PHLY Philadelphia Eagles Podcast - Eagles film review: Fran Duffy explains how Nick Sirianni’s Eagles offense FAILED after 21-0 lead

Episode Date: November 24, 2025

It’s film review Monday, so Fran Duffy and Deniz Selman are here to break down everything that went wrong in the Eagles’ 21-point collapse to the Dallas Cowboys, from Jalen Hurts missing open receivers to uninspired playcalling by Kevin Patullo, conservatism from Nick Sirianni, the absence of a pass rush on defense and more. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

All right. So beautiful start as we're off and running here on the the PHOI Eagles podcast. Some technical difficulties. So behind the scenes here. Okay. So no bow today. It's just going to be myself and day niz. And right before the show, Lindsay says, Frank, can you tilt your camera down a little bit? Just reframe. I go to tilt down and it knocked out my power cable. So I got to boot back up. And so when I boot back up, they come on and we are live. So here we are. Let's get going. Obviously, we are here from the. Xfinity Mobile Studio presented by our friends at Bet365 and Ashley. Danes, you are outside of your comfort zone. Thank you very much for joining us here today because usually you've got the entire week to be able to go through the film. You had to do it in just a few hours this morning, had to go through the, what I coin as the buzz through.

How did that go for this morning? Oh, yeah, this is normally my emotional recovery day, right? And, you know, we already have the short week. So, like, it was going to be a film day for me anyway. I don't know how you do it, Fran. I mean, like, I have, I already had tremendous respect for you. But now that I, you know, like working on a deadline like this, like to be able to talk about the film by two o'clock on the next day, it's not easy.

I mean, I normally take about five minutes of play. Like, it takes me about eight to nine hours to get through the whole thing. And certainly they don't have that amount of time today. And I certainly did not get through the film, by the way. Like, we kind of divied it up. Like, I focus more on the defense. some of the explosives that the defense gave up, then I'm happy to talk about.

And I'm eager to hear what you have to say about the offense. Well, let's get into it. But before we do that, I wanted to remind you guys of something we've got going on here at PHOI and across our entire All-City Network over the course of this week. And that is our Black Friday sale. And this is something you absolutely want to take advantage of, not just through today. It starts today, but it goes all the way up through the end of Thursday. You want to make sure you take advantage of this.

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Then we've got our Cyber Monday sale that starts just this Friday going up through next Tuesday. that's 30% off everything in the store, up to 75% off sale on some items. So I want to make sure you take advantage of everything we've got going on here this week. Obviously, happy Thanksgiving to everybody out there that is celebrating this week. That said, Danes, we've got a lot to get to. Tough Eagles lost yesterday. There's no getting around that. That was a tough one to swallow, a tough one to rewatch.

Let's start things off with the big takeaway presented by our friends at Xfinity. And we're going to start on the offensive side of the football where, look, the numbers, not friendly for this Eagles offense. It has been a downward spiral since the by week. You know, as good as the defense has been over the course of this stretch here, the offense has been a downward slope. Where does the offense stand right now when you're looking at some of these key metrics that you keep an eye on with your big fancy stats? Yeah, I mean, I think the offense has not had a good fabric to it throughout the season. I mean, we've been saying this over and over again, like, you're coming on every Monday talking about the issues with the scheme. I've been coming on on Fridays with probably, like, more detail than people want to hear about how upset I am about the scheme and about a bunch of the consistency metrics.

Right now, the offense is 17th in EPA per drive. It's their worst EPA per drive level that they've had since 2020. But that's been propped up. So 17th, again, below average. Yeah, second. Not in the top. half of offenses despite being the most expensive offense in the NFL. Correct.

And it's been propped up by unsustainable things as we've been talking about. The low turnover rate, which we saw revert a little bit yesterday, the off the charts red zone success, which is actually continuing. But when you look at the consistency metrics like success rate, these are play level things. Like what percent of your plays are successful? Series conversion rate, one of the things I talk about all the time. What percent of the time, when you have a first down, you end up moving the sticks, right? These are things that are larger sample and more predictive of what's going to happen going forward,

sometimes than EPA is because EPA is based on explosives and turnovers a lot. So the Eagles right now are 25th in offensive success rate in the NFL. It is their worst success rate number that they've had since 2005. I heard Sheel talk about this earlier today. I'll continue with some of the subsets of this. They are 22nd in passing a success rate. It is their worst level of passing success since 2020, which was obviously a disastrous season. The 22nd in rush success as well, which is their worst since 2014, okay?

This is like the Chip Kelly run inside zone on every play year, right? 70% series conversion rate ranks 24th. This team has been top 10 in series conversion rate every season under Nick Siriani. Explain serious conversion rate for our new listeners. So it's when you have a first and 10, do you go? get the first down or do you end up, does the drive end up ending, right? Like, so if you get it on first down or you get it on third down, fourth down, doesn't matter. Like, do you move the sticks? So it's the rate of moving the sticks. League average is 73%. The Eagles are a little below

league average. They're 24th, but compared to how they've been in the last four years, they are way below, not even close. And as I've made a point to mention on the show every week, they are going three and out on one third of their drives, which is the worst rate in the NFL since the 14 Raiders who sucked, like it was a terrible team. So it's like the absolute worst rate of going three and out, not only this year, but any of the last, what is that, 11 seasons in the NFL. And, you know, when you, I know you're going to bring up some of your grabby grabs and talk about the offensive scheme. There are a bunch of reasons, I think, that we can talk about and how this relates to the limitations of the scheme on, especially the passing game.

Yeah, well, it was kind of interesting, just kind of taking in all of the analysis, not just internally from everything here at PHOI, but just, you know, around the Eagle zeitgeist, right? Like, you know, what are people talking about coming off of what was one of the most disappointing losses we've seen here in the last few years under this, certainly under this regime? And, you know, some people, it's like, oh, they were, they were too conservative. They ran the ball too much. And other people are like, they were too aggressive. They need to run the ball. They should have sat in the lead. At the end of the day, you know, we were talking, you and I were exchanging text last night.

And it was like, all right, they, uh, obviously, they were calling past plays that didn't work, like, for, for whatever. And so we're interested to see, like, okay, coming out of that and coming out of this game and going through the film, why didn't they work? Was it, was it, Jalen? Was it the scheme? Was it the routes? Was it, you know, who was at fault there? Was it there was a protection? What were the big reasons why?

Because honestly, in the broadcast, we didn't get a good glimpse of a lot of the stuff that was happening down the field. With a lot of it was horrendous broadcast last. I mean, it's like it's Fox's number one. I listened to Merrill, so I didn't listen to what they were saying. But in terms of the replays, I mean, like, this is the number one crew on Fox. And we can't get a replay of some of the, like, biggest key plays of the whole game. So, you know, I honestly think, yeah, I honestly think if you say, like, all right, like, NBC, Fox, like, CBA. Like, like, I think Fox, from a production standpoint, like, it's just they are, they are behind everybody else in terms of, like, what they offer in terms of, like, value to the viewer.

sitting at home. I think they've got some catching up to do. That said, let's get into some of the film. Let's get into some of the screenshots. And we'll start. Lindsay, let's start with Carl. Because I just, I knew it was going to be Dana's and I. And I said, you know what?

What is going to get Dana is riled up the fastest? And that is going to be some of the play design. Obviously, you did so much with the hitch route rate last week and really kind of spun the conversation forward across the entire Eagles atmosphere. For anyone who missed it, Anyone who missed it, the Eagles run more hit-trouts than any team in recorded history. Like, true media goes back to 2012 on this, and no one has run more hit-trouts than the Eagles. And they have three of the top five hit-trout percentage receivers in the league. Dallas-Cotter, John Dodson, and Devante Smith are all top three, are all top five in percentage of hit-trout's run.

So I'll let you continue, your friend. Well, let's get into this. So, Lindsay, if you can go to curl one, first third and long of the day. here we go now these are not like hitch routes these i would i would say are like deep curl routes but it's the same general idea right and these are a little bit further down the field now we talked about this last week and they ran something similar and it was like oh they only had one that was past the sticks all three of these are past the sticks so there's that it was good now i circled the two guys that are close to the formation here and that's uh various cooper at the top

and that's uh dallas goddard to the bottom uh and what you see with with uh both these guys is that they're going to chip the edges. This was a very common occurrence in yesterday's game where they were using guys to chip the defensive ends for Dallas over and over and over. I would say sometimes to a detriment, maybe a little bit too long, but this was the first play call 30. Again, and not only to Fred Johnson's side. I mean, like one of the things I noticed live is that like you've got Will Shipley over there chipping Dante Fowler who might be rushing against Jordan Milata, right? Like it wasn't just a Fred Johnson thing. It seemed to be philosophical approach. We're going to line up

an empty and we're going to have the running back line up really tight and chip a guy. Have the tight on chip a guy and that takes away obviously a primary route in the coverage, in the concept. Lindsay, let's spin this to the next shot here. As you can see, Jalen Hertz takes the snap and he drops

back and look, the Cowboys, they're playing cover two and when you've got those three routes working down the field, Jalen basically is to kind of pick his spot and against this cover two zone defense where you've got two deep safeties. You've got that middle hole defender right in the middle there, right between the hash marks. That's going to be a safety there. And then you've got four defenders underneath.

You're going to have two voids in the coverage where you're going to be able to kind of pick this apart. One is down the seam to the right, right on the 30 yard line. And then you're going to have another one right in front of that Tampa middle linebacker working right between the hash marks. That route at the top ends up getting taken away. But with these routes, and that is the thing. And it's the same thing when you're talking about those hitch routes that are closer to the ball is about timing and rhythm. you if you don't if you do not hit it at the top of the drop and let it rip it's going to get the zone defense is going to take it away it's not going to be a viable throw otherwise you're throwing it into a tight window we know that jalen hurts does not want to throw it into these tight windows he is going to be more conservative so you got to hit the top of your drop and you got to let that thing rip and he does not do that here on this play instead he is basically resigned to the fact like oh there's a lot of guys playing in zone coverage i'm just going to throw to the check down here on third and 14 but if we go to the next shot lindsay you can see like j Dylan is already, he's getting ready to throw the checkdown. He has stepped into this throw by this point.

This ball should have gone to A.J. Brown. This ball could have gone to Dallas guy at work in the middle of the field. Like those guys were both open by the structure of the play, by the design of this play, say like, yeah, like that ball should have been ripped to one of those guys. Now, it ends up going to Darius Cooper in the flat. They rally, they tackle, they make the stop. The next play is fourth down. You have the roughing the punter kick, roughing the punter call, and the Eagles keep the football.

So this should have been a three and out, ended up not being a three and out. and the Eagles are able to get a touchdown later in their drive anyway. But what I wanted to bring up was that a little bit later in the game, you got another third and long type of situation. And Lindsay, let's go to the next one. Same idea, right? Again, you've got there's three deep curl routes over the ball. Jalen Hurth, you've got to drop back, and you've got to kind of pick your spot.

Read the defense. I understand where your matchups are. You're reading leverage of defenders. You're going to go through, pick your spot, top of your drop, let it rip. now here's the one difference bottom of the screen because it's the same idea where it's an empty set

and you've got those two guys chipping Saquan Barkley is chipping at the bottom that's AJ Brown chipping at the bottom so you don't even have any J. Brown running one of these vertical routes like AJ Brown is going to chip a defense event and release to the plot here on this play so let's go to the next shot

Jalen takes the snap he drops back this zone defense completely erases this there is nowhere for Jalen to go with this football yeah there there is no this one he hits the top And I'm like, oh, man, like there is nowhere for him to go. So he ends up saying, all right, well, I got, I have to settle for the checkdown again.

So let's go to the next shot, Lindsay. Uh, he goes to the, goes to the checkdown. And this ends up going to Saquan Barkley. And Saquan takes the checkdown. He starts running. He gets chased down from behind by a defensive end who knocks the ball out and it's a fumble. This type of too high coverage and, you know, cover two in particular, Dallas played cover

two seven times in the first half alone. It's a coverage they play a lot on the. season and we've talked in the past about how jalen sometimes has trouble recognizing these um you know like clever rotations into cover two there was nothing clever about any of these i mean these are just flat flat out regular old cover two like you can tell it's cover two pre-snap you can tell it's cover two throughout the whole thing sometimes it's like half inverted where the the safety becomes the mike and the nickel like becomes one of the high safeties or something but it was not that kind of like oh man i can't you know it wasn't like todd bulls like rotating into cover

to Jaylen didn't know what it was. So given that and the fact that with the chips, there was a lot of time to throw on that first one in particular, you know, it's disappointing to see Jalen get off that so fast. And also, given that that happened, like why are you calling similar concepts again later, especially when, you know,

you become more predictable and they can just, you know, cover those up with the same coverages. No, and no question. And honestly, and that's an example of, all right, like you can point to a little bit of everything on those two places. It's the same concept. You can say, like, all right, like, Jalen did not read it out well on the first one. It's a little predictable.

You've got duplicate plays and it didn't work. Like, so now they were able to plaster these routes better. Like, it's a little bit of everything. So everyone's kind of looking for like that one magic bullet with this offense. Say, like, oh, it is this person's fault. No, like this is a full team effort to be this bad in the passing game right now. And real quickly, let's go to one last one before we go to our first break, Lindsay. Let's go to ISO one because this is also like exemplary of what I'm talking about.

this is another good this one is second and long and this is again like i watch this and i'm like it is it is an uninspiring past game concept right like there is nothing none of these all four of these routes like nothing complements the other right like it's everyone everyone just kind of uh you you win one-on-one or you don't win and it's up to jalen to hit the top of his drop and figure out like where he's going to go with the ball i don't like the spacing in the middle of the field you've got the slot receiver basically running right into the passing lane for the the in-cut from Dallas Goddard, and you've got these two routes outside the numbers. And that's what you got.

For those who don't know, this is a famous Fran pet peeve when you have the two in-breaking routes, you know, going into the same part of the field. And this has happened with this team over and over again. I mean, last week there was one where they almost ran into each other, which I'm sure you remember as well. Let's go to the next shot here, Lindsay. And you can see, like, Jaylon drops back, and he's looking to his right. And he's like, all right, like, I'm going to, he's hitting the top of his drop.

Not really sure where is he going to go. Maybe he's going to go to Dallas Goddard here. Maybe it's Devante Smith at the top. Let's go to the next shot. And now all of a sudden he gets his eyes all the way back to the left. So it's like, all right. Now he's not sure where he wants to go. Is he going to go to, I believe that's, that's, uh, that's, uh, that's, uh, that's

John Dotson, yeah, yeah, that's, that's, that's dotting at the top. And honestly, like, I feel like that that probably was the throw here. He's going to, if you let go of this right now, he's at the top of his drop. they would be an anticipatory throw on an isolation route of that deep curl route. He probably could make this throw, put it on him, and it's a spot throw, and it's probably a reception. But he does not pull the trigger here. Let's go to the next one. He gets his eyes back towards the middle of the field.

Pressure starting to feel him a little bit, and you can see, like, he's already now. He's unsure where he's going to go with the football, and the pressure is starting to get home. Go to the next shot here, Lindsay. And one thing that stood out to me is like, even like the player, like Dallas Goddard is going double palms up here. he's like what the hell's going on right like and i don't know if that is it the spacing is that he thought like the ball should have been out at this point like uh and this isn't like even like a call out on goddard i think it's all more just like exemplary of like these guys just there's not a lot of like confidence there's not a lot of like uh you know usually like i remember there was

the uh what stuff and you might remember this the line that jeff stallin used to drop a couple years ago they're during that soup bowl rummer was like you know the um execution breeds. So execution fuels emotion. Yes. And it was like those guys were playing with so much fire and so much energy. It's the opposite right now. Like you can just see like there was bad body language across there along the offensive line, bad body language from skill players. We've seen this time and time again. And I think it's everybody's everybody's kind of taking turns with where that's going to go. And let's go to just the last shot here. This ends up being a very anti-typical Jalen Hertz play. He tosses this up to Devon. Very dangerous. Yeah.

picked off just an ugly play and again like that's one one looking I'm like all right like I don't like the scheme I didn't like the excuse from the quarterback I didn't like the body language like the whole thing just like just did not feel good they did not feel good watching that back yeah so this passing game a little bit of everything but honestly we'll talk about this on the other side of the first break here it's not just the scheme that's letting them down there were there were times where I felt like there were opportunities for the quarterback to make plays I did not think this was a great Jalen Hertz game, despite the numbers.

I did not think this was a great Jalen performance. We'll get to that on the other side of this first break. All right, well, let's first hear from our friends over at Ashley, because Ashley's Black Friday sale event is happening right now, and these deals hit hard, door-busting savings on today's most wanted sofas, sectionals, dining, bedrooms, and mattresses, upgrade your home for the holidays, and take advantage of zero percent interest for,

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your team goes up by 17 points with an instant payout on straight bets and parlays marked as winners. It's good for the NFL. It's good for college football. It would have hit yesterday in that Eagles game. The Eagles go up 21 nothing. Boom, you can rest easy the rest of the night. Even though the Eagles choke it away, you would not have had to worry about that. That was an an ordinary result. We know, whenever the moment, it's never ordinary at Bet365. And of course, we have breaking news from Bet365. New customers now get $150 in bonus bets when you bet just $5. Win or lose, you sign up, use the code P-H-L-Y-365, deposit $10 and place a bet for five to get $150 in bonus bets if your bet wins or loses. Those bonus bets can be used on the spread,

totals, player props, futures, and more. Whatever the moment, it's never ordinary. At Bet-365, be 21 or older and physically located in PA if you or someone you know has a gambling problem and wants help call 1 800 gambler and then we will also again just a quick reminder for our friends at ashley that black friday sale event is happening now the deals hit hard upgrade your home for the holidays take advantage of zero percent interest for 60 months plus again get that free gift with purchase ashley black friday starts here all right so Welcome back to the PHOI Eagles podcast. I want to quickly, Dana, you and I got together for this event last year.

It's a lot of fun. The day before Thanksgiving, so Wednesday afternoon, all day, PHOI is going to be live at Redding Terminal Market. So you want to make sure you go, come down and join us. We've got a great slate of shows planned for you throughout the course. Starting in the morning, we've got Cuzz and the Anthony Gargano show is going to kick things off. We've got the P. H.O.I. Eagle Show, the P.H.O.I. Flyer show. All of our covers from all of our teams.

We're all going to be down there at Reading Terminal. come down. I'm going to try. I'm going to get some DeNix. I know I'm going to get. I got to get some Uncle Gus. Yeah. Absolutely. I've got I've got the whole family coming with me. So everybody's coming down. It's going to be a lot of fun. Come join us. You want to get a little bit last minute like Thanksgiving shopping, you know, pick up a couple things for a side. There's something you want to make. Come down and join us on Wednesday over at Redding Terminal Market. Danes, there was a lot of fun last year. I'm looking forward to you. Yeah. I had a blast last year. Unfortunately, I will not be there On Wednesday, as our family travel plans mean that we're leaving town that morning,

but because we've got to get back for Friday, so it was going to be too short a trip to my, to go see my parents otherwise. But, yeah, I'm sure everyone there will have a great time. I'm sure you guys will have a great show. All right. Well, let's get to the rest of this passing game here and kind of put that in bed. Real quick, by the way, Fran, if I can just say, because there were so many people saying, like, they took their foot off the gas, right?

You know, they were so conservative. they took their foot off the gas, like they kept running it. This was kind of a narrative, which I didn't quite understand. And then you turn to some of the more mainstream coverage, you know, NBC Sports Philly, you know, you know, Rube and Ron Jaworsky and, you know, you know, slightly older guys. They're saying exactly the opposite. They're like, you know, they abandoned the run, right? And it's just, it's important to like just mention that they only ran the ball five times in the second half.

there were there were seven runs and 29 passes called after the game was 21-0 so this idea of they took their foot off the gas and they just tried to rely on the run is empirically false like i know you can say like they ran it on a couple of first downs and that killed but they only ran it on one second and long which is my main pet peeve after after it was 21-0 now um the like pass plays didn't work and sometimes that can make it seem like you're being conservative because you're not moving the ball but they did try to pass the ball. Like it wasn't, it wasn't one of those where it's like they thought it was last year and they kept giving it to Sequin. That was not the case. I'm not saying they should have

run it more. I'm just saying it's not factually true that they stopped passing it and we're just running it. That's why we're focusing on the past to start the show. Yeah, I was talking with somebody that would had been involved with the team a couple years ago and they texted me last night saying like, man, like they just said the run game. Like what's going on? And I was like, dude, like Sequin ran the ball 10 times for 22 yards yesterday. We'll talk about that. Uh, there's going to be the focus of my article that'll be up for. high hearts later today or tomorrow. But, yeah, the run game, not effective once again.

But we'll get that one. No, four for 16 in terms of success rate in the run. And two of the successful ones were a quarterback sneak and a quarterback draw. So there were two successful running back runs the whole game. One was a first down by Sequin. The other was a five-yard run on first and 10, which some models don't even consider successful. So, like, depending on the model, it was either three for 16 with one successful running back run or a 4-4-16.

So the run game wasn't good, but it's not like they were continuing to go to it. I mean, they stopped running the ball in the second half. No, they certainly, like, wanted to continue to throw the football, but we're unsuccessful for a variety of reasons. We went through a couple plays already. Let's take a look at some of the vertical plays that we saw down the field. And we saw that was that early, deep corner out,

that shot play that they called the Devante Smith, was slightly overthrown by Jalen Hertz. And I honestly, going back and watching it, I wasn't sure if this was an overrunner. overthrow from Jalen or if it was a bad landmark from Devante like it was one of the two those guys like weren't on the same page the ball was not clear it was not on the path that Devante was going on so one of there was a mix up on on those plays but this was a concept that is widely known as Yankee and so we'll go to that that one first here Lindsay so let's go to

Yankee one and what you get on Yankee is it's basically it's a version of a three level stretch concept where you have Devante Smith at the top he's going to work towards the middle of field like it's a post and then break back towards the pylon on a corner route you've got a deep crosser from a j brown coming from the other side and then the tight end it's going to serve as flat control underneath now on this play he's again you're going to get the tight ends chipping those defense events right which is fine on a shot play like this i'm actually perfectly fine with that uh the i don't love the tight at the the receivers and tight ends chipping on those all curl routes uh mainly because like again like those are all curls from the last segment that's a

timing throw that's not like a long developing play you shouldn't need chip help for those kinds of plays because that should be a rhythm like ball out quickly. I'd rather get all five out into the route. So that was a little bit puzzling for me. But on this one, I'm okay with that. So Dallas is going to chip the defensive end and then release late as flat control. So again, Jaylon's going to drop back. This ends up being a deep ball overthrow right near the pylon just short of the end zone. But they come back to a playoff of this a little bit later. I believe it's the very next series. Lindsay, if you go to the next shot here, going back the other way. So the next quarter, same idea, right? And it's like, hey, it was there first, first time.

let's go back to it now they put a little bit of a different spin on this version again you've got that deep post route this time that that that move that route from the bottom is jehan dotson it's devante smith coming on the or no that's i'm sorry that's uh i believe that's cooper coming on the big crosser on the over on the over on the over on the vertical route i think so then who's running this route is that a j and the pink cleats at the top AJ is in the pink, yeah. All right. So AJ is running the big post on the back. So, Lindsay, if you go to the next shot here, that's the one spin off of this. Now, because of this, this actually makes this play a little bit tough for us on the outside to determine what is the read for Jalen Hertz. Because typically, when you have that three level stretch play, the first version I showed you, you're kind of working this touchdown to checkdown, right? Like you're going to work the deep route, then the intermediate route, then the checkdown.

Well, when you have this added post on top of it, is he, is Jalen supposed to read this that first route by Jahan Dotson and then you're going to hit A.J. Brown on the backside of it. Or are you going to work AJ? Or I'm sorry, are you going to work Jahan to Devante then to AJ? Like that makes it a little bit cloudy. Regardless, this is a play that was left on the field from Jalen Hertz. I actually really like this design from the from the Eagles offensive coaching staff. Let's go to the next shot here. And you could see like again, like typically if he's read the this out. This is the first read. Jahan Dotson's first read like that, you know, whether it's, you're working the front side to the backside post or if you're working the high, you're working high to the, uh, the, the three level stretch play, uh, either way, you're going to start with this, this big corner out from Jahan Dotson. So let's go to the next shot here. When Jalen takes the snap and starts to drop back, the every, like he should have the green light here where the leverage from that corner and the leverage from that safety say, all right, that safety is going to run over the top. He saw, oh, yeah,

This is the same Yankee play that they ran in the previous drive. And John Dotson's got that corner turn. So John Dotson wins on the route. He should be able to beat the single high safety with this throw. It's going to be open. Now, he does not throw this to Jahan Dotson. So it's like, okay, what is he actually looking for here on this play? Let's go to the next shot.

And again, you've got the big crosser. This is coming from A.J. Brown. And then you've got the deep post, the big post route from Devante on the back side. both of these throws are available to Jalen Hertz. You know, I, you know, maybe he's, if he, if he is reading that, the crossing route from AJ, maybe he's worried about the safety underneath right there on the 50 yard line. That's Donovan Wilson.

And he's like, ah, you know, the flat control didn't do quite enough to be able to hold him underneath. But either, you know, again, John Dotson's going to be open. Let's go to the next shot here. Like, John Dotson's open. Devante Smith's open. If you want to cut this loose over the top. And again, AJ, if you want to throw this to the sideline,

AJA should be able to outrun that pursuit defender, but Jalen Hertz doesn't pull the trigger on any of these three, and he ends up rolling to his right, and he ends up settling for, I believe it was a checkdown to Sequin Barclay. It was incomplete. He's kind of rolling out to his right, tries to make a throw on the run,

and this goes incomplete. So, you know, this is one of those plays where I'm like, all right, like, I liked the design from the coaching staff. I liked, I liked this play. Attack the coverage, attack zone coverage. Like you had lots of different ways, manipulating zone coverage defenders deep and at the intermediate level, and they were not able to capitalize.

Yeah. It also looked like he had Granson in the flat for something like there. If he really like wants to just give up on the play, right? Because it's first and 20, I believe. So you really want to get to, you want to get something there to at least not make it second to 20. And okay. So let's get into the next one. And Lindsay, this one's called Levels.

So on this one, again, we can like rip like the, oh, you know, all the all hitches. all right, well, how come they don't see concepts where they're, you know, it's routes that complement each other. Well, on this play, they run routes that complement each other. This is a, this is a classic like West Coast offense staple where you've got a shallow cross running across the, you know, the underneath. And then you've got like a little in cut, like a dig route working behind it. That's Dallas got it working the end cut. This is against a cover two defensive scheme. So Lindsay, if you go to the next shot here, Jalen Hertz takes the snap and he drops back. A.J. Brown's at the bottom of the screen. He's facing cover two. You've got the

safety covered over top, and you've got the corner being aggressive with his jam underneath. Like, AJ is not, he is not a factor here on this play. And honestly, like, he right, he understands that he's running right into this safety. He's not running this all the way out. That's fine. Like, he knows, like, I'm the sacrificial lamb on this play. This play should be going to Dallas Goddard all day. And I'm going to show you exactly why. Lindsay, if you go to the next shot here, the shallow cross does its job. There are two underneath defenders right in the middle guard at the field in this coverage, both guys take the cheese and run for Devante Smith on the shallow cross. Dallas Goddard is going to be wide open here. Go to the next shot here.

Dallas is wide open, over the ball, hands out, right between the hashes. Like, this should be a chunk play all day. Now, you can look at the backfield and say, all right, all right, Jalen's already, he's running for his life here. What happened here? So if you go back, let's go to the next shot here, Lindsay. I rewind it a little bit. When Jalen hits the top of his drop, he's getting a little bit of speed pressure here off the left side from jordan my lot aside but honestly man like this is a play where it's like all right like yes you are getting edge pressure step up with your eyes up and deliver this football where it's supposed to go right like this is one like that that that is a fine pocket to be able to step up and deliver this football uh if we go to the next shot here

instead what we see from jalen is he immediately steps up and squares up and starts running to his left and they did a good job with their pursuit here the defensive tackle diggy zua is scraping over from the opposite side on a stunt and he matches Jalen and keeps him contained here and keeps him from scrambling. But again, like this should have been a chunk play for a first down middle of the field to Dallas Goddard and the ball doesn't go out. And so now Jalen kind of pirouettes in the backfield and ends up throwing this one away. This is a frustrating play. And this is like one of those things where it's like, all right, like, why do they play the way that they do? Why is it all hitches? And it's just like kind of kind of point to shoot. All right, well, this is a play where like you're asking

Jayland to kind of read it out and he does not get the ball where it needs to on this play. Now, that's the thing about this was, I mean, dude, like, I mean, I want to get your thoughts watching it live. There were a lot of times where Jalen would, like, look good in rhythm, like all of their best plays. It was like in rhythm slant flat, like, and they ran a bunch of slant flat in the game last night where it's like balls out to A.J. Brown fast, balls out to DeVante Smith fast. But Jalen is not a like a rhythmic thrower by nature.

Like that, that's not really like a strength of his. game he can do it but there's inconsistencies there and so if you are asking him to play that way uh and not doing anything to help him out and like make the window clear that's where you get the volatility that we've continued to see yeah based on some of the stuff that a j and nick syriani said after the game it sounded like dallas kind of um and and i'm curious to hear what you saw whether that whether what you saw confirms this but they said that dallas kind of changed the way they were playing some of those concepts in particular probably the slant thoughts because they were saying that the flats were there in the second half, that the slants weren't as much.

Maybe Dallas was overplaying the flat part of the slant flat a little bit in the first half. And then the, you know, the adjustment was to just check it down. What a timely point by you, Danes, because let's go to the play that I actually broke down in the postgame show last night. I was anxious to see what this looked like. The final sack, the final play offensively for the Eagles. So, Lindsay, let's just go to sack here. And on this one, again, it's third down coming out. I believe it was the two-minute warning.

You're going to get Jahan Dotson coming in motion here from right to left. And that signals man-to-man coverage. So that should be an automatic indicator for Jalen that, you know, yes, this is a zone-heavy defense. They played man a handful of times, you know, maybe three or four times on dropback so far in this game. But this looks like it's going to be man-to-man here. So where's my man-beater? What are we looking at? Let's go to the next shot and we'll take a look at the route concept.

It's ISO ball. All right. So more of what we've come to expect. This is not a slant, flat concept, but you've got the slant route from AJ Brown at the bottom of the screen. You got the vertical route that's basically like a deep out route from Jahan Dotson, who was the man, the motion man. You've got the ball route from Dallas Goddard at number three. He's going to kind of work the middle of the field and turn right past the sticks. He's going to be open.

You've got Devante Smith running the like the deeper like hitch route, a curl route at the top of the screen. So those are the routes here for Jalen. I think this was predetermined from Jalen all the way. I think he understood like, hey, it's man to man, who do I want to throw to when it's man to man? And if you take a look at the next shot here, Lindsay, he wants the slant route. Well, the corner is being ultra aggressive with AJ. And that linebacker, the whole player and a man, buzzes underneath it immediately. So it takes that throw away.

So now Jalen doesn't want to throw the slant. So now, again, when you're looking at like ISO football and it's not like pure progression read, like right to left like all right sequentially like you know like how it's just very clean you know I'm going to kind of work through my progressions a lot of times when you play this way it's going to be all right like I want to go

here now I want to go there like where are the quarterback's eyes supposed to go and he's working to the far left to start where does he go next let's go to the next he gets his eyes all the way to the far right he wants Devante Smith but Devante so you also see like Jalen's not in throwing

position right now right he's squared up to Devante so his feet don't follow Keep in mind, everybody keep in mind that this is third and two, and Dallas guttered is past the sticks right now. Yep, exactly right. And so now Jalen is looking to his right. He wants Devante. Devante's not open at this point, so he's not going to throw it now. So now, let's go to the next shot, Lindsay.

When he does get his eyes over to Devonte, he gets his feet over there, he doesn't throw it. He might have been able to squeeze his in. It would have been a contested target. It was very tight coverage. It's man to man. But let's go to the next shot. He gets his eyes towards the middle of field. But by that point, Dallas is already like, I mean, his round,

expired by this point that's the linebackers all over them and the pressure starting to get there this was a coverage sack all the way this was to me like this is this is not on landed and jordan like you know allowing leakage from the stunt this to me is a jalen hurt sack and a time when you could not give up a sack in that situation some some context for this play i mean it's third and two it's the biggest play of the game it's under the two minute warning with the game tied you have the ball third and two Dallas did not play a single snap of man coverage in week one a single one. I think it's still the only game in the NFL this year

where a team didn't play a single snap of man coverage. First half, this game, they didn't play a single snap of man coverage. Early in the second half, they started playing a little bit of man. They had played, I think, two or three snaps a man. But this was the first time that they had a four-man rush with man coverage behind it,

meaning that whole player, who takes away that slant, hadn't been there on any of the dropbacks in either of the two games. So this is man coverage with both a high safety and a whole player. It's the first time Dallas did that all year. So they changed it up in either of the games against the Eagles. They changed it up on this very last dropback.

And you have the motion by John Dodson, which gives you the coverage ID. And the thing that I was texting you last night, Fran, is how do you not have a better man-beater that you can check to in that situation? Like, I understand that they haven't run man coverage a lot. But why are you going through the gymnastics of that motion and getting that coverage indicator? They've got Triquoisee Bridges, a UDFA rookie. following Jahan Dotson, he's in the game due to injury or whatever it was, and that gives away the coverage,

do something that puts him in conflict. I don't know, like, do something that somehow makes them cover two routes at the same time. You know what I mean? Like, and to see that they, and they have all these man-beating concepts that they could call in these situations. I mean, they used to run mesh. That's gone away, right? They used to run that crash concept with A.J. Brown and one other person,

which is a good against man. And those all seem to have just been gone. I mean, it's mind-boggling to me. Well, let's, we'll finish. We'll put a wrap-a-bow on the past game and also talk through this Eagles run game right on the other side of this break. Well, now hear from our friends over at Xfinity

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why Eagle Show, Dana, I'm seeing a lot of people, like, saying, like, oh, you're looking at one screen grab of, saying, like, bad footwork. Look, I would love if we could show the video, unfortunately, take it up with Roger Goodell. I don't know what to tell you. Right now, we can't show video. You just have to take our word for it. The footwork was bad. Dallas Conner was open, and then, you know, we're going off the screen gaps.

It kind of is what it is. But, Dana, is anything else about the past game before we talked about this run game? Well, one of the things I wanted to say, just kind of zooming out, is that this limited scheme in the passing game is something that we've been talking about for years, right? This isn't new. This isn't like a Kevin Petulow specific issue. Like, this is something we talked about, you know, certainly last year with Kellynne Moore. I mean, remember, AJ Brown said our problem is passing. That was December of last year, right? Like, and, you know, a month and a half later, they're holding the trophy and smoking cigars. And so we kind of forget about it. But we talked

all year about how this passing game was not optimal in terms of scheme. It's just that it's been masked over by various things in all these years. And since Siriani's been here, since Jalen Hertz has been the quarterback, every year, something has somehow masked the fact that the passing game and the scheme is simple, right? RPO's on the QB run game in 2021. In 22, the RPO's in the QB run game continue. And now you bring A.J. Brown in and he's mossing guys downfield, right? You know, Jalen's throwing the clear out on dagger to him. And he's mossing the, you know, Fitzpatrick in the end zone or whatever. Like that added dimension, made that offense explosive and consistent.

2023. It's a continuation of all those things, honestly, but there were turnovers, right? The turnovers were the big problem that year on offense. 2024. Sequin's explosive runs and the run-heavy approach makes it so the passing game took kind of a secondary step. It didn't really matter

until the end when it kind of found itself a little bit. And throughout all these years, Jalen scrambling and getting first downs on broken pass plays has also been a consistent theme. Well, now, look at what's happening this year. They're not running the RPO's anymore outside of that Denver game. They don't have a single game where they ran like more than two RPOs.

There's almost no QB run game at all. There were some QB draws in one zone read yesterday. But for the season, for the season, there have been about a third of the number of QB runs outside the snakes. I know there was that one tackle trap read that Jalen kept that you liked yesterday as well. But the fact that we're getting so excited about those means is because they're so infrequent now. AJ is certainly not mossing guys this year.

I mean, he's getting locked up by Rock Yassin. Sequin is having a statistically, like he's statistically the worst or second worst running back in football right now by success rate, and that's including when he does get the yards before carry. Like I always break it down into runs where you get the one yard before carry and the ones where you don't.

And he's the lowest in success rate in both of those. And Jalen did have some scrambles in this game, but they had limited in fact, only one first down on a scramble, contrast it with what happened in week one when the passing game also wasn't good against Dallas, the same bad defense. The offense did not really work,

on that day either, except Jalen had those nine scrambles and was kind of, you know, played hero ball with his legs, which is something that he seems to be more hesitant to do as well. So when you don't have any of these bells and whistles to the offense and the actual fabric of the offense is so boring, these are the kinds of conversations we're going to have about the passing game every week. And it sucks. It sucks to watch and it sucks to be talking about it after a loss because we kind of, we've kind of known that this was going to lead to losses eventually. Yeah. And that's when you when you play in the like the game of the world where it's where it's going to be one score game one score game at some time at some point you're going to get

burned. And it's funny because I think there is a there's a section of the media that covers the team and then the fan base as well that nine months ago in preparing for that big game in February down in New Orleans. It was like, oh, if you if you just win a bunch of one score games like that's that's luck. Like that's going to regress back. And now it's like, oh, that this team just knows how to win, right? Like, you know, it can regress back the other way. Obviously, I'm referring to the Kansas City Chiefs, the fact that they were undefeated in unscored, or one-score games last year. And now our offer, well, I guess now they're not, they're won for it after they won a one-score game yesterday. But I think when you're looking at this team, they've been playing

with fire for most of this season. And I agree with your point wholeheartedly about the past game issues have been pretty consistent over the years, but they have found other ways to be able to mask that problem. And the run game is a big part of them. that and it's funny so i decided as i was going through game getting ready for you know my coverage this morning so you know i'm going to i'm going to write about saiquan in the run game he only had 10 carries yesterday so this is that's an easy way for me to just kind of take a look at what's what's going on here and so i just i'm going to post every single one of these so if you go up to social media pages like i posted all 10 of those runs i'm shocked at the vitriol that

say i'm not saying that he's without fault because i'm not saying it's not that he's been perfect I do think that he's pressing a little bit. I think that he's going, he's, you know, and I think that's the case for a lot of these guys is all right where I'm kind of, I'm big game hunting right now. Like I'm trying to show, you know, do a little bit extra. There was the, honestly, his first run. I felt like he could have kept that on track, a little bit more vertical.

And he tried to bounce it. I think he got spooked a little bit by the linebacker overshone being present in it in the A gap and he tried to bounce this outside. So it goes for a couple yards and it could have gone for more. But people are like, you know, just, I mean, just ripping. Sequin, and I'm going through, like, clip after clip after clip. And I'm like, all right, well, Fred Johnson missed the block here. I don't love, there was, they ran a bunch of different concepts in this game.

And I did, Fred Johnson did not have a good game in the run game. We've talked about how he's a better pass protector than run blocker. I think that was absolutely on display in that game last night. I think when you're looking at the rest of the group overall, like, they have, they haven't been great. Jordan Milata is not as good as he was last year. Landon Dickerson was banged up in the first half of the year and he's getting better, but he has his limitations.

Like he's better in a phone booth than he is out in space. We saw like they ran like a pin pool sweep play and Dallas Goddard misses the pin block on the defensive end. You've got Landon pulling out in space. Like that's not Landon's strength. So Landon doesn't look clear.

And the run gets strung out for a one-yard gain. Unusual pin pull with only Landon pulling, by the way. He didn't have the pull from the center or maybe because of the defensive alignment cam ends up climbing to a guy instead on that one. Yeah, it's honestly the entire, the entire operation. It's kind of similar to the past game where I'm looking at.

I'm like, all right, like, yeah, like, Sequan can be a little bit better. But to me, like, I don't think that he looks, he doesn't look like completely washed. People are saying, like, oh, like, tank Bigsby, like, he needs to be getting more touches. Like, tank, tank has looked good. And I'm a, I'm a tank Bigsby fan. I like Tank Bigsby. I was high on him coming out. But there's a, there's a difference when you, when it's, when you're getting a carry on,

on first and 25. Right. And what that, what that's going to do for your ability to have, to pick up big chunk gains as opposed to like, oh, you're getting the ball when it's, you know, first and ten or second and seven. I feel like structurally when you watch some of the Tank Bigsby runs, not necessarily yesterday. He only had one yesterday,

but when you look at some of the past few weeks, Sequin seems to be trying to follow the blocks, right? And that's one of the things that I like about Seiquan compared to, for example, Miles Sanders, who, like, never followed the blocks, right? Even when they were good. And the blocks aren't always there this year. And Tank Bigsby seems to be like, screw it. Like, you know, like that block doesn't look good.

I'm going to take this inside zone left run and cut it over to the other side. Even the gap scheme runs, he seems to be just kind of cutting into open space. And sometimes he looks more explosive because of that. But that's probably not a sustainable thing, where if you give him the ball every time, those runs are probably not going to work, you know, like consistently is my guess. Yeah. And Lindsay just flighted the comment there from Corey. He said tank Bigsby faces lighter boxes, but his runs look different, more decisive.

I would say those two statements are correlated. Like, yeah, it's easy to look decisive when you have a lighter box. You have less to read through. You know, so look, I think that, again, that it's higher up right. I'm going to write about it. So if you're a diehard, you'll be able to see my thoughts on the run game. But it is a group effort. And honestly, it has been a group effort throughout the course of the season.

When they have not played the New York Giants, this run game has been like one of the worst in football. I can go and remove what those games looked like and look at what the success rate would look like in the EPA per play. And it's rough. It's rough sledding out there for this rushing attack. for a lot of different reasons. So we can get into that, certainly.

Yeah, a couple of things real quick, friend, about the run game and also just the approach in general of this game. Much heavier 11 personnel than we've seen in the last four games. So the Eagles have been experimenting with heavy personnel and under center. That all kind of went away. There was a little bit of 12 and 13 early on in this game. They kind of started out in 12 and played a handful of snaps, but they ended up playing 73% of the snaps and 11 personnel.

they had, I think, four or five total under-center snaps the whole game, and that includes the sneak. So they kind of went back to what they'd been in past years, like an 11 personnel shotgun team. Seven of Sequan's 10 runs were out of 11 personnel. And so this was not one of those where we can just blame Grant Calcutera, right? Like his Grand Calcuttaire wasn't on the field for a lot of these runs. Grand Calcutera had his snaps heavily limited in this game compared to how much he'd been playing in the past ones. so this was not the same issues that we've been complaining about

like why are they you know inviting a heavy box and running out of heavy personnel this was not one of those games I mean they only had two snaps of extra offensive linemen this was this was they went away from all that stuff this week

and it still didn't work right like this kind of this soul searching continues like different approach approaches in different weeks and just nothing's working it's a little bit like your swooper season Fran I feel like you know every week like you seem to have a new approach

and you just you know it's just soul searching you know you look back to the film and you're like why did he do that why did he waste the turkeys here you know like like that that's just kind of watching the sequel's offense what i would say in my self-evaluation of swooper so far is that i am like i am the team that is like oh for four in one score games uh i've had so so many near misses and so yes i have gone outside my comfort zone in a couple of these and i've uh there have been a couple i'm like uh this is a little bit different than what i normally would do but we'll touch on that later this way. Every, every, every, every bad team points to those one score losses, Fran. It's, it's all about, it's all about the fabric. Another thing that really annoyed me, by the way, Landon Dickerson apparently told E.J. Smith last night that, um, I'm talking about him as if we don't know the guy, our friend E.J. last night, um, that they were, they were not, they did not have time on task against the five man fronts that Dallas played, um, that they did not expect them to play the five two fronts. They've been doing this for the last two games. And especially last week against Las Vegas, they came out in a 5-2 front. They played some 5-1 penny as well. And this is not something that should

have surprised the Eagles. I mean, they have three really good defensive tackles. They're going to try to play them all. And lining up in a five-man front to try to stop the run game is something that teams do all the time. Like, just because you weren't expecting Dallas to do it, like, can't you adjust to them doing it? Like, don't you have run plays against five-man fronts that you ran all the time last year with success? Like, that did not make any sense to me. Like, it's like, are you coming out and calling a play and then oh my god they're in a five-man front and you're running it anyway like I mean I just do not understand the the this like I'm you know I'm sure after the game Landon's tired like who knows exactly what he was thinking when he said that but it's just brain

breaking to me like it continues this pattern that the coaches continue during the week every week of oh you know we're we're so good that we get unscouted looks like as if like as if like you're not as if you're the only offense to ever get unscouted looks and the down scout it looks they're talking about aren't even all that interesting like it's like a five-man front like what are we talking about it's just like this excuse making of like we weren't ready for this is uh you know they think they're making excuses but it just makes you look unprepared so we got a lot to cover here uh what refer real quick we're going to go to our final break uh and i'm going to react to everything that dana is just said let's hear us hear from our friends over

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And then we'll hear from our friends over at Rothman Orthopedics. And I will tell you, just this summer, right before training camp, was outside. After a rainstorm, took a spill right out on my front sidewalk, hyper-extended my knee, woke up the next day, was in a lot of pain. What did I do? Took it right over to my local Rothen Orthopedics location. They got me fixed right up. They gave me what my regiment was going to be, set me up with a little,

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here on the p hl y eagles podcast uh lindsay let's take a look real quickly just our p hl y schedule the rest of the day you want to make sure you give support to all the rest of our shows got a big we got a big flyers game tonight so make sure you check in with with charlie and the gang 630 for the pregame show and then obviously right after the game uh for post game action uh right here on the P.H.O.Y. YouTube page, obviously, check out that entire group over at the P.H.O.Y. Flyer show. Danes, you hit on a lot there, but I should say, obviously, look, we've got, you know, some breaking news here, unfortunately, as we transition over to the

defensive side of the football. Jeremy Fowler and multiple other reporters reporting that Andrew McCuba has a fractured ankle. And so, you know, I would say that his season is probably in doubt. It didn't look good last night. It seems like we'd probably lost the other rookie safety my guess is for the rest of the year but you know we'll we'll see what uh what the what the prognosis looks like this is uh really bad news given the depth at safety macuba first of all had been certainly improved i mean uh vick talked in the last game in the last in his last presser that you know drew macuba he said he was like costing us big plays early in the year and those have gone away and that's certainly true um and so you know just as he's

improving. And just as he and Reed Blankenship, we're really forming a nice duo back there. It's really disappointing to see this because next man in is Sidney Brown. And we've talked a lot about Sidney Brown. I mean, he has a lot of issues when it comes to the mental side of things, knowing what to do, having discipline, like when he's, you know, coming in to tackle a guy, you know, all those things. This is not good. And I'm worried about this. Andre, Sam, for those of you wondering, is the only safety on the practice squad. The other thing that is worth mentioning is that how he did say in his presser after the trade deadline that Michael Carter can play safety.

And Vic, of course, like, kind of shot that down. Well, he's just so that Tom Nichols' best position. And the reason he said that is because he was thinking, well, you know, not really. Now, if it's worth anything on the three last. plays of yesterday's game, which were two kneel downs and a spike, okay? Cooper de Gene was the safety. So Cooper de Gene was back there with Sidney Brown as the second safety. Of course, Reed Blankenship also got hurt yesterday, and so they didn't have any, like they just didn't, they only had one safety left. So someone had to play. And it was Cooper de Gene playing safety with

Kili Ringo and Quinion on the outside and Michael Carter on the inside. Now, these were kneel downs and spikes so not exactly um you know it didn't exactly matter who was out there but that was the that was like that tells you something about the depth chart yes yeah uh so claire rightfully says andre sam or sam andre uh i dare to say that both might be an upgrade uh sam andre might be an upgrade over uh over brown i think we're looking at that sydney brown yeah definitely struggled down the stretch uh there there were a number of players i'm like yeah he'd probably like to have that back now cuz did bring up Anthony Gargano did say on the show this morning that we are now in Bovertime. Yeah.

So I think the big thing with Sidney, maybe he's a little bit better with a full week practice. Obviously, it's not a full week this week as the Eagles are on a short week of rest coming off the road, getting ready for Chicago, an offense that is going to stress you in a lot of different ways, all the different play action, all the different play action fakes and everything along those lines but um yeah definitely concerning here uh for for the back seven might get i mean cuss did say that he thinks that uh that that uh that read blanket chip will be back sooner rather than later uh not sure if that means by friday or not or just that it's not something

long term there with read so i mean there i guess there's a chance that it could be read and and de jean but yeah it's it's uh that's gonna be interesting to see how they do they go about this The exciting whites back there together. Look, Vic cares so much about practice. This is one more day than it would be for a Thursday game. I am curious if he tries to lobby Nick to have one real practice this week. Because I know they don't normally have any real practices for a Thursday game, but this is a Friday instead of a Thursday.

Is there a chance that they get in something that resembles a practice on Wednesday, for example? Or maybe not? I don't know. Yeah, that's a good question. I don't think the media schedule is out yet for this week. So not sure what that would look like from the Eagles from that standpoint. Let's really quickly. Let's hit on some super chats, Lindsay, because I know we've got a handful here that we can definitely hit on.

And we can start. Let's see. Let's go to the first one here. I believe it was from Musa. Yeah, I believe it was from Musa 86. Yeah, so Proposition A, Jalen is not a strong timing and rhythm thrower. Proposition B, hitches are a timing and rhythm throw. Proposition C, coaches are calling hitches at a historic rate. The question is, why? Yeah, you've basically summed it up. We've talked about it

in various forms over the class couple years. Like last year, it was a lot of the two by two stuff. And honestly, I haven't looked at with two by two this year. My guess is still high. Similar. It's similar. Yeah, but not as high as what it was. But either way, like that's still prevalent. Typically, when you're running two by two sets, like it's the same idea. where it requires like fast thinking like timing and rhythm timing and rhythm uh and when the ball's out looks great when the ball's not out quickly it's not and so that's moosa it's a it's a great question uh and it's something that uh unfortunately i don't think we have the answer to and it was a little bit less with stuyken so after stuyken left it definitely went up a little bit so that might

have been one of the things that stuyken was kind of keeping more controlled um and you know stuyken's not running as many hitches in indianapolis either uh but after stuyken left it kind of went up and it really went up with Kellan Moore last year. And who's running the second most hitches in the NFL, by the way? It is the New Orleans Saints. Let's go, well, look, do we really need to show the comment from Ike 860? I mean, it's clearly a Cowboys fan. But thanks for the $1.99.

Appreciate the $2 there from Ike down in Dallas or wherever he's from, from whatever dark corner he crawled out from. Miss Mr. Instinct left to Super Chat as well. just sucks how we will inevitably hear years from now that in hindsight we should have stepped in to have somebody else call plays uh when he wasn't ready so i'm i was doing again talking about kevin petula you and i haven't really i don't think we've talked about this i think that to me like when i'm looking at kevin petulah as a play caller yeah like hasn't been great i don't think it's been terrible i think that there are things that we've laughed about

where it's like oh like you know they run a play and then they run the compliment off of it like right after that like there's not like they don't like they can't they burns a hole in their pocket um you know and there have been i you know the the the runs on second and long and things like that um not it hasn't been great but i honestly i don't think like play caller is the biggest flaw with this offense right now i'm not i'm not sure i agree not in the sense of like the specific sequencing within the game but in terms of like why was denver like the rPO game and there hasn't been another one. You know, like, like, why did we have four weeks of, why did we have four weeks of under center heavy personnel, you know, and then, like, we've gone away from it. Like, I feel like

he's accessing different chapters of the playbook in different weeks and hasn't developed a feel for mixing it up and adjusting in game. Like, so, you know, we talk about Vic Fangio all the time. Like, he started one way. It didn't work. Next time they ran the same play. He had a different coverage and worked perfectly. And, you know, he stopped it. like he's adjusting in-game. I feel like the in-game adjustments from Siriani and Petulow, the offensive staff, have been so slow or non-existent within the game, right?

And I feel like they're very slowly and deliberately making adjustments in the following week, but by then, like, it's easy for the next defensive coordinator to game plan around whatever they're doing that week. And so I don't know if you, you're saying that's more of a game plan than play falling. Yeah, to me, like that's more, and that's where you, like, you split up, like, the playbook is like the,

overall like top down philosophy or like that's right training camp like this way and then it's like all right the game plan on a weekly basis that's the coaches pulling from the menu of the playbook and so like all right here are the x amount of plays that are installed for this week and then the play caller is the one who like enacts you know pulls from that weekly menu and says to me like if i were to stack it yes the game plans on weekly basis are like i'm curious to your question like i'm curious as to like some of the decisions and the how it fluctuates from week to week and like whether it's our identity um i don't even think it's necessarily like bad as much as like curious i think the top down philosophical stuff to me that's the like all the hitches and all that like to me like that is to me like that's

the bigger concern as opposed to like the down to down play calling so i i think i mentioned this on the show before i think it was bill wash like was famous for having like two game plans every week and depending on how the defense came out like he would just like scrap one and and you know like middle of the first quarter, he'd just go around and tell everybody, like, we're doing plan B, you know, like, forget plan A is out the window. And players apparently hated it because, like, practices were longer and meetings were longer because they had to learn two things. You can't do that anymore because of the, you know, you don't have time to practice and all that.

But you have some bread and butter staples that everyone knows how to run, like some of those RPO's, like some of the QB run stuff, that you can run against certain looks. And I feel like Petulo has been very slow at accessing those, right? He's just kind of been like, this is what we're doing. this week. We're going to go with this. We're going to run, you know, we're going to run out of this specific formation and do play action out of this specific formation over and over again. And by the end of the game, you can see the defense has kind of picked up on it and is, and is stopping it. And I think Stuyken had a really good feel for changing it up when needed, accessing a

different kind of part of the playbook when needed. You know, I don't know. Sometimes like, you know, your memories are, you know, like, see things more fondly than what you're living right now, but I, but I, but I don't remember a game where I was thinking like, oh man, like great sequencing by Patullo here, you know, like, um, there were a couple of opening scripts that, that might have been like that, uh, early in the season. Yes, there were, there were a handful of those. A handful might be strong. But yeah, there were a couple. Maybe, maybe three, but like, you know, that's, that, that kind of like speaks to my point of like, he's not adjusting, right? Like, and yesterday was an example of that as well. Like, the openers were good. I'm like,

you know, touchdowns on the first three drives, um, or three or four. drives depending on how you interpret the rough in particular one but like still i mean that's a that's a good start to the game that then uh deteriorates into into a bunch of uh passing concepts that aren't working against the coverage as you're seeing to not score a point against that defense in the second half is surprising um that said let's get to our last super chat if you if you had told nick syriani he wouldn't score in the second half you think you would have tried to score at the end of the first half this is now the third uh end of half give up that he's had this season week three against the Rams, week 10 against the Packers, and now this one, where he has time, he has timeouts,

and he just doesn't try to score. Like, and it is so maddening because the thing that he's worried about, like turning it over and giving them the ball, like, what are the odds that's going to happen? How much time is going to be left when that happens? Like, what are you talking about? Like, the thing that he's worried about giving the other team is exactly the thing that he has and is volunteering not to use. So how valuable can it be?

Like having the ball with like 10 seconds left, he chooses not to try to score there. And yet he's worried about giving the ball to the other team. And it drives me crazy. And I couldn't like, you know, I'm not going to be on again this week. So I had to, I had to mention that here. And like, Sheel made this point on his show on Philly Special last night. And I completely 1,000% agree is if you're going to sit on the ball, like if you're going to get. Just sit on it.

Yeah, yeah. Don't hand it off. Yeah. You're going to hand it off to Sequin. Like, what if Jordan Milata tears his ACL or Saquan Barkley like breaks his ankle on that play? Or he could fumble. Like, the only thing that can happen, the only thing that could happen on a run is you can,

you can fumble it. He said, oh, you know, we ran and see if we could run it out of there and see what happens. There are 17 seconds, there are 17 seconds left. Like, you're going to run it out of there? Like, how long is the run going to go that's going to convince you to try to score after that, right? I mean, there's 17 seconds left on your own 28.

So even if you get, like, a really long run, there's not going to be any time left. You know what I mean? Like, it's just, yeah. He's had one run. he's had one run this year it was the first run against the giants where he popped one on a play like that like it's like one run out of uh you know however many he's had this year there has been nothing that has shown that oh yeah and it's like a it's like a prevent style defense too you're not

gonna pop that for a long run it's not like there yeah anyway it's just remember remember after the green bay game remember what he said he said at the end of the half unless time is limited we're always going to try to score so just just think just think about that quote and and try to remember the end of a half where time wasn't limited like yeah that is literally the definition of the end of the half as i said to quote our french eel uh who also said this when talking about it last night if you had stopped the game at the end of the game last night and said like hold on hold on the eagles actually get 17 seconds with two timeouts left from the 40 like uh yeah they would gladly taken that opportunity and they wasted that opportunity at the end of the second quarter

exactly uh let's go to our last super chat here matthew greenwood 4516 uh it hurts me to see the hitch cutouts maybe I'm wrong, but wouldn't hitchh routes be more risky than pre-snap motion and crossers hit an easy button? Yeah, it wouldn't kill you. I do think like the, look, the hitchhout thing, it's not inherently, they're not inherently bad, but it's the volume, it's the lack of it being really meshing really well with what I perceive to be Jalen Hertz's like best traits. It's the fact that you've got receivers that can be really good after the catch.

that is you said a point last week about how like you don't get yards that you can get yards after the catch with with hit routes like j a j had a couple yesterday where it's like if you get it on time and the defender's not right on your hip like yeah you can drop step and get you can you can spin out of it sure you can spin out of it and go uh but you're not going to get it you're not catching it on the run you are facing back towards the line of scrimmage like uh so it's it's it's harder to be able to do that stuff so yeah i agree with that wholeheartedly um we have been going live now or if you count my not even understanding that we were live for the first 30 plus seconds

of the show. We've been live now for 71 minutes. We have talked very little about the defense outside of the Drumakuba injury. Overall, like a good defensive performance obviously downstrike against a good offense. Yeah, it was okay. It was okay. Honestly, like this was a game. On the pregame show yesterday, they asked me from my prediction.

I thought Eagles win 28, 21. I thought that both teams would have the ability to put points on the board. this game. The reason why I bid so hard on my swooper for last week on terms of all four of those big receivers all getting at least 50 yards. I thought that there would be yards gain and points scored in this game. So I think from my expectation going in, I thought the run defense was very strong. There were a couple of reps. Like, yeah, like they popped a couple of, but I thought Jordan Davis was really good inside. I thought Jalen Carter came to play inside. I think Nolan Smith is starting to get a little bit healthier. He's starting to play a little bit more. I know you did, I would love

I'd love for you to share that with our audience here. I posted what the rotations looked like in terms of like the linebackers and the edge rushers and base and nickel. But I thought Nolan really made his presence felt at the point of attack. There is a, in my opinion, a palpable difference between like Nolan Smith and Jalix Hunt at the point of attack. Like, you're seeing those guys keep on the three blocks

and the way that Nolan's able to impact those, he is a force multiplier in the run game because of what he does to squeeze those lanes down. For sure, Nolan had been on a snap limitation. had 19 snaps against Green Bay and 22 against the Lions. He had 40 yesterday. Now, there were more defensive snaps overall. There were 74 defensive snaps total. Nolan played on 40 of them. One interesting change is that Jihad Campbell is no longer playing any of those edge snaps in base unless he happens to be on the field already. And then he's just playing linebacker. So he did not

play a single snap at the edge in this game. He only played on one drive in the entire game, and that was the fourth drive of the first half. That drive happened to have 11 plays, and those were the only 11 plays that Jahad Campbell played. Eight of them were nickel. Three of them were in base, but in all of them, he was just an inside linebacker next to Zach Bond. So the difference between Nikobe Dean snaps and Jihad Campbell snaps in this game was very much pronounced. I mean, Nikobe Dean ends up playing 62 snaps. Jihad Campbell, only 11 so it's almost like a like a token series that jihad campbell got there in the first half and that's all like when when push came to shove in the second half um uncle victed uh not

want to take nicoby dean off the field which is not surprising given how he's playing he blew up a running back again uh he almost did it again on that on that last play um and and and we're going to continue to see it go this way i think as long as nikobie dean keeps playing this way well let's go to some things you wanted to break down you picked some good plays for us to take a look at here let's look at lindsay first at slant flat let's say you pointed this out that the eagles on their first drop back of the game and their last drop back of the game faced the same concept with similar results for for the cowboys exactly very first drop back second play of the game and then the very last one to pickens eagles got beat by identical slant flat flat concepts where the flat came from a kivante turpin motion where he starts out of out in a jet motion in the backfield, sprints to the flat behind George Pickens, who runs a slant? This is an under-center three-step drop with no play action, so it's kind of old-school, old-school offense from Dallas. On the first one, Eagles are in zone coverage, and Nicobi Dean is running to the flat with Turpin. But Pughey-on also has eyes on Turpin, and that leaves

the pick-and-slant wide open. As Zach Bond, Zach Bond is occupied on the other side by that CD-Lamp, you know, little curl there that's kind of entering his zone. And you see here with both guys going to the flat, that means that the slant is wide open. Reed Blankenships playing too high up to make that stop. On the second one, which Fran broke down in last night's post game and which was much more costly and that it was the last play that got them into easy field goal range.

Eagles are in zone. Eagles are in, excuse me, are in man in that one. And Michael Carter follows Turpin. But he's so threatened by Turpin's speed that rather than follow him in a parallel path down the line of scrimmage, he tries to retreat at the same time and he runs right into Quignon Mitchell, as Fran broke down nicely yesterday, who then can't cover his guy Pickens, who runs the slant and is wide open. So it's the exact same play. Ball goes to the exact same place, and it worked against Zone on the first play of the game and against Mann on the last one.

They're really using Turpin's speed there in a clever way by having him run that motion to the flat. anytime I see any sort of creativity like this from an offense I mean slant flat is one of the most like high school you know route concepts you'll ever see but when you have it come from the motion like that it works it does so many things I mean it gives you a coverage indicator it gives you a threat that you wouldn't have had otherwise it gives you an extra body like over there like you guys can run into each other which is exactly what happens on this one as this as this shot shows and I mean Michael Carter looks so clumsy on this because he's just running right into his own guy but that's just what the speed of Cavante Turpin can do. Like I guess he's just worried he's going to run a wheel there. He's worried he's going to just beat him down the field and so he's trying to get any advantage he can get. Two guys who aren't used to playing

with each other obviously with Michael Carter just getting here. And that was a huge play in the game. And yeah, it's just disappointing to see that. Yeah, honestly, like that one, I mean, it was a killer for a number of reasons

but you had the Nikobe Dean getting home. Like if those guys don't run into each other on that final play, Dax got to hold on to the ball a little bit longer, and then maybe Ncobobe gets home, you know, for that pressure. And we're talking about a different outcome, potentially, of that game. They also gave up some big chunk plays to George Pickens over the middle of the field, some deep dig routes.

So you want to take a look at that. Lindsay, it'll be a dagger. Yeah, I mean, first of all, for the game, George Bickens, nine catches on nine targets, 146 yards. There was one incomplete ball to Pickens, but it was negated by a holding call against Dallas. Now, the Eagles got me twice by very similar dagger concepts to him, and both of them, as you can see on this shot here, involved play action.

And the play action involves trap protection from the center, Cooper Bibi, where it looks like it's going to be a gap scheme run with B.B. pulling, which influences the underneath defenders, and then he ends up blocking a defensive lineman. In this case, it was Jalen Carter. And this is a theme that continues, and we're going to talk about later on as well. On this first one, Jake Ferguson runs the clear-out, and both Cooper DeGine and Jehad Campbell are slow to get deep enough to undercut the dig from Pickens, who cuts inside from Adori

Jackson. This is a great play that shows you the influence of play action. I mean, look at Jehad Campbell. He's running with his back turn to the quarterback, like retreating because he bit on that initial play action. Cooper DeGine, who's normally very good at undercutting. cutting routes and reading what's going to happen is also out of place because he also bit on the same play action. We talked about the difference between running shotgun play action

where you're barely doing any sort of fake and then under center play action, especially with pulling linemen, where it's much more convincing. So that one worked there. And then on the second one, it's zone coverage. And Adori Jackson actually has inside leverage on Pickens, but Pickens fights through the contact to run the dig, and Drew Mukuba, who rotates down to that area, has already matched with C.V. Lamb, who's running the clear-out, so Pickens is open once he gets through Adori Jackson. Unfortunately, Adori Jackson also got concussed. I believe it was a concussion, right, for Adroy Jackson. He hit his head. And he left the game after this. He did not return, which created the need to bring Michael Carter into the game later on. And Prescott had all day to throw this ball. Eagles are running an exchange. with Cooper to Gene Blitzing, but the running back picks him up, and that BB pulling ends up trapping Jalen Carter on the other side. I thought Dallas was really creative throughout the day with the way they used play action, not only to influence the underneath defenders, but also to pass protect. I mean, we talked after the game about how, you know, they didn't, you know,

the pass rush, the pass rush since Jalen Phillips has arrived has been so good. So many times Jalen Phillips is getting blocked by a pulling guard from the other side, right? Like where where they're doing that, they do that pull with either the left guard or the right guard. And he's the one who ends up blocking Phillips. And that's something that maybe you're not as ready for in terms of like, you know, like what you're, the pass rush that you're planning to do. If, you know, I'm sure you have thoughts on that. Yeah.

I mean, it's, you know, it's one of those things, especially look, going up against Ben Johnson and the Bears. That's one of the things that they do at a high level. So seeing that, my guess is that Ben Johnson, they're going to be watching that film from yesterday, and it's like, okay, what are the things that we can do to replicate that? Because it mirrors a lot of the things that they do well

when they've had success so far this season. So my guess is that they will try and pull some of that that Dallas was able to have success with. Honestly, both of those things, when you talk about like the motion into the slant flap, but then also the play action, you know, dagger concepts. Those are things. I would expect that the Eagles are going to be put to the test with that as well,

especially if you've got Sidney Brown in at safety, like, you know, trying to give those guys the second and third level extra eye candy. I would expect you're going to see plenty of that in this one. Yeah, I mean, you know, Cooper DeGine got beat on the outside a couple of times after he moved out there, once by C.D. Lamb, once by George Pickens. And the George Pickens one, which was kind of that post-corner route, which you mentioned was somewhat similar to the route that C.D. Lamb ran against

the Dory Jackson in week one. That's another example where there's play action with that trap protection, the center pulls right, helps block Jalen Carter, the tight end stays in and helps chip against Jalen Phillips, the running back chips against Jalick's Hunt, who otherwise would be rushing against the backup left tackle, who would come in at that point. So Prescott ends up with all day to throw that ball,

and it looked like it was cover one robber, so McCuba's rotating down to the middle of the field, and that leaves Cooper on an island against Pickens, and he just gets beat. I mean, that's one of those where they're running three deep routes, lamb, turpin, and Pickens are all running deep there. And if you give Prescott enough time, he's going to find his guy, and that's what happened there.

And I thought that, again, Dallas, clever with the combination of the play action to influence defenders. And on that one, all those routes are going deep. So it's not to influence defenders as much as it is to set up that protection, I thought. Yeah, no, it was to me, like, they were able to definitely scheme up a couple of big chunk plays and take advantage of some of the, especially once the injuries took place. You talk about that route that they ran against Cooper. I remember breaking that play down the day after that week one game. And I was like, look, like, this is a route. I know what Dori Jackson gets beat by C.D. Lamb here, but that's going to beat most corners.

Like that's a tough route to defend, especially in that situation, off of a play action fake. And sure enough, like George Pickens beats Cooper Degine on basically the same idea, the same kind of route, the same kind of play for a big game here in this one. I know you also wanted to talk through the Jake Ferguson, found the final driver. Yeah, I mean, that one, I thought to me, like, maybe the Pickens one is the one that gets them into deep field goal range. So that was probably the biggest play. but I thought that this was the biggest chance to get the stop, right? Because it was third and two. So you have a chance to get off the field.

At that point, they're still deep in their own end, and they're going to punt it. If you can stop them, they're going to punt that ball. And they end up with a 19-yarder to Jake Ferguson on an over-rout. In this one, the Eagles are in a cover-one man-coverage, and McCuba rotates to the post, and that leaves Sidney Brown as the man-coverage guy on Ferguson. He rotates down to get Ferguson. Now, Ferguson runs an over-rout, and he out leverages Sidney Brown to the other. the side of the field.

Sidney Brown might have gotten influenced a little bit by Quinyon Mitchell running in front of him because he was running his guy. But at the end of the day, he just got beat. And that's going to happen. You have a backup in there. He's going to get beat. But if you watch it, Ferguson doesn't catch that ball until he's almost reached the opposite numbers on the other side of the field, which means Prescott had a long time

to throw the ball. And when you look at the reason, both edge rushers drop into coverage at the snap. Nolan Smith drops to become the whole player. Jalen Phillips drops, and it looks like he's picking up the running back and man coverage. Now, Zabon blitzes up the middle, and both of the defensive tackles are rushing, so that's three rushing. And based on how Fangio has called this in the past and earlier in the game as well, Nicopi Dien certainly looks like he's also supposed to be blitzing. In fact, Jalen Carter has an unnaturally wide rush there that makes it look like he's kind of opening up that area around the right guard for Nikobe Dean to blitz.

But instead, Nicopi Dean covers the same running back that Phillips is already covering in the flat. And as a result, the Eagles end up rushing only three guys on this crucial third and two play. And Prescott has forever to read and hit Ferguson all the way at the opposite numbers on the over-out. Now, my guess, and I'm curious what you think on this, Fran, Dallas isn't empty there. The running back is kind of lined up tight to the formation, but in an empty look. So I'm wondering if that messed up the read, where maybe if it's empty, that's supposed to either mean that

Indyen's not blitzing or that Phillips isn't dropping? One of the two but I seriously doubt that like they're both supposed to cover the running back and you're only going to have a three man rush there. I mean that and both you've got both your edge rushers dropping there so you've got your best fast rushes dropping in the coverage

and then you know it was it was easy for them to pick up the three man rush. If I had to guess my guess is that once they motion to empty that yes the Nkobie's not supposed to blitz there and then that call should have been relayed to Jalen that now you are the rusher and that but that's complete uh projection on my part so um yeah and honestly like if i'm gonna say like right who's more likely to be right is it is it Nicobi

or is the guy that's been here for a couple weeks even though he played in the scheme previously my guess is that nicoby would be in the right there but uh look everybody makes mistakes so it could have gone the other way oh for sure and and i'm guessing the d line works together there right so jalen carter rushing wide indicates that maybe phillips was supposed to drop but that's something that they would be on the same page, but maybe not on the same page as the next level, right? Just based on pre-stop communication. Yeah, so the call, you know, it's like the, you know,

the play last week where, you know, D-Line makes a, you know, said like, oh, like Jaylon Carter's pointing to where the run's going to go. Zach Bond sees that. He relays that to the front and then it gets Brandon Grant to loop back inside. Like there's that, that communication that, you know, happens between all different levels of the defense that definitely did not happen on that play. So, yeah, and this was a, it was tough. I mean, we didn't, we didn't talk through the Xavier Gibson punt return.

Like, there were penalties on both sides that were questionable and unfortunate. Yeah, it was, uh, look, so there was a, this was a tough loss. I'm fascinated to see how they bounce back from this because the last time they, the, uh, you know, they had that tough game and it was like, oh, you know what? Like short week giants, like, yeah, this is a great way to flush this. And then they came out and laid an absolute egg on the road against division rival. So, uh, what do they do this week on the short week? it's going to be interesting. It's very similar. I mean, I remember you saying at the time,

like, don't let the Broncos beat you twice. And that certainly seemed to happen. That was another blown lead, you know, similar, like blown lead in the second half. And that Giants game was horrible. So, yeah, I'm starting to get a early look at some bear stuff today. It'll be exciting to be there. Everyone's going to be there. My dad's coming, so it'll be a family affair for us on Black Friday and 3 o'clock Fran the best time for a game to start possible that's a shout out to old colleague Zeeby there

who's really excited about the 3pm kick for this one Eagles now need help from the Rams I need the Rams to lose a game to get back into position to get the one seed Rams have at Carolina they've got Detroit they have to go to Seattle they have some games that they could lose Eagles obviously have to take care of have business here to otherwise the bears are going to be in great position to get the two seed.

I mean, the Eagles and the Bears have the same record coming into this game. And obviously, the winner of the game will have, we'll have the tiebreaker. So that's another thing to think about. What is your confidence level right now on this team? It's so hard to say. Like, it's like I try to turn, I turn around and I look at all these like advanced metrics and the eye test in on offense in particular. And this doesn't look like a good team, right? It doesn't look like a team that is, you know,

I use that word fabric because like that play-to-play consistency that makes you think like, okay, like they're going to be able to do this. At the same time, you look at the talent level, you look at the know-how from last year, the fact that Nick Siriani is like, you know, the second-winningest coach since John Madden, other than John Madden since the merger, all those things.

And you just wonder, like, is there something to all that or is this just going to fall apart like 2023 right and i don't think it's 2023 because the defense is not that defense um the schedule is getting a little bit easier here to some degree like you have the raiders you have two games against washington the division i mean knock on wood like looks pretty safe um and so you're talking about a team that's going to have home playoff games even if it doesn't have that buy so i don't know no man. I texted you during the game yesterday that I was going to book my San Francisco Airbnb. When it was 21-0, we got that text. I'll be honest. Yeah, I take, I take blame

for that one. I'd take the text of that one totally. I'll be honest, I did not book it yet. Okay, good for you. That's good. But, but, I mean, the reason I didn't book it isn't because I don't think it's going to happen. It's because I want to book it like after it win. You know, I want it to feel good. I want there to be like a good feeling about celebratory feeling, yeah. About it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because in past years, it was after all, it was after like a statement win that I, that I booked both my Airbnb in Phoenix and also in New Orleans last year. So, yeah, I don't know. If you want to, if, like, I'm really, as a fan, as like a, as like a really hardcore fan of the team, it's really hard for me to, like, put an objective Turkey's number

on it. But it does unfortunately look more like last year's chief's team than it does like last year's Eagle's team, right? Like it looks like if it does happen, it'll be like, wow, how did they get there with this, with these performances? Having said

that, the Chiefs were in the Super Bowl last year. You know, like, so. Of all 16, that's a notable number. Of all 16 teams in the NFC, who scares you the most? Who are you most worried about? Oh, I mean, definitely the Rams right now. I mean, like, just watching them last night against Tampa Bay,

watching them against Seattle, like watching like a bunch of their last few games. I don't know what it is with the updated, updated DVOA, but coming into this last game, they were second in offensive DVOA and second in defensive DVOA. And, I mean, those numbers are both better than they were last year when they gave the Eagles a scare, even though the game was here. So far is not exactly like a like a scary road game right so if there is a there is a team that's going to get the one seed that you're going to have to travel to yeah like the rams are about as good as i mean it'll it'll be half it's a really good points yeah it'll be half eagles fan there there's no like you know uh big home field advantage but it's not just going on the road in the nfc championship

game it's having to play the extra game right like and and with this team like every game's kind of a coin flip so like um yeah i don't know uh not to mention like the bears are kind of messing up the standings, because if the bears do somehow win that division, you're talking about the lions, the Packers, like Seattle, like a bunch of good teams are going to be in those wildcard spots. So that wild card round is not going to be an easy game. I mean, last year, I know the Eagles miraculously beat Jordan Love in the wild card round, but you're not always going to be able to get past those games. It would be great to be able to get the one seed.

It's so funny to talk about, like, for an hour and a half, we talk about like this team sucks. and then it's like we're talking about the one seed, we're talking about the Super Bowl. You know, all the gambling books still have the Eagles second in Super Bowl champion odds, like behind the Rams. So I don't know what to think. What do you think, friend? The stretch with this offense is terrifying, and it makes it very hard to feel very confident about this team when you do go up against, you know, some of the best teams. that I'm saying that knowing full well that they have beaten Kansas City and the Rams

and all the other teams, you know, some of the best teams in the league, right? That said, like, they beat the Rams on a blocked field goal at the end of the game. Like, they, they, they, you know, there are these other, there are these moments against these other teams where it's like, all right, like, are you, can you count on that happening again? Like, I don't know. But with the trend with this offense being such,

on such a downward slope, it does not inspire a lot of confidence as you're going down into the stretch run. And so I want to say, like, yeah, I've got a lot of faith in this team. And they absolutely could just, Jaylen Hertz can play out of his mind. And we know that that's possible. And that's why I have always held him to that standard

because that's the, I've seen him do what he did again in the Super Bowl, right? Like, I've seen him go and have these kinds of plays. He's got strengths and weaknesses, but, you know, that's sort of everybody. You know, he's a flawed player just like, you know, 99% of the NFL. But I think when you're looking at this team, I don't know. There's a lot of holes that they got to overcome. Can they do it? Absolutely.

I just, I don't feel great about it right now. E.J. was making the point last night that Jalen is different after losses. And, you know, we remember the way he reacted to finally getting off that losing streak. You know, he said, we're not effing losers anymore. Like, he really doesn't like losing. And he seems to really, like, dig deep and think about, like, ways to get out of it. And so we'll see how he responds from this.

but when he was asked last night about whether he's surprised that they haven't found any consistency on offense, he said, no, we've been here before, which I thought was an interesting response from the quarterback. I mean, it's almost like he's saying like, and he said earlier in the year as well, that with a new offensive coordinator, it's hard to find consistency. He said the one time that we had the same coordinator, you saw what happened. So referring to 2022 when the offense was at its best. So I don't know, like, I don't know how much of it is the small sample of last year's playoffs and the fact that we saw Jalen holding the trophy and how much of it is real.

But like his whole Jordan thing and all of that, like it can be convincing at times. Like it can be convincing that he's going to turn it on when it matters. It can be convincing that he's going to suddenly come out and, you know, be the Super Bowl MVP again. So it's just so hard to do in the limitation. of this scheme and it's it's kind of um it's easy to just wonder like what would what would have happened what would happen if the if the offensive staff were a little more creative or if they could convince jalen to run certain kinds concepts that other teams run to make things a little bit easier um but i don't think we're ever going to know that like i honestly don't think we're

ever going to know it so i don't think so either um one last super chat uh from Winston Gordon 711 uh thank you for the super chat by the way the question With the current safety situation, does Justin Simmons make any sense? I would say the fact that Justin Simmons has been off the, off a roster, it's November 24th. Yeah, I don't have a lot of faith that he's going to come in and be able to give you any kind of help. I think that we've seen this in the past with vets, like especially skill position, like guys that, you know, you lean on speed and athleticism. If he's been on the street this long at that spot, this isn't like Lynn Valjoseph, where it's like, oh, yeah, like big run stuffing nose tackle come in and he's going to dominate in the trenches. I have a lot less confidence that he would be able to come in and make an impact.

Yeah, the way, Vic, I mean, yeah, of course, like, you know, the familiarity with Vic and that kind of thing. But the, yeah, the first thing Emily asked me last night when I said, Drew McCuba might be done, she said, is it too late to sign guys? And I was like, why are you available? Like, you're going to be there Friday? Because that's the thing. It's like, you have to be on the street at this point, right? And who's on the street that's actually going to help you? so um yeah and it's ironic that cj gj will be visiting the link on uh on friday it'll it'll be hard

not to think about um you know how the eagles don't have anyone to play at safety and c j j j j's i was looking at the other raiders death chart the other day and uh trista mccallum is a backup with the raiders right now so uh it would be nice to have trista mccallum uh even right now at this point but the raiders just signed they just wanted super bowl pedigree fran they got thomas booker Tristan McCollum, right? They got, they got Kenny Pickett, too. They just got all the, they got all the, they got all the Super Bowl champs. All right. Well, I already mentioned Wednesday, Redding Terminal Market, come out and join us. I would be remiss if I didn't also say on Friday. Anthony Gargano, Cuzz is going to be live from Chickies and Peets for the Friday show. It's going to be a special show 12 noon until 2 p.m. Great way to lead us right into the kickoff show to the pregame show, the Ph.I. Eagle show before Friday's game. So be sure. to join cuz vG and the crew live at chickies and peats on friday afternoon and also i talked about

at the very beginning uh take advantage of the black friday sale you know you've got the die hard exclusive sale it started today it runs all the way up through thursday you get 30% off a diehard membership uh and again you need that code black friday dash die hard you get all the work from j smith from bow wolf myself you got all the eagles coverage the draft guide you got the NBA coverage and Sixers from Kyle Newbeck and Derek Bodner. You've got Charlie O'Connor and the Flyers. All of our great analysis from across all of our Philly Sports teams, you want to make sure that you become a diehard. Take advantage of that sale. And then next week, you could take advantage of the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale. That starts Friday. It goes all the way up

through Tuesday. You get 30% off everything in the store, up to 75% off some of those items. I'm wearing one of my P.H.O.I. T-shirts right now. This is one of my favorites. I've talked a lot about the hoodies. The hoodies are some of the favorite pieces of clothing that I own. So make sure you take advantage of both of those Black Friday sales. You've got the diehard exclusive ones during the week this week. That takes you all the way up through Thursday. And then starting on Friday, take advantage of the merch, the Black Friday sale we've got from a merch standpoint. Danes, I don't know. I don't think you and I are going to talk to each other. Well, we'll text. But I hope you have. What did I say, Fran? Well, look, I hope you have plenty of dried fruit on

Thursday for Thanksgiving. And I hope that all you do on Thanksgiving is just eat a big bowl of raisins, Fran. Enjoy it. I'll be eating nice, juicy turkey and fresh fruit. And I hope you enjoy your raisins and your crackers. And my coffee with lots of milk. That's right. That's right.

All right, Danes. Well, we will talk to you later this week, or I guess next week as well. Thank you, Danes, for joining us once again. Thank you to Lindsay for producing behind the scenes. Thanks for all the sickos in the chat. that we'll talk bell bow and e j i think are back tomorrow we'll be back later this week or later tomorrow right here on the p hilly eagle show