like the way that gilin hurt you talked after the game, it is hard for me to believe that this has not been coach directed. Yeah, it almost felt like, and you guys correct me or tell me what you think about this. It almost feels like AJ and Jalen after the game sort of got the ball rolling on maybe the come to Jesus moment for this season. You know, you think about the early by last year and the opportunity it gave them to

reevaluate what their identity on offense was. It felt as if this was their moment to say, okay, like we've been playing scared to lose. That's what Jalen said, you know, playing not to lose was what he said in the postgame interview with Pam Oliver. He kind of walked it back in his postgame press conference when asked specifically about AJ's comments about the offense being conservative and wanting the offense to be more aggressive. He said the offense was aggressive in the second half. But I do think that maybe this is part of the growing process and the story of this year's offense and maybe being a little bit more willing to take shots. They have the talent to do it.

They showed it. I think that once they proved it, that second half, they both were more comfortable to say something that I think we knew they felt going into this game, that they wanted to take more shots, be more aggressive. You know, Jalen talked about chasing it after the Chiefs game. I do think that this was an opportunity for them to kind of get the ball rolling on that. And I do wonder if this is the beginning of this offense changing to be more aggressive because of those comments after the game. I just, I'm going to read some of them because I just, I mean, you can't hear these things and not get exactly what he's saying.

I don't think it should be like that being meaning conservative. I think it should be let your killers do their thing, which is like so spot on and play fast and play aggressive. I'm not saying that we haven't been, but me personally, that's what I would like. Obviously, we're going to run the ball and we're going to set the run off the pass and the pass off the run. But we have a lot of good players. I feel like you should just let us go. Let us go hoop. And then later on, he's asked about what turned things around.

And he says, I don't mean this in a negative way. I just got the ball and I think it's that simple. Like, no arguments. He's not wrong. He's not wrong. Like some of like some will go through all these with Fran. And I'm sure there will be details that, you know, that are lost on most people when watching the game.

But some of these are like just A.J. Brown on a crawl route and he just wins. It's like it doesn't have to be that complicated when you have players that good. And I think that is, you know, it was validating to watch the Eagles passing game in the second half. because it really was. It was like, okay, like this doesn't have to be that hard when you have players like that. We will get on the other side, I want to ask you guys if you think that they will internalize the lesson that I think everybody else has taken from this game and whether this is in fact like the best case scenario outcome where you get the come to Jesus like resolution of this is,

this is how we have to play or how we can play. And also you still get the win out of it and you, you know, you get the Jordan Davis star making moment. So I'm going to ask you guys if you think that this one, will stick or if we're going to go back to the same on the other side. So E.J. invited me over the other day. He said, we got to check out these grabby grabs. And we're going to watch the game. And unfortunately, we get there and the setup was a total mess.

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and select a bed length that fits your needs. For more information, visit your local Ford store. All right, back on the P.H.O.Y. Eagles podcast, a super chat from Fresh Prince who says, this is premature, but if Jordan Davis made the leap that we were talking about, what would he have to do to make the pick over Kyle Hamilton feel like less of a mistake and validate that decision. He says, I love JD. He went to high school with my sister. I mean, I think he would have, I mean, look, Kyle Hamilton got paid a large sum of

money this offseason because he's the best safety in football right now. I'd have to look and see what that number was. Give me one second because I've got it here. But listen, there is a, there's a little bit of a parallel here with the Brandon Graham, Earl Thomas of all. You know, it took a while for Brandon Graham to be considered as good of a play. as he was. And yeah, at his peak, Earl Thomas was a more viable player, but the, you know, he wasn't at that peak for very long. It's possible. It's not, it's not impossible that this could be history reporting, repeating itself. So there, there's one safety in football who is making north of 22 million a year. And that's Kyle Hamilton. There are one, two, three, four, five, six,

seven, eight, eight defensive tackles that are making north of 22 million a year. So, you know, if Jordan Davis plays his way into, let's go through the list here of guys that are Namde Madabike, Derek Brown, we know how great of a player he is, Alim McNeil, Daron Payne, Milton Williams, DeFarice Buckner, Jeffrey Simmons, Quinny Williams, Chris Jones, and then Christian Wilkins was also making that as well before he was cut this off season by, or this summer by the Raiders. Like, if he could play his way into that kind of a contract, then you make the argument, oh, then he was worth it over Kyle Hamilton. Right. He doesn't have to become the best defensive tackle.

on football. I mean, the decision was made on position valuation more than anything else. There's also just like the luxury of like winning a Super Bowl and also like drafting well from there on like, you know, to the Eagles draft Cooper to Gene if they had Kyle Hamilton on the roster. So I think like this isn't the Justin Jefferson Jalen Rager type scenario where like they sorely missed that position for a while after missing on that pick. I think at this point like the there's enough like butterfly, butterfly effect that has gone well for the Eagles. that you don't really, I don't know, it doesn't, it doesn't have the same sting to it as it would if things hadn't gotten that way for him.

All right. One last thing to get on in the first half, Fran, in just the bad offense of it all. I know you wanted to break down the Saquine Barclay miss in pass protection. Yeah, this is that third and long sack from Jalen McCullough, the dime safety there for the L.A. Ram. So, Julia, if you just go to McCullough, one. Greg Olson actually did a really good job on the broadcast, bringing up a good point that the Eagles tried to catch the Rams off guard here.

The Rams have a really good third down pressure package where they get into their dime defense, six DBs on the field, and they run a variety of blitzes and stunts and twists. So I think the Eagles were trying to kind of catch them here by everybody standing up and you're pointing out what the protection is and you're just trying to slow play it. So then that way they can't get off the ball just to buy Jalen Hertz a little bit of extra time. But what we see here on the next snap is what the protection call is. So everybody's standing up, but now you get into the call. And it's a pretty basic protection where you're going to have the offensive line sliding right.

So everyone from Cam Jorgans over to the right, they're all going to be. It's going to be to our left. So you see Steen and Matt Pryor, everybody's sliding to their right. That means it's man-to-man protection on the left side. So you've got Lande Dickerson manned up on number 91, Jordan Milata manned up on zero. that leaves Sequin Barclay with the pass rusher number 10 lined up in the A gap. So that's where Barclay's eyes go immediately. Now, as soon as that guy drops out, so you see that he's getting ready to drop out here,

Sequin has to make sure that there's nobody else coming. He has got to make sure. And look, if you go to the next shot here, Julia, you'll see. Number two, Jalen McCullough, he's coming from depth. He's coming from distance. I think Sequin, he's looking at direction, clearly doesn't see him. If he did see him, my guess is that Sequin's going to stay in there and protect. But instead, he's going to just kind of chip the defensive end, Jared Verst, on the way out.

But that's where his eyes should have gone. As soon as the edge rusher number 10 dropped out, that's who circled there in the middle of the field. Once he dropped out, Sequan's eyes should have gone to the backside and should have been able to pick up McCullough coming from depth. Unfortunately, he did not. We go to the next shot here. And like I said, Seekwon is just going to try and chip that defensive end on his way to releasing to the flight. lot. Number two, McCullough's got a free run right at Jalen Hertz and Hertz just takes a really violent shot here, a sack on third and long. And again, that's kind of what I was going for is

all right, they call a downfield play there on that play, like something that attacks past the sticks. Like it would have been an intermediate game that you probably would like 15, 20 yards, but because the protection didn't hold up and that's not on Hertz. We're like, oh, he should have seen that. To me, that that is a Sequin Barkley miss. I could be wrong. It could be that he's only got that one and he's got a release. But from my understanding, protection rules, that should have been Sequin's responsibility. When they showed the replay on the broadcast from like the angle of the Eagles backfield, like you lose McCullough for a second. He is hidden behind the left defensive end.

And I do think that that's what happened to Sequin as you late. Like as his eyes are turning, he's just out of vision for a second. And then by that time, it's too late. Yeah. It was a well designed blitz. Like they did a good job of kind of showing things, Shullin rushed one way and then dropping out and sending someone from the opposite side and it was able to get home. This was the, I believe, since Chris Shula took over last year, this was their second highest blitz percentage in a game this season. And that's obviously coming off of last week when Spaggs blitzed the most that he has blitzed. What did you make of their game plan on that front? Yeah, I mean, they were doing a variety of like mixing and matching in terms of their zones.

You know, it was a good amount of blitzing, but, you know, you saw three under three. deep. You saw four deep two under. You saw a lot of inverted Tampa 2, which we broke down on the show yesterday. The Dallas got our touchdown. They did that a handful of times in the game. And so they definitely were trying to mix and match and do different things from that standpoint, just trying to keep Jalen Hertz guessing. And I think that's the best way to try and go about attacking Jalen Hertz. So, you know, we saw that last year. Teams really leaned into that and said, all right, we're going to, we're going to be selective with our pressure. We'll see if we can blitz and try and get home. I don't think that it's like 2023 where it's like, out just just blitz jalen hertz and that's a win for the defense uh i do think that this offense has

evolved and jalen hurts has evolved to the point where that's not just the easy button there for that side of the ball but clearly the the way that teams want to try and do it is they're going to try and vary their approach from a coverage standpoint and it's going to be mainly zone coverage if it's man to man he's going to take advantage of matchups and he's got that ability as a scrambler and so now it's just going to be all right we're going to make sure that we are really keeping them guessing from a zone coverage standpoint i imagine that this is going to be a real topic this week as we turn the page to Todd Bowles and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. It's going to definitely be topical for the next few days.

Top Bulls. From the last year. Oh, yeah. Okay. All right. Let's do that. He doesn't know that joke, though, Bo. Yeah, this one went over my head.

It's important that he gets brought in on things that he doesn't know about. Michael Kendrick coined that term in 20... This happened like a decade ago. Thank you for you. my verbiage to help me understand. When there was the year that Todd Bowles replaced Juan Castillo mid-season as defense coordinator, which I believe was Kendricks's rookie year. And then the next year, the Eagles were playing against Todd Bowles.

And during the week, Kendricks was asked about playing Todd Bowles from last year. Like, is there any advantage of that? And he did not remember who Todd Bulls was. that's awesome and with that we head to the forward drive of the game and here i want to dive deep into the last eagle's offensive possession fran because we will get to some of the big picture stuff i want to know what what jillan hertz did in this game but uh after they have that stretch of five or you know four three and outs and then the two and out turn over they go touchdown touchdown Turnover on downs.

And then finally, the game winning touchdown drive, 17 plays, 91 yards, capped off by that fourth down touchdown pass to Devante Smith, which you broke down very well on the postgame show last night. Everybody can check that out on the PHAY YouTube page. But on this drive, knowing what they needed to do, this is one where A.J. Brown in particular came up big with those, just those big mad muscles. Yeah, I mean, it was it was bully ball for A.J. Brown in those scenarios.

It wasn't like they did anything special to kind of like scheme him open. They put him on the backside of some of these routes and say, all right, we're going to run, you know, some kind of three-man concept to the right. And AJ, you're going to run a stop route at 12 yards and just go and win. And he was just a bully at the catch point. And then after the catch, you know, the Eagles came into this game as one of the worst yards after catch teams in football, which, by the way, like, that also kind of speaks to the nature of this past game over the first two games that it were so little vertical. It was not a downfield offense, but then you also were so low in yards after catch.

Like usually it does not work that way. It's one or the other. Like you're either a good quick game in yards after catch offense or you're a good deep ball offense and it's going to be volatility, but you're not, you know, that you're, you're picking up yardage somehow. The fact that they were so low in both kind of speaks to like the lack of health, you know, in that in that past game overall coming into this one. But in this game, I mean, AJ Brown just after the catch was a monster and just did an

outstanding job once one's given the opportunity over the course of the game. Watching him on those two stop routes like made me think about the story I wrote last week where he talked about how his mindset's changed where like every time he touches the ball, he feels like he has to change the game because he knows that there is going to be limited opportunities for that. Like watching him like be like, no, I cannot let you tackle me behind the sticks. Like I have to make the most of this opportunity. And it's, you know, the thing that we've talked about, which is probably overstated, like,

you know, get him an early touch, you know, stuff like that. but like you see him literally like he's like a video game character he's gaining more juice the more he gets the ball it's like you know he gets he has the one-handed catch on the beautiful throw from jalen to start things off in the second half and from then on it's like he finally starts to look like the all pro guy who we've all come to know all right so now i'm just going to have to take a whiff here been saying it for a couple weeks now he's been he's healthy it's not the health it's the fact that he's been floating through games, probably frustrated by the lack of involvement. So I think we can put that to bed now.

I feel like we've cracked the code. A whiff-taking situation. I mean, I'm going to take a little bit of credit. I think I came out on the right side of history on this one. E.J. is like barely talking this whole episode. The only time he's chiming in is to just give himself a whiff. For a guy who can't, who like can't smell, you all for you take a lot of whips. To your point, by the way, Sean's, I had texted me today and said it looked like

AJ Brown was moving at 1.25 speed in the second half. So, yeah, I think that is a good observation. Yeah, like it's like it's true. Like the more they give him the ball, the better he looks. And so just to go through this drive, you know, they have the third and 10 from the nine. And this is the one where, you know, that ball from Jalen just sort of floats to A.J. Brown. But he's got those, those strong hands to bring in that catch and then shake off Darius Williams. And then another, after they, you know, after they were, oh for the entire first half on third-down conversions,

then they get a third and three where Jalen makes that nice pass to Devante Smith for 10 yards. Then it's third and 10 again. And he gets A.J. Brown for 23 yards. And then on a game where the running game really had no impact for the Eagles, that third down run on third and three for four yards from Sequin Barclay. I mean, you know, if he gets two yards, there's a good chance that they're able to just push it. But that run from Sequin was awesome. Yeah, I mean, the run game was not good throughout most of the,

And it's, again, this is one of those where it's a little bit of everything. I went back before we came on and just kind of charted like, all right, just the unsuccessful runs. Like what happened on the unsciful. And I would say like the biggest themes for me, look, they're not getting the same play from the interior three that they got from a year ago. Okay. So Landed Dickerson clearly not 100% healthy. And I think that's showing up in the run game as well as in the past game. Tyler Steen, not playing to the Pro Bowl level that Mackay Beckton was a year ago.

He's not playing poorly. but he's going to lose some matchups because you're a solid player and not a great player. And so I think when you're looking at Steen, like, all right, he loses one-on-one to Brayden Fiske on one play. He loses one-on-one to Puna Ford on one play. He loses one-on-one to Kobe Turner on one play. I do think that as you got into like late second quarter, early third quarter, I think that Seekwan was pressing a little bit. And maybe his eyes were a little bit too quick to try and find a cutback. There was one play where it was first and ten backed up late in the second quarter where if he had just stayed on this front of,

side. It was inside zone. If he stayed on this front side, like the lane was there to the outside to behind Matt Pryor and Tyler Steen, but his eyes were so quick to try and cut back, well, now my lot of loss on the backside and you had a defensive tackle, or I think it was Gyrr diverse was there to be able to make the play. And so I do think it was a little bit of everything in this one, but that's something that they need to certainly kind of get back on the rails is, you know, just trying to get, it's not even like be the explosive run game that you were in 2024, but there are so many first and 10 runs. still in the second half.

Like when the past game went alive, it was still like first and 10, a lot of runs that went for zero or went for one. And now it's second and nine and it's third and 10. And now you got to make a play. That was one of my big takeaways. Honestly, going through that final drive was just, you went through that list of third downs

where they were able to come up big. Ideally, you don't want to live in that world where you're trying to convert third and long every single, you know, every single series. Fram, what did you think about like the, I guess, like, the types of runs that they were calling. It seemed like a lot of inside runs.

It seemed like they kind of gained traction with the outside zone against the Chiefs. So I was curious, like, maybe that's just not something that you want to do against Jared Verst. But what did you think of the diversity and the scheme, the schematics there?

Well, they tried like that one little flip play where they had Devante go on the jet motion and they flipped it out to Sequant. But like, that's not a Fred Johnson play. Fred Johnson. And honestly, like Fred Johnson's better in Pass Pro than he is in the run game. He plays a little bit high going into contact.

and so he had some bad losses in the run game yesterday as well. But that play, you know, that that was kind of dead on arrival. Like that had no shot. Jahan Dotson loss on the outside of it as well. So I think the one thing, if you want to take this away from the run game yesterday, they definitely got away from the 12 personnel stuff, you know, and it's what's interesting about that is that this is a team in the L.A. Rams that wants to live in dime and in nickel.

And so if you wanted to try and say like, all right, we want to try and get them to play into base because that's out of their comfort zone. would be the game where you would try and lean into that. But I think they said, more tight ends up. Yeah, let's, yeah. Yeah, it had all of those guys available. And they did have like somewhere. It was 11 personnel with Cam Latu or 11 personnel with Kylan Grantson. Like they mixed the guys in.

But yeah, it was, it was, the run game's got to get a little bit better. And it's again, it's not just one player. Yeah, just to just to that point to underscore it. 18 carries for 46 yards for the running backs in this game. In terms of just running back. runs a 27.8% success rate, which is the third worst of a Jalen Hertz started and finished game since the start of last season. Last season, okay.

Since last season. So the, yeah, the Steelers and Browns from last year were both a little bit lower. So it's, it's actually even a little bit better than I was expecting because I thought it might be like the worst of those. But they were able to, they were able to pop a couple big plays in those games, which they were not able to do in this game. All right. That'll do it for the forward drive of the game.

coming back on the other side after this break. We're going to talk about Jalen Hertz's day and his willingness to throw over the middle of the field, Fran, and what got unstuck for Jalen. But first, we talk about our friends at True Mark Financial. True Mark Financial Credit Union. You know what? We've all been through the back-to-school situation here, and that's not what we're going to talk about. No, no, no, sports fans, listen up. September's here.

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like the floodgates burst open the very next play they hit dallas goddard down the seam against Tampa 2 invert for the touchdown. We broke that play down on the post game show yesterday. So you can go back, check that breakdown out. The film confirmed everything we thought from the broadcast copy there. So we're not going to break down the screen grabs on that one here. But I think when you're looking at it overall, yeah, like they had more aggressive play calls built into the game plan this week.

I think there were more chances for Jayland to be able to attack the intermediate area and the deep area of the field. in the first half there was one and EJ Texas was the it was the first third down of the game right each other first third down of the game jalen takes off and he was tackled just short of the sticks that was probably like his worst turn down of the afternoon and we actually have the uh i do have the screen grabs uh on this one and it actually they went back to it a little bit later so that's why i wanted to make sure we showed kind of both ends of it so uh julia if you want to bring up uh their hurts middle of the field uh hurts middle of the field one uh you'll see that basically

what they what you've got here on this concept two crossing routes underneath so it's being run here from dallas goddard and from saquan barclay out of the slot so you've got those two underneath routes basically against zone coverage which again the rams played a lot of zone that's going to hold those middle of the field those guys underneath and try and take their eyes away to open up and stretch some some area some room to work for the middle of the field and then you've got devante smith if you go to the next shot devante smith is going to be the first guy through the zone he's going to run a crossing route and a j brown is on the back side of this you know, running on the backside of the progression here.

So ideally, those two underneath rats, they open up space for Devante Smith and you're able to hit him for a first down. If we go to the next shot, you can see that this is actually going to work really well. You've got those two underneath crossers, those linebackers, the nickel, the safety, they're all, you know, they have to pick those routes up as they come across. Devante Smith sneaks across it and he's wide open. You go to the next shot here, Devante is wide open, just as Jaylon is about to take off here. This should have been a throw to Devante Smith for first.

down. And so honestly, as I'm watching, I'm like, all right, that's the first third down of the game. That's a, that's a turn down here that Jalen, I think, would like to have back. Now, the very next drive, he goes to any hits, AJ Brown on a post cross that gets interrupted by the, by Quentin Lake. So he gets in. So it's not like, oh, man, like Jalen, not attacking the middle of the field. He went back to it a couple of a couple different times and was able to attack the middle of the field throughout the course of the game. But what I like is that they ran a very similar version of this exact concept on that final drive, on that final. On that final. Yeah, it was to start that final, this is late third quarter. It's a third and 10. Let's go to the next shot here, Julia. This would be Hertzman Middlefield 5. Again, you've got those two underneath crossing routes. This time it's coming from AJ Brown and from Johan Dotson. If you go to the next shot, you got the two, those two deep in breaking routes. The first one is going to come from Dallas Goddard. He's going to be the first guy through the zone. And then you've got Devante Smith is going to be on the back side of this. So as Jalen drops back, we go to the next shot. What happens here, this actually makes it even more diverse.

difficult than the last one. It's just a three-man rush from the Rams. Only three guys are rushing, which means now you've got six underneath defenders. So those passing lanes are going to be even a little bit tighter for Jane on this play. But the route concept does the work here on this one. As you're going to see on the next shot, Jalen drops back. He hits the top of his drop. The first guy, again, through the zone is Dallas Goddard. This throw that he did, he turned down earlier to Devante Smith. If he makes that throw here blindly, it's getting picked off by the middle linebacker in the middle of the field. So Jaylen says, all right, I'm not going to hit Dallas here.

I've got to hang tight and I've got to make sure I'm, let's get to the backside of the progression here. And that's going to be Devante Smith. And you see Devante coming open at the bottom of the screen. Now, Devante, Greg Olson pointed this out in the broadcast. Oh, man, he really took this release really wide. He took his time getting there. When the way that a lot of teams will coach this, if you were the last guy in the

progression, you've got the ability to freelance a little bit more with your releases. You can slow play it a little bit because you are last in the progression. And the timing and the precision is not as important as it is for somebody that's early in the progression. So Devante was able to kind of shake loose and make sure that, you know, because if he wins that inside, now he's too tight to Dallas. And he gets into the situation we talked about earlier where the spacing is not very good. So he did a good job of winning outside and then giving himself a little bit more room to be able to operate. Jalen, we go to the next shot, did a nice job of hanging tight here against the three-man rush.

The clock wasn't too fast for him. He stayed in there. got his eyes to the backside and Devante comes through for him and makes this catch. It was a great job by Jalen. It was a good concept against zone coverage. The route concepts all worked together in concert. And it was a big time first down on third and 10. They were able to move the sticks.

That was a really impressive play. I thought. Yeah. Gelen live, just like how patient he was in the pocket and then throwing him open. That was nice. Yeah, it really illustrates like the growth of Jalen Hertz. Like, you know, it's not that long ago that I feel like there were a lot lot of one side of the field concepts like oh you want to really like make sure that you're kind of

simplify things for him so to see him get to that point like a late progression throw or he has to trust it you know i thought the last screen grab was particularly telling fran of like like the time that he decides to throw that ball like to the trust that he has for devonte to cross that defensive backs face and get into that soft spot in the zone the accuracy to find him in that soft spot in the zone like i just thought it was really high level quarterback play you know i feel like it is we've talked a lot about like Jalen has not really been the problem with the passing passing game he has been you know making good decisions with the football and in you know being like trying to find that rhythm I think that this was a really good like I said a good

way to see exactly how like high of a level he's playing at right now and Julia we have the we have the graphic of his past chart to your point EJ because yeah you know in the past it would have been like all those balls to the right side and you know we know that through the first two weeks He wasn't throwing the ball in that intermediate areas. This is the, you know, this is what the, you know, the tacticos want to see, E.J. Yeah, like, I'm laughing looking at the passing chart because we've seen the passing chart be weaponized against Jailen Hertz. Yeah, if this was, you know, yeah, if this was like, I don't know, Bo Nix's passing chart or something like that, people would be throwing a parade. Yeah, exactly.

I mean, even like, you know, Fran mentioned the, the in-breaker to AJ early in the game, even that was like, something where I feel like we don't see Jalen make those throws maybe a few years ago. So it is. It's like throughout the second half, there were just a few times where I felt like his trust in his receivers and his willingness to kind of let it rip even before they were out of breaks. And just, again, like be confident in the offense within the framework of the offense. I thought that those two plays were a perfect way to see it. Like, you know, the first time he doesn't necessarily trust it, doesn't necessarily pull the trigger on it.

But then in a big moment in the game, he had the trust to throw it. All right. We have one more break to take to hear from our sponsors. And then on the other side, I want to talk a little bit more about Jalen, and then we'll get into the defense. Get your home ready for cozy season during Ashley's fall savings event happening now. Discover the season's warmest and coziest hot buys for every room in your house. From stylish living rooms to welcoming dining rooms to relaxing bedrooms,

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code P-HL-Y. We thank Mac Weldon for be a sponsor of this podcast. Get your home ready for cozy season during Ashley's fall savings event happening now. Discover the season's warmest and coziest hot buys for every room in your home from stylish living rooms to welcoming dining rooms to relaxing bedrooms. You'll find beautiful. look, starting at just $2.99 and right now by today and pay later with no interest for 60 months because fall isn't just a season. It's a feeling. Visit your local Ashley Showroom and start saving today. All right. Back on the PHLY Eagles podcast. Big picture check in on Jalen. You know, like the footage of him on the sideline, you know, like completely no-selling the Jordan Davis thing as Nick Siriani like, you know, almost knocks him over. It's just so good. He's so cool. Like, all of this nonsense and, like, all of the things surrounding this team.

And sometimes you'll hear behind the scene stuff of like, oh, well, you know, it's really Jalen's fault. Like, you know, like somebody's like, I'm so tired of that. Like, the guy is nails, man. I just, I, he's a Super Bowl MVP. I don't, he doesn't need me to back him. But I feel like these three weeks of football to start this season have made me more in the tank for Jalen Hertz. I think he really is like the Eagles fans who feel like there is like a thing against him nationally. I do feel like he is criminally underrated for everything he brings to like the tenor of this team and the calmness and the coolness.

He's just, he's very cool. We had this conversation before a pod last week about like some of the indications internally about why the offense looks the way looks. And I really haven't stopped thinking about it since we have that conversation. Like, just the, the role that Jalen plays in how the offense looks and maybe how there can be a misconception about that. Or at the very least, like you made a very compelling argument that there might be a misconception about Jalen's role in the way the offense looks. And when you watch him play like you did in the second half against the Rams, it is like, I don't, I don't know. I think I might need to reframe my view on like what, what, uh, what, uh, what,

Jalen Hertz offense should look like, what it has looked like, and sort of the factors at play there. So yeah, it's, I've been a little bit conflicted since we had that conversation. I think that you might be swaying me to your side of things here. To me, to me, the way I look at it is, you know, there are, there's the conversations about, like, where does Jalen rank in the hierarchy of quarterbacks in the NFL and, you know, versus Justin Herbert and Jordan Love? You go down the list and C.J. Stroud, right? Um, there's that conversation. And then there's like, everybody.

that's on the other side of it where it's like, oh, like this guy's no good. He leaves these throws on the field and he's, they had all these opportunities and why does he turn this down? I think like we, we as in like a collective we, there's like this, I think I talked about this with Cuzz last week where we see highlights from Joe Burrow or we see highlights from, you know, insert quarterback here.

And we're like, yeah, like, why doesn't, why doesn't the Eagles offense always look like that? But then you also remember like there are moments like, Jordan Love just had one yesterday, you know, in Green Bay, where he averaged like 1.3 yards per attempt or whatever, you know, whatever it was. If you look at Josh Allen's, if you look at his chart from Thursday against the dolphins and everything was underneath 10 yards, like, people would say like, oh, yeah, that's a Jalen Hertz chart, not a, not a Josh Allen chart. Like these kinds of moments happen with all the best quarterbacks in football. And I think it's important to remember that when we're talking about Jalen Hertz. Right. And those guys have turned downs too. And there have also like there have been. times when in the middle of last season, at the start of last season, when Jalen was not playing very well. And like, just because that's your confirmation bias doesn't mean that that's exactly what's happening this time. Like, there's, there, there are different things going on. I just, I can't get like the, the Russell Wilson comparison out of my head at this point. I feel like their careers are going to be very similar, you know, like, and I don't, I mean that as a complimentary

thing. Like, you know, I think pretty highly of Russell Wilson's career. And they feel in their off field like an enigmatic persona and just like the fact that they're a part of these very I think the I think the persona is so unfair to Jalen on the Russell Wilson front I mean they both are enigmatic at the very least I'm not saying that they act the same but they both are sort of you know they just like most people don't react to a blocked field goal to save the game the way that Jalen would and I'm sure Russell Wilson would have had probably the exact opposite reaction to it but yeah still both both sides of the spectrum there I do think that there are a lot of similarities you can draw from like an on-field,

like playing, not even the, you know, the enigmatic personalities aside. I think there's a lot of person or a lot of similarities you can draw between Jalen and Russell Wilson or Jalen and like an Eli Manning even. Like there are definitely like narrative things that you could point to with those guys. I just, I do think that Jalen is better than both. I think if you're in terms of like overall archetype and you're taking everything into consideration, I think Jalen like at his peak is honestly like I think I would take him over Russell Wilson at his peak.

Russell won, you know, however many Super Bowls. Yeah, I, I'm with you on that. I think I would take, I think peak Hertz is better than peak Russell Wilson. I think the Cam Newton discussion like peak at both at the peak of their powers. That's where it gets interesting to me. Yeah. All right. Super chat from Joe Rockhead, who says, how has steam looked on film, Fran, maybe a grade and any word on lane?

I guess the steam, to me, I'll be interested get your guys talking. too on this a lot of it would be like based off like expectation like if you're if i were to say like what my expectations were i'd probably give him like a b or b plus if you were going to grade him like all right because if we're like a a a is like best right guard in football then he's probably like a c right like i think he is a fine starter like he's like he's playing like starting quality like right guard um which is fine like he would be the the the second best lineman on the new the New York Giants right now. You know, but with the way that the Eagles are built,

he's their worst starting offensive lineman if everybody's healthy. So, you know, I think that's the way I'm looking at Tyler's team as of this moment. A couple pieces of injury news from around the league. Nick Bosa, out for the year, torn ACL and C.D. Lam set to miss several weeks with a high ankle sprain. Tough. All right. Let's talk about the defense, Fran.

the run defense, not giving up explosives necessarily, but they have been picked on a little bit over the start of this season. The two worst games by success rate in terms of run defense for the Eagles under Vic Fangio have been this game and week one against Dallas. What's going on? Yeah, I think that, you know, I went back and I watched the seven runs from the running backs of eight plus yards in this game. So Kyron Williams had a handful. Blake Quorum had a couple as well. Two things first right off the back. Kyron Williams is a good back.

Blake Quorum was running pretty well yesterday as well. And this scheme is tough. Like, it was a reason why. I mean, this scheme has been doing it since, you know, the 90s with Mike Shanahan, right? And Terrell Davis and Mike Anderson and Orlando Gary. So like the scheme itself can be very difficult. Now, that said, I do think that there are a couple things that I would say, like as my big takeaways, number one, too many mistackles.

You know, you had a mistackle from Quinnian Mitchell on one. You had a mistackle from Cooper DeGine on another. You had a mistackle from Zach Bonn on an explosive run. So you had mistackles at the second level that would be uncharacteristic of the Seagulls defense. I think that Cooper DeGine, who is normally a awesome run defender, was just okay going up against Pooka Nukua and going up again. Jordan Whittington got him a couple times.

One of them was maybe could have been flagged as a hold on the, I think it was the second long run. Those are tough to officiate, friend. Yeah, I mean, we honestly, like, throw inside zone out. We should probably vote on that next week or next spring. But I think to me, those are the two biggest things. I do think as well, like, like Jalen Carter, he's not playing poorly against the run, but he has like there was one, I think the very first one, like he gets moved on earthed by the double team. And he's, he ends up like a gap over. And, you know, I think it's all right, like he has one down rep. And then everybody else, you know, that turns a, what, could have been a three-yard run into a seven or seven or eight-yard run.

So now, as I go through, I told you, there were seven of those plays. Six of them happened in the first half. Like they were just, they were just more sound against the run. The last one that happened was in the first or in the fourth quarter. It was a first and 10. And it was a cutback run by Kairn Williams, where he like starts to his left and winds all the way back. The only reason he was able to wind all the way back, Josh Hushay, like started turning

and running with the tight end, releasing downfield as if it was going to be a play action and pass play, Ushay gets turned around and he's not, no one's there as the backside support player to be able to make the tackle. So, you know, I think when you're looking at the run defense overall, it was poor in the first half, and that was a big issue. And then they really tightened things up in the second half of the game. You know who they could use? Brandon Graham.

Well, yeah, we know that. Yeah. You're saying. Yeah. You know that. But, I mean, look, he's spoken for at this point. It's true. It's true. He's on a new team. one thing that we had the Jordan Davis discussion earlier and I would be remiss if I did not bring

this up as well. This is a scheme I mentioned that has been, you know, has been very, very effective for a long time in the NFL. And the big thing when you're talking about like outside zone teams and, you know, stretch zone teams, it's like everything is like outside, outside, outside. And then you hit them later, you know, with the inside zone and that cut back from the running back, the defensive tackles are gas because they've been chasing their gaps all the all game long. The fact that Jordan Davis, like he was chasing those gaps all game long. And then you get into the third quarter, you get into the fourth quarter. To me, like that, that actually was another thing as I was watching and I'm watching

Jordan Davis. And he's not like making impactful plays on these plays where he's chasing the play. It's not like, oh, man, watch them track down Kiron Williams from 30 yards away. But that's a lot of work for a guy who's 3.30 to be able to carry those gaps and then say like, all right, now I'm going to take on a double team. And now I'm going to block a field goal in the final play. Like just add to the impressive nature of the performance. No, EJ, do you think that, you think Julian Carter is healthy?

I mean, we were talking about this earlier. Like, he grabs at his shoulder a good amount. And I think the broadcast caught him, like, holding his shoulder after hitting Stafford one time. I think it was in the second half. Yeah. So to me, it's just, it looks like he's going through something. It's not enough to, like, be debilitating for him. You know, the next play after he was holding his shoulder there, he's, like, pointing at something.

And, you know, he's clearly, like, able to play through it. but yeah, it doesn't seem like he's totally right. Yeah. To me, it seems like he's, it's kind of like a different level of the Tyler Steen conversation. It's like he's, he's playing well. He's not, he's not playing up to defensive player of the year candidate level. Yeah. We might have been expecting.

Which, by the way, like that we talked about that last year at this time. You know, the start of the season last year was not, it was not like, oh, man, like he's dominant right now. And then he slowly, he kind of rounded into. form by the time we got to like week seven that's true uh good point all right we're going to break down the field goal blocks both of them when we get to bovertide all right friend let's go with the first one uh the double block here with yelan carter and jordan davis and boy like what a i feel like the way that they block these two puns is so uh you know the way we've talked about the eagles just being the bullies and like being bigger and stronger and meaner than the other teams for like a season

and a half now, they both felt like that just like get out of here. Well, you know, we we talked about the interior of that offensive line for the, for the Rams. You know, Justin Dietich was in it, left guard. He's a smaller block. And these are the same guys you're going to see out on the field goal unit. I think that they were able to take advantage of that size, that size differential, you know, certainly on these two plays. So let's just go to the first one here. This is the Jalen Carter field goal block in the fourth quarter. So Carter block one, Julia.

So the first thing that stands out, the get off from Jalen Carter here was ridiculous. And you can kind of see like, all right, the ball has been snapped. You know, I wanted to make sure. All right there it is right there just past the 20 yard line. Jalen is flying off the ball. And I like went like frame by frame to be able to see like, all right, when does his first move? He is wired into this snap count.

As soon as that center drops his head to go to snap. he is flying off the insane reaction quickness from Jalen here. So he flies off the ball. And what that does if we go to the next shot is that it allows him to get inside. Because you got to remember, there's rules in terms of like what you can do in terms of contacting the long snapper. You're allowed to steal that agap. Like you can get past him.

You can touch him, but you can't like impact him because he's a defenseless player, you know, in that situation. So because he was so fast off the ball, Dotson like had no base to be able to be able to stop. So Dotson is the left guard that are standing straight up in the air. And you could see, like, look at where the pockets should be with Dotson and look at where his feet are. He lost like two yards on this play.

So Jalen Carter's get off to me, like it was all the sole reason why this kick was blocked. Outstanding job from him. Obviously, he takes to the air. And then he and Jordan Davis are both in position to be able to block this. But to me, this was all Carter's get off on that one. There's some good grabby grabs. It's a good screen grab. the screen you know tell tell frustrations uh drawings doodles you know i'll take anything

all about the grab and grab all right let's get to the next grab to grab the all right for the next one obviously is the pivotal play uh this play needs you know if you really want to coin something e j this play needs a coinage i don't want to coin stuff i just i just do you know it just happens natural what i call the jordan davis play if you look at the time stamps that's all i'm saying somebody had to coin it. It's not like winning. woke up, it was Monday morning. Who was the first person to say Monday?

All right. So go to the first one here. This is Davis Block 1, Julia. So on this play, again, Jalen Carter really fast off the ball. And now they've got to do this. Kevin Dotson got hurt now. So now Bo Limmer, who is the backup guard, like first guy up for the ramps, he's in on this play.

Carter has already blocked one kick. because of his getoff there, his explosive first step. So you can see, like, Limmer with his first step, look at that right leg, right underneath the circle. He, like, really, he makes his stance so wide to try and protect that inside gap, to try and protect that A gap. So because he makes his stance so wide to try and stop Jalen Carter, now he has no base, right?

He's got no ability to kind of anchor and hold up against Jordan Davis. So you go to the next shot here. You can see, like, Jalen Carter has cleared the long snapper. now he's into the backfield and you can see Limmer he is standing straight up so now Jordan Davis he just bench presses him

he just completely unfolds him you go to the next shot here and you see Jordan Davis exploding through Limmer is completely off balance he's got his left foot is up in the air but that's again he's protecting the inside half against Carter and his first step

he gets and he just gets uncorked Jordan Davis gets into the backfield you get the field go block just an unbelievable job there We go to the next shot, and you can see now there's Jordan Davis, full extension. Can we talk about one very underrated part of this, though? And I didn't do a good job of getting the screen grab over to Julia. But on the right side is Jacorian Bennett.

Now, you can see on the left side, Keitheringo is coming with his hand. He's going for the block here, okay? Now, typically when you have a field goal block, you're not, everybody on the field is not going for the block, right? Because you want somebody to be available to be able to pick up the blocked kick. So in this case, you have Keithy, go coming off of our left side, Jacorian Bennett is going to be the guy that is going to try and scoop up this

fumble. We know that he is not the one to scoop up this fumble. And the reason why is that when the, when the kick is blocked, the holder is about to try and jump on the, on the loose ball. Bennett did a really heads up play in that he took the holder out. Like he went and just kind of like boxed him out and laid his body out to keep the ball live.

And then Jordan Davis is able to go for the scoop and score. So give the assist there to Jacorian. and Bennett. It's an outstanding job that I don't know that I've ever seen a guy do that. I'm sure he's not the first to do it. I don't want to say he coined the action, but I think that a really heads-up play there by Jacorian Bennett. We are not going to fall for this. We are not going out of your way. Yep. Say something nice about Jacorrean Bennett just because you've already been called to account on burying the guy. And by the way, even in this, the hidden message is he belongs on special teams.

You thought you were slick, Fran. The chat was waiting for you to bring up to Corey and Bennett. He did a great job on special teams yesterday. That's awesome job. You know, look, and that's what I said he was. He's a fourth corner. Like, he's going to give you good special team snaps. It really was crazy that Final Rams drive.

It was great. They had six passing plays, and they just went after him on every single one of them. Yeah, I mean, that was the matchup they wanted to take advantage of. And the Eagles, I'm not like kidding. Like, they were lucky that wasn't called PI against Bennett because that very easily could have been called PI or a defensive hold, like automatic first down against Bennett on that one outbreaking route. But the rest let a play on that one. Oh, man. Very funny.

That plays amazing. Where do you think that play ranks or that game ranks for like regular season games for Eagles fans, Fran? well you know the the game that i instantly thought of like as i was uh like when i came upstairs and i'm like getting stuff ready for post game show and like the the game that i thought of was the 2017 like jake elliott was the 63 yarder like you know that that unpredictable but that didn't have like the comeback nature you know of this one where like they come back from you know they score 26 unanswered um this it's up there you know i was talking with somebody last night and they asked uh you know where does this rank in terms of like games at the

link. Like, you know, we're talking like, all right, like, 2003. Like, that's, it's going to be up there. Especially if you're just talking regular season games. Definitely one of the most memorable games that we've seen, you know, in our lifetimes here. Any thoughts there, AJ? Yeah, I'm not, I don't have like the most like photogenic or, you know, whatever memory when it comes to games. But in terms of like, just like craziness, I can't think of one that I've covered that ranks that highly. So, yeah, no, it's definitely up there. Zach Passman says it was his wife and daughter's first game. Wow.

Oh, yeah, that got a good one. Sure did. And then we should say, you know, in terms of things they could have called, this is, this is, this is brutal. But we do have the screenshot of on the Jordan Davis touchdown as he's running. Julia, if you want to flash it up, if you go to the, if you go further to the sideline, poor Bob Lang, the Eagles medias are, is so happy in celebrating he sort of steps onto the field for like a like a half of. a second. And that would have been just the worst turn of events in Eagles history if he had been called for being on the field there. Yeah. And when you brought that up to me, my mind immediately went to when the Eagles' previous security director, Butch got hit on a sideline infraction.

I forget who was the opponent on that? We're talking about it. He trucked the ref. It was 2004. I remember that one. Well, it was my first year at Temple. E.J. was eight years off of the game. What's that? Opening kickoff of the game. So different situation there. Different, yeah, from the first play of the game, the last play in the game. That would have been, I mean, could you imagine, could you imagine the storm in the city if that had been called? Just crazy.

I feel like you can't blame him, you know. Yeah, I mean, crazy game, crazy result. But you got to stay on the sideline. And he knows that. I'm sure he knows that. E.J., what would they have called that if? What would they, what would that game have been called if, if that flag had been thrown? Like, oh, you want me to coin?

You want me to coin it? Uh, they just happened. The, the, the Bob Lang blender. You got to be kick. You got to be quicker. You got to be quicker. Somebody else coined it already. I was quick yesterday.

The Bob Lang blunder is what I, what I, what I remember. No, the Bob Lang blender. It's a mistake. Well, don't be. You don't have to throw blunder as more than you're thinking worse. Do you have a bird pun for this? No. Oh, so you don't even try.

You're getting on me to be going. I'm not as good at this as you. I can't just come up. You don't coin things. Yeah. That's beyond my capability. Any leftover nuggets or anything, Fran? I mean, Zach Bonn, aside from that one miss tackle, continues to play at an insane level.

Yeah. It's crazy when he's like when he's just covering Pooka Nakua. I know. That was a great play by him, you know, picking that up after the motion. And then that one way, I mean, the one catch Nakua had on him where he's like just draped over him. It's an impossible catch. It's just crazy the level he's playing it. He's, he's turned into a really, really good player.

We talked about the Devante Smith game when he touched down. That was on yesterday's post game show. That's it. Really quick. So the plays that we did yesterday. we did the Zach Bon Interception on the opening drive

we did the Devante Adams touchdown over Reed blanket chip the Devante Smith touchdown and the Goddard touchdown so if you're watching this and you're like oh like how come you guys didn't break that down those are on the post game show feed

and there's a video up on the PHLY Sports YouTube page that's got all the breakdown so you can go check that out as well. Beautiful. Anything else from you, E.J.? One quick thing, Tank Bigsby still has not featured on offense. So at what

point do we reframe that conversation from skepticism from the about the eagles messaging to skepticism about the trade compensation because they have a returner who i mean i know that it was tough to catch those kickoffs on one on the one hop there but still like i don't know the two weeks in this trade is not looking looking like a great one for the eagles what what i would say is i don't know that the running back value was necessarily like oh they're training for this guy so that he can, you know, that he can take eight carries a game. I think it was more like, all right, like as a as a fail safe option for 2025 and for 20206, because he's under team control for next year as well. So I don't necessarily think that it was going to be like early

payout for his running back value. That said, like the emphasis on him being a returner and then him having this struggle. I mean, you're, Bo, you're never wrong. You were just early with that swooper last week. That's right. Yeah, you should have, should have re-uped it. That's right. I mean, to me, I think it's not an indication that they were telling the truth. It's an indication that they are going out of their way to pretend like they were telling the truth. Oh, I don't know. That's a stretch.

Don't play him. Don't play him. They're just throwing their tracks as much as possible. Just keep AJ Dillon out there. That'll show them. Yeah, I mean, can we give Tank Biggsby a coward's draw carry, please if we're going to just be wasting these carries? I agree with that.

Yeah. All right. Good stuff, everybody. We will be back tomorrow at 2 o'clock. We will have E.J. in studio. We'll hear from Brandon Graham. The unblocked Brandon Graham on the big block from Jordan Davis. So plenty more to come.

Check out EJ's early bird on all-PHLY.com. Check out that Slim Davis T-shirt on the All-PHLY store. And that's all we got. Oh, yeah. Victory Monday. Shirt release. Nicely done by the quick turnaround with the All-City folks. And that'll do it for the seven. of the PHA by Eagles podcast, comment, like the video, subscribe.

I mean, don't be a, don't be a, you know, don't pull your weight, okay? We're almost to 50,000. What? We're almost to 50,000 subs, yeah. Yeah, we got to get there. It's a lot of subs. It's a lot of hoagies. I don't even make that correlation.

Yeah, it's tough. Tough way for you to end up. There are that many submarines in the world, probably not. You're going to be thinking about the way you end at the pod all day. I promise you. I promise you that whole top of you. That makes one of us then. This is absolutely gone from my memory in 30 seconds.

Watch it and move on. That'll do it for this episode of the P.HL. My Eagles podcast. Thank you, Julia. We'll talk to tomorrow at 2 o'clock. And as always, oh, by the way, that guy eating soup on the plane, throw him off the plane. Yeah, total violation.

Absolute violation. Eating soup on the plane is like borderline arrestable. We will talk you tomorrow. Also, shout out to Bill, or to Bob in the chat. Bob Rinaldi, who said, it was a sicko that I saw out in the wild on Saturday out of the orchard. So, him and his daughter, and his daughter both diehard listeners of the show. So shout out to Bob. Shout out to Bill as well, who lives around the corner I saw at a school event, which is a reason.

Who also is a diehard listener of the show. And shout out to Barry. There's got to be a Barry out there somewhere. Shout out to Bo. Yeah. shout out to Brent. Do you have any bees, E.J.? Not Bo.

I bet there's a BJ out there somewhere. Blunder. Don't go there. Because you got your Mac Weldon's protected. Oh, man. This really took a turn at the very last second. You know what? Now I'm going to be happy about the end of this. Now I'm going to be the one thinking about the end of this pod the rest of the day.

All right. I'll do it. We'll talk to you tomorrow. And as always, we love you.