PHLY Philadelphia Eagles Podcast - Jalen Hurts, Kellen Moore and the struggling Philadelphia Eagles passing game: Let’s fix it

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

Fran Duffy joins the show for his weekly assessment of the Eagles’ performance, this time with a narrow focus on an Eagles passing game that is underperforming. As Brandon Graham airs dirty laundry between A.J. Brown and Jalen Hurts, we wonder if Hurts needs to get Brown the ball more. And what about DeVonta Smith?Join our PHLY Eagles crew, poo ragu not included, for an in-depth breakdown. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the PHOI Eagles podcast presented by Bet365. Download the Bet365 app and use code PHLY when PHLY 365 when you sign up. Whatever the moment, it's never ordinary at Bet365. We are here on a Tuesday afternoon to talk about what else with the Philadelphia Eagles, Bowulf, Fran Duffy, Zach Berman. And let me just start by saying, I'm letting the audience know that Fran and Zach used to, to be really good friends. They're not really friends anymore,

but it's still on them to get this going and make this podcast successful. How you guys do it? You might be misinformed, right? You should look into things before you say them on a podcast or a show. No, I'm doing well. I'm excited for the show.

Looking forward. This is one, I read Friends article this morning on the passing game, and I can't wait for him to put it in the words on the show here. Yes, no doubt that will be the focus of today's show, Fran's breakdown of Jalen Hertz's performance and the passing games performance overall against the Carolina Panthers.

How concerned should we be? How much are we putting on Jalen versus the rest of the offense versus the coaching staff, all that stuff. Fran, I know that you pose to the story today. Great read. Hope everybody has read it. If you haven't read it, probably just pause the podcast, go read it and then hit play again.

Worth your time. How you doing, Francis? Doing great. No, it's, look, it was interesting putting this, piece together just because at first I was like oh maybe I do want to cover other topics from the game you know sayquan played well the offensive line looked good there were some good things to take away from the defense but the longer I sat on it on Monday I said now this I think the Jalen Hertz aspect of things certainly is dominating the headlines and for good reason and then yeah we can

get into the approach around the piece but a lot to chew on for today's episode for sure yeah I don't I don't I don't you know I could give the analysis sayquan played well I don't know that we need you wasting your time on that let's let's get into the down and dirty. But however, we should start with the thing that everybody's talking about, say, give us the breakdown of this, this melodrama going on, courtesy of the longest tenured eagle. Yeah, Brandon Graham on his radio show on Monday night on WIP, the Brandon Graham show. He was talking about A.J. Brown and J. Brown and J. Hurtz, and he suggested that there has been some type of erosion in the relationship, I think would be fair to say.

He did not like AJ Brown's public comments. He said that AJ should have taken them to Jalen. We can get to that in a bit. But he then walked it back. He also said J. Allen's been like trying in this relationship. But he then walked it back. He said that he was kind of speaking out of turn. He didn't have all the details.

And that's not the case. He spoke to Tim McManus and John Clark last night. He was on the WIP morning show today. So he addressed it then. We'll see. I mean, this is, I don't think something like that is said haphazardly. I think there must, me personally, I think there has to be a there there. Now, the extent of the there there, I can't tell you.

I hope to find out more. But there's a few different explanations. I'm curious what you guys think. sometimes, you know, the players operate like in this locker room bubble often where things might be going on that they're not aware that people outside the locker room don't know, right? So sometimes when you're speaking and you're speaking to like Ike Reese in like a casual setting, you can say something and you just kind of assume it's common knowledge. There's a situation. I remember a few years ago when a player mentioned something to me about what was going on with someone else's family. and like it hadn't been out there and and but it was just it was well known in the locker

so that that that that might have been the case that it might have been something like what Brandon said where he thought one thing he didn't have all the details um maybe there was designed to what Brandon was doing maybe he felt like you know enough's enough here and he should use a public form for it although him backing away from it makes me think that's that's not the So I don't want to project intention on any of this, but I'm not saying, oh, he cleared it up. There's nothing there because I do think there is there or there. Yeah, I mean, without knowing all the details and knowing exactly what's going on in Brandon Graham's head, but having been around him as long as we have, you know, we joke that BG is a great interview in some ways because you can get him to say anything you want,

just based on how you frame the question. you're like hey BG like Fran doesn't deserve those turkeys am I right? Like oh yeah no he's This was not that kind of situation He was this was not something that was like lobbed up to him with that front This is him talking like separaniously

I like you said just You know to Ike as part of the show My read on it Just suspicion Is that what he said is true And he's he's You know he's hoping that those guys can work it out And I'm not

not as you said, Zach, I'm not ascribing intention of like, you're saying this in order to light a fire under them or like to buttress his media career. I think that's just, yeah. Brandon is an honest guy in conversation. I think this is what that was. I'm happy to jump in more here. Yeah, I was, I was deferring that to Fran. I do want to say this.

And I, I would disagree with, with Brandon in that I don't think AJ said anything that bad. No, neither do I. The answer passing. when asked what they needed to improve, it was the worst passing game of the season. If he didn't answer passing, that would be a major concern to me. And frankly,

he could have said a lot more than what he said. I think him just saying passing and then stopping there was him biting his lip. So I don't, I think Brandon might have been reacting to the reaction as opposed to reacting to specifically what AJ said, but there has to be context there. I also think that, you know, again, without knowing all the details, you guys both know this well, the locker room is a workplace, just like anything else.

And, you know, when you have 53 players in there, well, I mean, 70 players, including the practice squad, and you have 20 coaches, you have all the support staff, these are human relationships that evolve. There's natural emotion. You know, there's feelings, there's emotion. There's a lot there. These are not simply players. These are people. And so, look, if there is something going on between A.J. Brown and J. and J. One Hertz is certainly going to be the first time.

That's happened, as we all know in Philadelphia. But also, if there's a relationship that has evolved or changed from the time that they got here, that's totally normal, too. Just like I imagine in anyone's workplace, you know. when you're with someone over a period of time, things evolve and change. What matters for fans is how it translates to the field. And I do think there's a strong case to be made from a football perspective that A.J. Brown needs to get the ball more.

And J. One Hurts is the one throwing him the ball. And so I don't know how much of this is football related. I don't know how much of this is beyond that. But I'm not going to be dismissive. Or I'm, I mean, just because Brandon Graham walked it back and just because, you know, Nick and, you know, Kellan spoke today, I'm not saying there's nothing there. And by the way, even in Nick and Kellan's comments, it wasn't like flat out denials, right? It was like, these are competitive people, things like that. Yeah.

And also just to be clear, like even if they're not best friends anymore or whatever it is, like that should have no effect on the way. Exactly. It shouldn't be a big deal. A super chat, Zach from King A.B. says, A.J. saying passing is the problem points the finger at Hertz. Zach, you can't act like that was appropriate to do through the media, even if Hertz is the issue. So, a few. Come at you. All right. Well, first of all, I appreciate you watching. I appreciate the contribution. I, well, number one, like Nick said today, AJ is a part of the passing offense.

but if you think that is intended directly at jailing, I don't have an issue with that either. Like uncomfortable conversations are not, he said they had 83 yards net passing. They had their fewest yards per attempt this season. What's he supposed to say? If AJ came there and said everything's fine, no big deal, we won the game, I would say he's delusional, right?

So, yeah, like sometimes I don't want to. to be like everyone's all sensitive. That's certainly not what I'm trying to say. But having uncomfortable conversations, you know, taking responsibility, putting accountability, there's nothing wrong with that. If your interpretation of that is that he's putting it on jailing, maybe he should put it on jail on after after after that game. If they are, in fact, close friends, then you should be able to say that. And regardless, they're, they're, I would hope that. this. I would hope if I have a bad show that Bo and Fran and Julia can say to me, Zach, you need to make better points. You need to have more energy there. You need, like, there needs to be,

that's, that's part of this. I would never do that. You're opening the door now to somewhere you don't want to go. Yeah. I would never do that. This is all business, baby. So, yeah, so that I, I don't, I would disagree with the super chat there that if it was intended for jailing, so be it. Jalen. John Birch is a quarterback football team. He's saying it's not about not having those conversations. His point is about doing it through the media. So it would be like if I went on blue sky after a show and said,

Zach needs to make better points and didn't talk to you about it. Okay. I hear your point there. Generally, I don't want to be hypocritical, which is I want players to be honest. And I'm not going to be outraged whenever a player is honest. I agree with you. So like if a player just gets canned answers and I'm like, yeah, he's said this. If I come on to the post game show and I always say the things that are interesting

because the things that are just canned aren't interesting and someone says something like interesting, I'm not going to criticize them for saying something interesting. All right. I do. I would like to move on from this conversation and get to the real football stuff. But one more super chat from Chase in your plane view who says sounds like Jaylon is trying and AJ is shutting him out. Should Jailen go to Nick for advice? He went through a similar situation with his quarterback last year. Let's go to you, Fran. Look, you know, I think that at the end of the day, all the players typically are pretty reliable narrators, right? And so that's why when, you know, when you hear BG speak, we've said that, I know you guys have said this in the past.

Whenever Jason Kelsey or any of the Eagles vets, like go up and say something in the media, you always kind of take that with some seriousness to it. Now, I think that some guys are more purposeful than others, right? And so like if Jason Kelsey says something to the media, there's usually like some pre-planning there to the points that you guys made earlier. I don't know that BG necessarily planned to go on onto his show last night and say those things. But should Jalen go to Nick for advice? I don't know, but obviously, look, I do think if there is something there that BG alluded to, then they need to get that sorted out as well, not just the on-field issues, but some of the off-field things as well.

Yeah, I would also say if I'm going to be critical of anyone here, because I like when players are honest, but I would say Brandon Graham probably didn't need to say that. Like I have to, you know, because there's a difference between like being honest and like talking about someone else's, you know, someone else's business, right? So I look, I so appreciate Brandon Graham. I have a 14-year relationship with him. But yeah, I would say Brandon Graham probably didn't need to say that last night.

All right. Let's talk about the actual lies behind the passing offense. And just to set the standard here, in 2021, Nick Seriani's first year, and the Eagles were 14th in passing DVA. In 2022, when they went to the Super Bowl, they were fifth. Last year, in which they had this historic collapse and had to clean house from the entire coaching staff to fix the offense, they finished 12th in passing DVA.

Right now, they rank 17th. in passing DVOA, according to Aaron Chats. They have also been trending downward lately, Fran. Yeah. Over the course of the season, they are 11th in EPA per dropback, but over the past five weeks, they're 18th. And so it has been on a sort of a steady downward trend with the Rams game as the only exception over the past five weeks.

As you watch this game, before we get to the specifics and some of the stills and the takeaways. What is your big picture, like state of the passing game at the moment? Well, I can go back to what we talked about last week after the win against the Ravens, where, you know, we said, hey, look, he completed 11 passes Jalen Hertz against Baltimore. That's a good defense. They gave up explosives, but they got, they created a lot of pressure and they could do some things to mess with you as a quarterback.

But he had two completions that weren't, did, we're not play action or RPO. Like, they didn't put a heavy lift on. him from a mental standpoint. They really streamlined the past game. We talked about Roquan Smith calling out route concepts before the snap because he had a bead on what the Eagles were doing. And so you started, look, we're saying that because that's kind of what the, that's what the film had showed in recent weeks, that they obviously, they became extremely run heavy. But even with what they were doing in the past game, everything was much more streamlined. Everything was much more simple. A lot of repeat plays. It wasn't a deep voluminous playbook in

terms of what they had been doing from a past game standpoint. And so that's kind of where we were at coming into this game against Carolina. And to me, going into these game against the Panthers, we talked last week, last Thursday, about a Panthers defense that struggled every which way at defending the past. They weren't creating pressure. They were giving up explosives. You know, every, metric you look at to measure the quality of a secondary, this group was coming up short. I think this, I think the Eagles came into this game and said, you know what, let's be aggressive. I think that the opportunity is going to be there for us to get some, chunk plays down the field.

And obviously they were unable to take advantage of some of those opportunities, especially early on in this game. All right. Well, let's get to that. We've all seen it. You tweeted the clip to break down. Let's start with that second play of the game. Where AJ Brown is streaking downfield because J.C.

Horn takes the intermediate guy. And as we talked about yesterday, to me, when Jaylen Hurts like doesn't see a guy, that's one thing. When he's looking right at the guy and Ben doesn't pull the trigger still, that is a larger concern to me. Yeah, so, Julia, this is A.J. Corner route. We have four screen grabs here on this one. I also want to give a shout out to Miko in the Discord and Yishmeister as well, who both asked that this play be broken down on the show, obviously that we knew that this play was going to be broken down on the show. Now, I want to say at the very top that I am not a person typically that will say, oh, you know what, on this play, look at this guy wide

open down the field. This is where the quarterback should have gone. This is much different than 90% of those posts that you'll see on social media now that everybody's got access to the L-22. This is a play that is designed to create a chunk play down the field to either A.J. Brown or Devante Smith. And it's a basic three-level stretch concept where you're going to get A.J. Brown running that deep corner route. So he's the deep vertical route. Devante Smith is running that intermediate route. And then you've got Jahan Dotson coming in motion. And he's going to be the flat, just as the checkdown option for Jalen Hertz. Julie, if you want to go to the next one here,

we can take a look at these routes as they develop. But really, again, with what they're expecting to be cover three, J.C. Horn is the corner number eight there that's circled. That's basically who Jalen Hertz is going to read off of this. If J.C. Horn drops into the deep third to take away the route from A.J. Brown, then he should have Devante Smith underneath. If for whatever reason, J.C. Horn stays underneath against Devante Smith, well, then AJ Brown should be wide open.

So let's go to the next shot. And we can see how the routes develop. This is the point. The reason why I circle this is that you can see that Jalen Hurts is still staring downfield. By the way, pristine pocket. And I think that that's important here. There is nobody anywhere within Jalen Hertz's vicinity in the pocket here. You can see that the routes are starting to develop.

A.J. Brown is clearing past J.C. Horn. Devante Smith is breaking into the intermediate route. Jahan Dotson is wide open underneath. At this point, this is just before Jalen is starting to turn that he's made the decision to go to the checkdown. Okay. So he is honestly, like mentally, he might already be off of this. But at this point, J.C. Horn is about even with A.J. Brown. And so to me, I get why Jalen does not throw this to A.J. That said, I think he is in the wrong for not sticking with this longer. When we talk about going through progressions for a quarterback, so often everyone thinks, oh, he's on there too long.

He's staring down his first read. He can't get past the first read. There are also instances where the quarterback is too fast through his progressions and too fast to get through those reads. And I think this is an example of it. He's moving a little bit too fast here. And he's fast to get to the checkdown. And Julie, if you want to just go to the next shot, this is the last one.

He goes to this point. Then now he's turning to get ready to deliver this ball to Jahan Dotson. You can see down the field. AJ is going to be wide open on the deep corner. J.C. Horn has already put his foot in the ground to come downhill to defend Devante Smith. This should have been explosive play. This is a potential touchdown to A.J. Brown on the opening drive.

It was the second play of the day for the offense. What a swooper point on an opening drive touchdown. No hard feelings there. But I think when you look at this past game, just got off on a bad foot. Now, very next play, Kenny Gamewell runs for a first down and gets an explosive play on the ground and they keep rolling.

But I think this was a good example of some of the issues you're seeing down the field. So a couple questions. Yeah. At the top of the drop, as you say, like he's getting off of it early. My first question is, we know that like Jalen is an arm thrower. I mean,

he's not an arm thrower. He is sort of a leg thrower. So for him to like get all of his body into, in that case, what would be like a 40 yard throw, does he, is that part of his calculation, you think?

Because he can't just quickly pull the trigger on that if it's not exactly what he's expecting to do. Yeah, and that's why typically what you'll see on plays like that is that the progression will typically go from deep to short. because within timing you want all right like hey i'm i'm jalen hurts i'm stepping back back back back when i hit the top of my drop i want to be able to step and deliver that throw so within the rhythm of that

sometimes you might see it hey you know what this read is going to be you know five steps and a hitch not just five step drop but five step hitch up once then deliver and i think that that's one of those plays where you're hoping that by the time you hit not just the the top of your drop but then also like that first hitch you should be able to have made the read by that point and again i just think he was just a bit too fast to get his eyes to do that checkdown. He was right to not throw to Devante. Devante obviously was not open. So, you know, to me, like if J.C. Horn stays with AJ, Jalen makes the right call there. But because he went through so fast through it, you left that play on the field. So just to play devil's advocate, is there a chance that, like, that's the calculation

J.C. Horn is making is that once Jailen Hertz gets to the top of his drop and he's not getting, gearing up to throw a deep, then he, then he's breaking ahead. I don't know. Potentially, I mean, I think honestly the bigger thing is probably that the fact they have not been particularly aggressive with attacking downfield and so he might be just kind of sitting on that intermediate route just because we have not seen that many deep balls from Jalen Hertz over the course of the last few games but we'll get into that obviously. Okay. And then my second question is just how much do you think his internal clock is an issue on a play

like this sensing pressure when there is not pressure yet? Yeah. I mean, you know, it's one of those things where like I can't say like the why you know, I don't know if it's because of pressure. I don't know if it's just, you know, I have to get through my reads. I have to get through my reads. You know, go, go, go, go. So I can't speak as to the why behind it.

But all I can say is like there are, typically you see this. The quarterback I think of a lot, you know, is Baker Mayfield, you know, very early on in his career. And honestly, like, you would see this. We see this with Josh Allen. You saw this with Patrick Mahomes. You still see it with Patrick Mahomes at times where he'll go, he'll drop back. And it's too fast on one play. and then you see it a few plays later and it's, oh, he was too slow.

He got stuck on this read. You know, and so to me, like, that's, I think, what you're seeing here with Jalen in recent weeks. And for the majority of this season has just been the inconsistencies with those progressions. The drive that caused A.J. Brown to slam his helmet. What did you see from that drive in particular? Yeah, so I believe that was the third drive, Boe, I believe was a three and out. And the second downplay with Julia, I actually have that. This is A.J. Slant, one to two.

Yeah, the A.J. Slant is the next one here. And this was the second down throw. And it's a basic two-man route where it's just a double slant route. And you've got Jalen Hertz. And he's looking at A.J. Brown. When you're running double slants, typically, and you see Devante Smith is there just at the hash mark, that first slant from Devante Smith is meant to open up the window for A.J. Brown. The throw is there and Jalen does not make it.

Now, the reason why I think he doesn't make it, Carolina blitzed here on this play. Julie, if you go to the next shot, you can see that the linebacker Josie Jule, he like jumps up right basically in Jalen's face. And I think that's what said, all right, I can't make this throw. Now, Jalen, what he does is he ends up rolling to his left.

He's got nowhere to go because both receivers to that side are running towards the middle of the field, right? And so he basically takes himself out of this play. In hindsight, what this should have been is a subtle slide. up a subtle slide to the left. You can make a throw around a linebacker jumping up into the throwing lane and find AJ Brown. He did something similar last week. It was a little bit of a different throw, but off play action found AJ Brown in the middle of the field where the linebacker Roquant Smith was patrolling there and to try and take that away. And he was able to make that

throw around that defender. But you could see after this play, AJ was frustrated. And then there was a third downplay on the very next snap where AJ beat his guy. vertically on a go ball and he was uh that's when he was really upset after that play what did you see on that play well we got i have that one too uh so julia if you want to pull up um iso ball one uh so the big thing and we we've talked a lot about this when you're talking about this past game yes you're like jalen hurts is not playing well you know as we as we're discussing he's not he's not playing particularly well but uh i don't think that the scheme consistently does enough in the pure drop back game to help him and make things easy for him from that standpoint.

Now, we've seen more play action. We've seen more RPO's. They're leaning into those things, right? But when we talk about things like pre-snap motion and stacks and bunches and, you know, all those different elements that teams can use in the past game to get those guys open, we don't always see that. And this is a good example of what I mean by that because basically what you've got is a two by two set where the two inside receivers, that's Grant Calcuttaire at the top,

Johnny Wilson at the bottom. They're basically just going to play low post basketball at the sticks. They're going to both run and turn around. And nothing is going to impact either of those routes. They are working siloed for the quarterback here on their own to just create separation and be there if Jalen wants to go to it. On the outside, Julia, if you want to go to the next shot, you've got an out route from Devante Smith at the sticks. And then you've got a slot fade or a go ball, a fade route from A.J. Brown at the top. Now, everybody's tight.

Both of these routes on the outside, you've got room out to the perimeter for Jalen Hertz to be able to make these throws. Now, Jalen starts to his, what we do, here's what we don't know. What we don't know when you're playing ISO ball this way, I don't know how Jalen is coached in terms of, hey, this is where we want your eyes to start. What are you, what, what is he reading before the snap department. Hey, you know what, I'm going to look at Devante Smith here on this play versus A.J. Brown. You know, there have been times. I know, Zach, I know you've reported it. This might be going back even to last year where, you know, you know,

you know what, AJ Brown is being pressed on the outside. That's an immediate alert on this route. I want to go to AJ Brown. Forget what else is going on. We're going to AJ Brown here. Well, AJ Brown's getting pressed here, but Jalen does not look that way. And again, I don't know if that's what the coaching point here is on that one. But this is all for me to say, I don't know where his eyes are supposed to start.

All I can tell you is this is where they do start. And Julie, if you want to go to the next shot, basically Jalen's going to drop back. And if he's going to hit Devante Smith at the bottom of the screen where that's where he's staring at early on in his drop, this ball's got to be out now. Like as soon as Devante Smith's head turns, that ball should already be mid-flight on his way there because that corner was lined up outside and off coverage. If Jalen throws this ball like right now as we are frozen, this is going to be picked off. Maybe it's a PBU if you're lucky, but you're not going to be able to complete this throw

with a corner and out we're playing with outside leverage running an out route right at him. You're not going to be able to complete that throw. And so Jalen stares that throw down. There was a play even later. I know that Mark Sanchez highlighted on the broadcast where he said, you know what? He's got to throw this ball. A.J. Brown was running the deep out route off play action, and Jalen didn't throw it. Very, very similar look to this play.

And so Jalen doesn't throw this one. We can see at the top of the screen. A.J. Brown is about to stack J.C. Horn. So he's got the ability to go over the top to A.J. But again, that's all the way over on the other side of the field. So by the time that Jalen gets his eyes back over there, now we're getting back to what you asked on that first play, where that's just that's a far throw for Jalen to make. If he doesn't make that throw within rhythm,

then he's probably not going to make that throw. Since the two guys in the middle of the field are just basically running stop routes, the D.Bs there are all over it. Those guys get smothered. And so we go to the next shot. And you can see, again, there's A.J. He has stacked J.C. Horn. Jalen took a peek over there.

But he said, you know, he decides he's not going to make that throw. You could see the two DBs are all over those routes in the middle of the field. And then, Julie, if you want to go to the last one, he ends up settling this to throw to Johnny Wilson, and it ends up being an incomplete. He puts this like three feet over Johnny Wilson's head, and Johnny Wilson doesn't come down with it. And so, you know, I think that this is an example of what schematically

they're not necessarily doing for Jalen. Now, this is the thing because we can say that I know this can become a Kellynne Moore conversation. We've been saying this about this past game for the last couple of years. And so now you get into, all right, well, how is it that these past game concepts are still this static or you're still having these same discussions. I don't know the answer there. I want to get to that and I don't want to ask Zach that,

but very quickly, Fran, also noticing those screenshots, something that you told us a couple weeks ago, the footwork there from Jaylen seems like he's square to the rush at the top of that drop. Yeah, he does it a handful of times in this game again where he'll drop back and, you know, again, you're like, all right, you're the quarterback, your turn. But there are times as he's going through his progress,

let's say he's going to start to his left and he comes back, instead of turning and still being in position to throw the football, he'll, like, hop into this position and be parallel to the line of scrimmage. You're not throwing the ball like this, right? And so that, and so he'll sometimes pop back into that throwing position, but it's, you know, he'll do it every once in a while. And I don't know if that's like a, you know, like a skittishness to try to anticipating pressure. I don't know if that's something that he's just kind of doing, just being an athlete where,

hey, I'm going to have some bounce in the pocket. But, yeah, there are times where he could be in position to throw it, but his feet are squared off and he does not have the ability to deliver that throw. All right. When we get back from break, Zach, I want to ask you about your understanding of, you know, the Nick Siriani, Kellemore, Turkey disparity in the passing game design and all that stuff. But we'll do that right after this. What's today?

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He used GameTime to buy his tickets to bring his wife and to her first game and his parents' Christmas present. No guesswork, no hidden fees. Nice. All right. Zach, I have a super chat here that will get us on. topic. Musa says it's time to have a conversation about the real villain here, tongue in cheek, Kevin Petulow, but for real, what exactly does a passing game coordinator do? And so let's talk

about what is your understanding of the disparity of like who was responsible for what in putting a game plan together for the Eagles offensively? Absolutely. Well, first off, I want to commend Bo here for playing hurt today. Bo, Texas. this morning not feeling well friend and i could have done it in studio i thought the three of us uh it's it's it's it's better even if we had to do it virtually but i see that that you're playing through something here so i i appreciate it how many hours of sleep do you think i got last night um four and a half i got 11 hours of sleep last i was gonna say oh wow and you're still up eight o'clock huh and you're still exhausted yeah uh i'm sorry bill that's that just never

gotten 11 hours. Yeah, I was going to say, like, I don't know that you've ever gotten. That's probably as much as we've got the last three nights combined. Actually, yeah, you're right. That is 12 and a half is combined last three nights. So anyways, Kevin Patuo. Yeah, Kevin Patuo is an important person behind the scenes in the Eagles, calling the Eagles coach staff.

And probably the most important one that's not discussed, right? Like, Stoutland's name comes up. You know, you hear Dom a lot. Dom's not on the coaching staff, but in terms of, I suppose Dom does have a coaching role. But Kevin Petuo has a significant role in the coaching operation and the offensive operation. First off, Kevin Pattoe is like Nick Siriani's right-hand man, has been since he came here. When Nick first visited the NovaCare Complex, there was one other coach on the plane, and that was Kevin Patuo. When Nick Siriani had COVID back in 2021, the acting head coach during that time was Kevin

Patuo. So, you know, Kevin Patuo's had an important role in the offense during the past three years. This year, Kevin Patuo has been important in terms of, I think he was the conduit between the Kellan Moore offense and the offense they had in the building here the past three years. And I still think that when they put that game plan together, Kevin Patuo is a big part of it. Nick Siriani references Kevin Patu as frequently as he, as he, as he, as he, as he, he can. This is and I defer to Fran on this special a utupo. This is not the entire

Kellmore offense that was in place in Dallas or was in place with the Chargers. This is kind of a melding of what he's done in the past and what the Eagles have done. And Nick Siriani did say that was going to happen when they hired Kellynmore. Part of this is you build your system for your personnel,

for your quarterback, for your running back, for your offensive line. But I do think Kevin Petuo is the is the thread between what was it here before and what Kellyn Moore and Doug Nussmeyer brought here this year. And so when you talk about whose hands are on the offense, you talk about Jeff Stoutland from the run concepts, right? We always talk about that. Obviously, Kelm Moore is calling the plays. Kelmores in charge.

Nick Siriani has a say here. But Kevin Petuo has an enormous role in this. Well, Fran, I know that you've studied Keller Moore. Moore, and I know you've done a little bit of extra digging this week. How much of a, how much of a Kellynmore offense does this offense look like? Yeah, I mean, look, going through some of my notes on what I saw in Dallas for years with Kellynne Moore as the defense or as the offensive coordinator, you know, you always saw like a lot of motion, a lot of under center play action.

And again, we see that we see these things in like bits and spurts. But that that is what happens, though, when an offensive coordinator comes in, a new office coordinator with a with a already set coaching staff is there are going to be those meldings. I mean, Kellyn Moore was on the opposite side of it when Mike McCarthy came in to Dallas. And at first, McCarthy came in and said, all right, like, you know, we're going to run the Kellynne Moore offense. But over time, you know, McCarthy said, oh, we're going to start running a little bit more of what I want to do.

And then it became that weird back and forth. Look, we've talked about it, you know, a couple of times here this season. When you have an offensive staff and the same thing happens on defense, you know, all the assistance, everybody's going to have a role in putting together the game plan. And it might be certain parts of situation. So there's going to be a coach that's in charge of the opening script. There's a coach that's in charge of Red Zone. There's a coach that's in charge of third down. There's a coach that's in charge of first and second down pass game. So all of those different areas, those parts of the game plan might be run. Maybe there's a part that's for Kevin Petulow. There's a part that's for Aaron Moorhead.

There's a part for that's for Doug Nussmeyer. You go right down the list. And so I think when you look at it, we don't know who's in charge of what area. But obviously, Nick Siriani, Kellan Moore and Kevin Petulow, they're all going to have a hand in everything. How heavy a hand is the thing that those are the things we don't know being on the outside. All right. Let's get back to the screenshots, Fran. One last one on the processing turn downs discussion. That's the first third down in the game.

Yeah. Throw is a little bit late to John Dodson. Yeah. So this is an example, and this was two plays after that deep corner route to A.J. Brown, right? It's the first third down of the game. So, Julia, this is Dotson PBU. You know, the A.J. Brown one that we showed earlier at the top, that's an example of Jalen getting too fast through his progressions.

And then two plays later, you see an example of it being too slow through the progression. And this one, this is a basic concept that they run every single week, honestly. I mean, they run some version of this concept multiple times a week. They rounded two or three times in this game against the Panthers, where you basically have like two stop routes. a flat route, two curl routes and a flat route. And so basically you've got Devante Smith. He's running in the middle of the field.

That's Jahan Dotson running in the outside. And then you're going to have Grant Calcutera running to the flat. Now, that you are reading this. If you're the quarterback, you are reading this inside out. So in the order that I laid it out, Jalen, that's how Jalen Hertz is going to read it. He's going to go from Devante to John Dotson at the bottom of screen to Grant Calcutara in the flat.

And, Julie, if you want to go to the next shot, Jalen drops back. And he stares at that first read to Devante Smith, who is running right into this defender, who's hanging out in the middle of the Eagles logo. That's his landmark for this route. And that defender was, there was no mystery that he was there. Like he was there the whole way. Jalen was just stuck on this for a little bit too long.

And you could see that Jahan Dotson, right at where the five is for the 50 yard line, he's already at his route break. And so really, ideally, especially if you want yards after catch, because you'll see that these routes don't go past the sticks, right? This is it's third and long. And these are these are two routes that end short of the sticks here. So if you want to be able to get up with that down, you need some yards after catch here on this play.

And so the ball needs to come out with good timing, but the ball does not come out with good timing. As Julie, if you go to the next shot here, because Jalen got to that too late, the corner was able to put his foot in the ground and close on this throw. And Mike Jackson gets the PBO. He's able to contest the throw and it gets knocked down. And so that was an example of, again, like the,

the route weren't all that, like, inspirational, right? We're not like saying, like, oh, yeah, what a great concept there. Now, there is something to like, hey, you know, we're going to run the same basic plays all the time and we're going to out-execute you kind of deal, but they're not out-executing anybody right now. You know, that's not how, that's not Jalen's game right now. And so I think when you look at it, that was an example of him hanging too long on Devante Smith that prevented him from getting to Dotson and it resulted in incomplete pass. Is it, I mean, across the league, it's not atypical for offenses to be running stable

plays throughout the same game, right? Yeah, I think that, you know, you see that throughout the NFL, and certainly with this Eagles offense, some teams more than most, obviously, right? But I think with with this Eagles offense, this is a play we see multiple times a week, you know, and it's pretty consistently. We see, we see this play in this offense. I mean, I do, I would like to see one option. I know it's 1317, but I would like to see one option that could get you the first down, but maybe that's, yeah, maybe that's stressful thinking. Okay, climbing back overall. Yep.

And we talked about how the Eagles are trending downward as a passing game over the past four or five weeks. I know you had the chart in your piece on all p.hly.com, everybody should be a diehard so they can check it out. You talked about, you grabbed it right away on the postgame show on Sunday that this game, Jalen Hertz held the ball forever and threw it very short. and if you look at him compared to the rest of the league that that stands out yeah i and the way i initially was going to do the piece was thinking about that stat that i pulled before the uh at the beginning of the post game show on sunday um but i thought you know what like it's still such a small sample and it's one game you know let's let's branch this out and just look at the last four weeks just the last four games we'll kind of expand uh the search a little bit so julia if you want to just

pull up, Hertz last four weeks. This is a table that was in the piece that I, that just went up on all PHOI this morning. And basically the order of which you see these quarterbacks, this is the list of the quarterbacks that hold the ball or at least four seconds at the highest percentage of the time over the last month of the season, right? So Jalen Hertz is at the very top. And the reason why I want to show. Jalen Hertz is on 22.2% of his dropbacks.

He's holding the ball for over four seconds. and that's the most in the league. Yes. And the big thing here is that you're seeing some of the best quarterbacks in football here on this list. And yes, while Jalen is well out in front of some of these guys, you know, I mean, Josh Allen is at 17%. Lamar Jackson is at near 20%.

And typically, depending on how wide you make this scope, you're going to see those guys at or near the top of the list. But the big thing is what happens on those plays? It's not just the fact that Jalen holds the ball. That's bad he holds the ball. along. A lot of these guys hold the ball along. That's what that's what makes them great is that they've got that ability to create. But when you start combining that with some of those other numbers, that's where things get concerning. And if you go to how often on plays where he holds

the ball for at least four seconds, how often does he throw 20 yards downfield? And that like, bow, I gasped when I saw the number. Like 2.2% over the last month. And when you look at those percentage points for those other guys, like it's double digits for basically everybody. There's only one other who's under 10% and that's at 6.5. And it's Aaron Rogers. You don't want to be in the company of the New York Jets offense right now. And so I think when you're looking at that

and then you look, all right, well, what are some of the other reasons why a quarterback would hold the ball for a really long time? And one of those reasons would be, all right, he's under pressure. You know, because if he's got a quick pressure in his face, now he's got to hold the ball

and he's got to navigate. He's got to avoid the rush or he's got to escape the pocket. I mean, Jalen, he faces quick pressure. This is all from next gen stats. He faces quick pressure. under 4% of dropbacks. And so when you look at that compared to all these other guys in this list,

that's well, well behind all of these other guys. And so, all right, it's not because he's getting pressured. It's not drop. I put drop back death in there because that's one thing. Sometimes you see with quarterbacks that hold onto the ball, you think of like, you know, Jimmy Garoppolo would always be high on this list. Well, it's because they did a lot of play action boot. You know, Jared Gopford, he was with the Rams.

They did a lot of play action, longer developing plays, moving the pocket, deep vertical drops off play action. Well, Jalen's not dropping back all that deep. They're doing a little bit more play action, but even still, those are typically like really fast bang play action plays where it's like five step and get the ball out really fast. It's not necessarily those longer developing plays. And then I started getting into, all right, well, what happens on those plays where he's holding the ball four seconds? That's where you get into the throwaways and sacks and scrambles. And Jalen is near the top or at the top of all three of those categories.

And Bo, I thought to myself, I'm like, wait a minute, let me add these up. And if you take the throwaway percentage, the sack percentage, and the scrambles, the scramble percentage and you add up all three of those kind of 41.4% of his throws where he holds the ball for four for four seconds result in a throwaway a sack or a scramble and it's just like man like that that that right there like crystallizes the inconsistencies you're seeing with this past game right now because he's doing it at an extremely high rate he's not creating enough explosives when he does do this right you're not getting as many of those great scrambles you see them, they're there, but there's not as many. That's why when you look at EPA per dropback,

he was like third worst, you know, amongst this group on these types of plays. And so, again, this doesn't count the RPO's. This doesn't count like the quick play action throw, some of the West Coast stuff, the screens. Like, you take all that stuff out. You're just looking at the plays where he holds the ball. And this is supposed to be his superpower. He's just not hitting on as many of these plays as, you know, as you would like to see. I think the explanation for that, honestly is I think he doesn't want to turn the ball over. So when you're not going to throw the ball deep in those situations because you don't want to put it up for grabs, you're going to take sacks there because you're being told live

to see the next play. I think that he's there looking for a play to develop and it's been whether it's coached into him or whether it's his response to the coaching. I think that there is intentionality from him in terms of not trying to. trying to turn the ball over, but that's been such an emphasis after last year, such an emphasis after the first few weeks. You even heard Kellyn Moore today talking about Jalen. And when he was asked about Jalen's play, he mentioned only one turnover since the biweek.

Like this is a talking point that they have. And I think that is something that perhaps it's an overcorrection. But when I see that chart, it certainly isn't kind to Jalen. But I think the not wanting to throw a turnover is a big part of that. I mean, it's a pretty dire chart, and we talked about it either early in the season or right before the season that, like, over the course of his career, Jalen Hurts's numbers are not good the longer he holds onto the ball. The offense is so much better when he's getting the ball out at the top of his drop. But I guess my other question, Fran, is if the Eagles know that, that they have this awesome offensive line that can allow Jailen Hurts to throw to hold on to the ball that long, is there anything that they can be doing coaching-wise or something? schematically to you know we don't we always hear about like they're practicing

scramble drills and stuff like that like is that is that a problem that you see in the offense or do you put this pretty pretty much mostly on jalen well the thing with practicing scramble drill and you need to practice scramble drill right but it's almost like um it's like the turnover circuit right where it's like oh like we practice it better than anybody but there's still like an element of randomness that goes into those plays and you know you're there are going to be plays where yeah like oh man he did a great job on the the 27 yard or to Devante Smith, right? So that play, like that ball should have gone to AJ within rhythm.

That was like a deep curl route to AJ Brown, far right side, like four first down. AJ separated. That ball should have gone out to AJ. He turns that throw down. He ends up rolling to his left going all the way over the other side. And he finds Devante for a first down on third and long, great play. Roll the dice later and he might be stepping into a sack or maybe he throws and he rolls to his left and nobody's there and it's incomplete.

Right. And so there's that element of randomness there. that we've talked about so often at times with this past game. And so they can practice it. I think the bigger thing is that they've just got to be able to find ways for him to get his stinger back. You know, because to me, like that that 2.2% downfield throw rate on those play, like, alarming because that's always been what Jay, like, I mean, Zach, it was what? It was like five or six weeks ago.

He was telling every, he was telling reporters, he told me, like, this is, those big plays are always going to be a part of our, uh, uh, uh, this is. I was going to throw a deep ball. people just have to accept it people just have to accept it um that's not it that's that has not been a part of the offense uh over these last few weeks and so uh i found that to be really really surprising going back and looking at those numbers all right well we will get to uh the rest of the leftovers from the film in just a minute everyone has a specialty they love for some it's running or gardening for others it's shooting hoops are crossing up a defender at rothman orthopedics and their physicians are not only

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All right, friend, I don't want to keep this negative, but let's clean up the negative. I think last thing on the passing game you had talked about some of the easy buttons. Last week, it was those RPO's that were working pretty successfully. This week, the Panthers had a pretty good game plan against those.

Yeah, and this is the problem when you do streamline your offense and you say, all right, like, this is what we're going to focus on. We're going to do this, this set amount of plays, is that, yes, like, the idea that you can out-execute your opponent on a weekly basis is there, but also those guys get paid too, and they're going to try and out-execute you. They're going to have plans for what your plan is. And so I thought we saw that. Let's go to the busted RPO, Julia, first. This happened on the second drive of the game. And you can see here on this play, the Eagles, we're looking at it from the end zone angle to start. The Eagles are running their QB counter read.

You can see Lane Johnson and Mackay Beckton. They're already starting to pull over from our left to our right. Saquan Barclay is going the opposite way. Jalen Hurts, if he was going to go through this play, he's going to read a defender and either keep it or give it to Saquine Barclay. But he bails on this concept entirely. And we'll go to the next shot here to show exactly why. The reason why he bales entirely on this play is that the big nickel corner, the DB Demani Richardson, the safety there, he's on the line of scrimmage,

basically showing that he's going to blitz off the edge. And there is nobody over Devante Smith in the slot. That safety is, you know, 10 yards away. And so this is what is called a site adjust from the Eagles where basically Devante Smith, you know, once he sees that he's got free access, he and Jalen Hertz are on the same page. Devante Smith's just going to take a couple steps and turn around and catch this ball. And you're basically just stealing yards from the defense on early downs.

It's second along here. well what happens at the snap of the ball julia if you go to the next shot you could see that the safety instead of blitzing he actually ends up trying to fall off and steps right into the passing lane tries to step in front of this throw from jalen hurts and so jalen immediately says all right i'm not throwing it and so now he ends up just basically running and ends up running for for two yards and so uh the panthers baited him on this play Demani richerson baited him on this play they were all over it it looked at that's why like even when we were watching it live i said oh like maybe johnny wilson on the wrong route or him and Devante Smith weren't on the same page. He and Devante were talking on the field after this play. Yeah.

So I think that ultimately what happened was that they saw that they had free access. I think he and Devante were on the same page. Julie, if you go to the next shot, you can see like Devante sitting there open. And by this point, Jaylam has already decided like, all right, I'm going to run. He's running behind Seekwon at this point. This was just one of those ones where the defense was able to fool them and it ended up helping them get off the field. And at that point, the linemen are already downfield, right? Yes.

He can't wait and throw that one. So that's a true, just tip your cap to the defense, it feels like. Yes. Well, we can go later in the game on that pivotal sack, the one that we discussed thoroughly on the post game show. Julie, if you go to the late sack number one. So this is the one where it's first down, right, where it's first and 10 in the fourth quarter. And the Eagles are running an RPO to the bottom of the screen here.

and basically it's going to be either counter where you've got pullers from the back side that's Landa Dickerson and Grant Calcutara and you're handing this ball off to Saquan Barclay and he's going to run to the right or you're throwing a slant to A.J. Brown. Now, on the first play of this drive, they ran the same exact play. Same exact thing.

They ran counter with Sequin Barclay and they ran the slant with A.J. Brown. Their safety was in the deep middle of the field. So AJ was wide open. Ran the slant, went for 11 yards. Easy. Pitch and catch. Move to football. Well, they come back to it a few plays later and you can see the difference here. Julie, if you go to the next shot, the safety being so close

to the line of scrimmage, he's basically sitting on this slant route. He's taking this slant route away. And AJ sees it. So he's like jogging through the route because he's like, all right, well, I'm not getting the ball. I'm basically double covered here. The ball's not coming my way. Jalen doesn't see it that way. He does not hand the ball off to Sequin Barkley. And so now when he wants to go to AJ, like AJ's double covered. There's nowhere that he can go. But not only that, Julie, if you go to the next shot, the defensive end that Jalen, I think, is reading here on the end of the line of scrimmage, he also is like falling back into the past lane because he just said, yeah, like three plays earlier. You guys just did the same thing to me. I'm not going to let you throw this past me. I've got a six foot five frame. I'm going to try and take this away. And so Jalen doesn't make this throw. He ends up rolling to his right. Nobody else is running routes because it's an RPO. Julie, if you go to the next shot, Jalen starts rolling to his right. Devante Smith's over there, but he's essentially just trying to trying to block somebody. Jalen said that he was worried about offensive lineman being downfield. Ironically enough, like no offensive lineman went downfield on this play. So if he had thrown it

away, he would have been okay. It wouldn't have been a penalty. But as we discussed, like the right play would have been to throw this away, even accepting the penalty because it would have been a better outcome than taking second and 19 here and setting them back the way that he did. And I asked Nick Siriani on Monday what the coaching point is there, knowing that he did the right thing, what we think is the right thing against the Ravens and taking the penalty. And he said he's just not willing to go into the specifics there. So, I mean, I think it's pretty clear. Yes. I think not taking on Zach. Yes. We're 58 minutes. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead, Frank. I mean, Zach. We're 58 minutes in. We've focused on a lot on what Janwin needs to do better,

but Janlon did throw a touchdown past the Grand Calcutera. I know that's something that you reviewed on the film. Did you want to run through real quick what was working on that? that play. And if you do want to see what was working on that play, make sure that you go to all-PHLY.com. If you're watching on Terrestrial Television, those of you watching live. So quick shout out to Yishmeister. He asked for that, the busted RPO play to be included in this breakdown. So that was off the Discord. Good reason to be a diehard. So you're a part of our Discord community. You can make contributions to the show in that way. Also, to C.J.R. 34, who asked for this Grant Calcutera touchdown.

So, Julia, if you want to just go to Grant TD, I think that's what I named it, or Calcutara TD. Basically what you're seeing here from the Eagles is it's actually a really nice route combination. I really like what they did here on this play, where you're going to get, basically, the bottom of the screen, you've got A.J. Brown and Devante Smith. You've got Johnny Wilson, Calcutara, and Sequan Barkley to the top. Jalen's going to start looking to his left. and what he's got working to his left.

Julie, if you go to the next shot, you've got AJ running inside. You've got Devante running outside. Now, what I don't know is, is Jalen actually reading off of these guys? Like, is the ball supposed to go to AJ? Is it supposed to go to Devante? Or what you often see in this part of the red zone,

because things happen so fast and the ball's got to come out with good timing is that he'll start to his left, but it's just to hold a safety in the middle of the field. It's just to make sure that he doesn't cheat over to the other side and take away the throw that you actually want. And so that's why you'll often see an NFL films, you might get a close up shot of the quarterback's eyes

where the helmet is looking left, but the quarterback's eyes are like looking to the right. It's always a cool to see that. You will tend to see that here in this part of the field. But either way, Jalen looks like he's looking to the left. These guys are basically running picks off of each other. And if it is man to man, honestly, both guys were open here. So if Jalen did read this,

he would have had both opportunities there. essentially what the eagles are doing in the top, Julie, if you want to go to the next one, what it looks like off of, I talked about like that, that two curls and a flat concept with the Jahan Dotson play, how they run that all the time. This is your basic snag concept, and excuse that like short arrow. That's basically, that's the best I could do from this screen grab here. But they run this play a lot where you're going to get a corner route, a flat route, and it's called like a little snag round.

It's a little like kind of a button hook there, you know, just inside the numbers. And so that's a route that the Eagles run a lot. And they run it a handful of times a game. Well, this is a play off of that because that's not, Seguan Barclay is running to the flat, but those two routes in the middle of the field are actually going to change. And Julie, if you go to the next one, basically, instead of running to the corner, Johnny Wilson's actually going to the post.

And instead of just sitting down, Calcutterra is actually going to, like, do a little bit of a pivot route where he's going to turn and look at Jalen Hertz and then work his way back inside. So it's just basically a setup off of a concept that they run a decent amount of. Julie, if you go to the next shot, you can see that Calcutera is wide open in the end zone here, working away from the DB. It did a nice job there. So this was good execution down in the red zone. And Jalen Hurts is able to connect with Grant Calcutera for his first career touchdown.

And how does he celebrate? I missed that. Zach, would you want to? Yeah. Yeah, I think he put his hands in upward down this motion. put his hands in an upwards down's motion. I did think that the willingness to pass in the red zone was a little bit encouraging. The touchdown passed to Devante was nice as well.

Yeah, the one that Devante was like, I don't want to say dangerously late, but he did lead them to the sideline a little bit. It was a little bit close to being out of bounds just because Devante's coming from number three. He was the tightest to the formation, and that ball was thrown close to the pylon. I probably should have come out maybe a beat earlier, but it's probably a little nitpicky. Ultimately, still got the touchdown. And to your point, like two throws in the red zone,

we have not seen too many of those over the course of this season. All right, I'll give you, I'm going to give you 45 seconds. I'll give you 90 seconds to give your spiel about how good the running game was. Yeah, it was really good. Sequin Barkley, 6.2 a carry. The offensive line was outstanding. The double teams were great. You saw Cam Juergens moving,

the shy tunnel, the nose. tackle number 99 is going to be seeing all three of those interior guys in his nightmares for a couple of weeks. Dickerson, Juergens, Beckton, they all did a great job of getting movement at the point of attack. It's more the same. I mean, they ran counter in like four or five different ways and they got chunk plays and all the different versions of them. The run game was outstanding. Cooper DeGine's positionless nature. Yeah. Wait, what was the word you used, Bo? Technically, it's the word I used. Yeah, exactly. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not used. I'm not using this as my own.

I heard it come out of your mouth. I just know it. Yeah. Yeah. Guess what? You calling positionless players is dumb. Okay. Calling players positionless is dumb.

It still came out of my mouth. Okay. I keep rolling. Julie. This one. I thought I thought Cooper deGene was really good against the run in this game. And what you saw a couple of times was the Eagles. come out in nickel. And we've talked about Zach

Bond and his flexibility and how sometimes he'll line up stacked and they like to put him down on the line of scrimmage in a five-man front. Well, here the Eagles are lined up and what essentially is like a base defense look, right? You've got your three down linemen. You've got two outside linebackers and your two stackbackers. But the guy on the right there who's lined up as a

quasi as an outside linebacker is Cooper de Gene. Now, this part of this is because it's 11 personnel. It's three receivers. The Panthers like to keep those receivers tight to the formation. Dave Canales believes in a balanced attack offensively. And so those receivers are all going to be a part of the run game. That requires your nickel corner to be a part of the run game from a defensive standpoint. But I think that Dijin gives them that added flexibility

to be able to line up in that way. And again, he had a couple of really nice plays against the run in this game. Not because he's playing a different position. He's just a physical thing. Yes. Oh, well. But look, I mean, not every corner you can confidently line up down to the line of scrimmage and say, hey, you know what? Like if you're dealing with a tight end coming across the formation, you can do that. Yeah, he does allow them to see. stay and they go against against other team's base. Yes.

An example of the Eagles creating a one-on-one opportunity for Jalen Carter. Yes, so in the Discord, Marty Maxi asked just about like the state of the pass rush post-Branding Graham. I like Jalek's Hunt.

I probably had one of his more impactful games. We continue to see Goods flashes from Nolan Smith. We know Josh Swett. What he can do? He had a couple of nice pressures in this game. But one of the things I liked here from this one, Julia, if you want to go to Carter

1V1, one of my biggest critiques from the Eagles defense over the course the last few years, honestly, is that I don't think that they're overly creative with their front alignments with, you know, dictating one-on-ones and, you know, kind of creating space for those guys to get those kind of opportunities from a rush standpoint. It's more like, hey, like, we're better than you. We're going to line up and beat you. This is a good example of what I'd like to see from other fronts and we typically don't see here from the Eagles. This is what I call a tilted front where you've got three linemen to one side and one line.

up all the way over on the other side. And when you don't put anybody else in line of scrimand, you say, all right, it's just these four guys. This is what I would call a tilted front. Typically what happens, Julie, if you go to the next shot, the offense is going to respond by sliding towards the tilted side because a lot of teams like to run stunts with those three guys over on that side. So to make sure that you've got the advantage, you want to make sure you've got four versus three. That can account for any kind of stunts that you have over that way. Now you've got Josh Sweat one-on-one on the other side. The running back is there in the backfield in case anybody blitzes from depth.

But what I like about this is that if you're not running any kind of stunts here, because of the alignment from the Eagles defensive line, Julie, if you go to the next shot, you can see that the guy who gets the double is the inside defensive tackle. And so what that means is that Jalen Carter, since he's the second man on the line, he gets a one-on-one. You have dictated to the offense who is going to get the double and who is going to get the one-on-one.

And so you've got Jordan Davis. I think that's Milton, Williams. Milton Williams gets double-teamed here on this play. Jalen Carter gets the single team. Julie, if you go to the last shot, you could see that he gets a nice quick pressure here where he bullrushes Robert Hunt into the backfield. The ball just came out really, really fast. But the offensive lineman was in Bryce Young's lap here. This was actually the play where C.J. Gardner Johnson lights up Xavier League it over the middle of the field on a third down play. But I thought it was nice to be able to see this kind of flash here from the defensive staff. What would be, why can't you do that all the time?

Good question. I don't have the answer. answer there. But to me, like, that's something that we've seen a lot of defenses, like, really, like, I think of the Rams and some of the things that they always did to create one-on-one opportunities for Aaron Donald. They would line up in those tilted fronts. And sometimes he's the defensive end where, all right, well, now you have to choose. Are you going to slide extra help to Aaron Donald? Or are you going to slide over to the three-man side? Or maybe he lined up as that number two guy, the way we saw there with Carter. And so just, you know, lining up in different ways, trying to find those advantage's matchups. I think that's something they can really try and do more with a guy like

Jalen Carter. Last thing, did you think that Cooper DeGine struggled in coverage in this game? No. I think that that became a topic because, you know, yeah, yeah, he gave up two catches to Adam Thielen. Theelan had nine catches for over 100 yards. Only two of them came against Dijin and man-to-man coverage, and one of them was on a really slick double move.

And that was the majority of those plays. The other one came blitz coverage on a slant route where he had no help in the middle of the field and he lost the top of the route and third down. Other than that, Slay really contested. on a third down throw. He was right there on top of Thielen and coverage. He was able to get past Nolan Smith and Darius Slay in zone coverage on one play on a fake bubble screen to the outside. He caught that tip throw on fourth down that Jalen Carter tipped up in the air that was intended for somebody else. And Dillon just was like Johnny on the spot there. And he had a couple of plays where he caught

some plays underneath. There was another one late in the game where he caught that fourth down throw where he's matched up against Tristan McCollum in space. Like, you know, yeah, Thielen had a good game. But I wouldn't say like, oh, man, like Cooper Jean really struggled. That was not my takeaway after watching the film. And then you just reminded me of it. But in your video on the L-PH-LI.com breakdown, you mentioned that, you know, the Eagles ran all these slants with AJ Brown.

They never once in this game pulled a double move off. It kind of odd, right? Yeah, I, you know, as I was watching, I was like, I was like, all right, maybe there was one that happened in the game and I just missed it on the broadcast, and I was waiting for it, waiting for it, and it just never came. Yeah, I think that, you know,

Maybe that's something we'll see this weekend here against the Pittsburgh Steelers. Maybe it's, maybe that'll be a swooper on Thursday. Oh, there you. I like that. All right, we've got to run through the remaining super chats here before we get going. Our friend Richard Fitzwell, don't call him Dick, says, I believe social media has both heightened and distorted the granular weekly scrutiny of quarterback play. Most fans think quarterback think quarterbacks are either elite or terrible. And there's less room for Zach's favorite word, nuance.

I think he's 100% correct. Yeah, I think this can be extended beyond quarterback play. No question, yes. I think we too often label great and horrible, elite and worst, however you want to frame it, when it's really hard to be on either end of the spectrum. Most people, most things are somewhere in the middle, right? And so if you think of the bell-shaped curve, right, most by definition, most things are in the middle of that curve. And I think too often we try to make it binary.

You're either the best or you're the worst. And so I don't know if it's social media that does it. I don't know if it's just the nature of opinion. But yeah, I like that perspective. Technology. You were very close to like dipping your toe in a potential. anti-technology stance, but you make sure to couch it at the end that it's probably not social media. Well, I don't think technology creates that. I think it's society. But honestly, if we want to get deep

into it, I think it's also kind of the state of discourse too, right? No one is, you know, you don't have headlines by saying, this guy's the most average player I've seen, right? It's like, this is the best running back. This is the worst pick they've ever made. This is the biggest bust. This is the boom. It's it's it's it's it's never like this is this is the most middling class that Howie Rosem's ever, you know, like that doesn't that doesn't sell. So it's just the nature of discourse as well. Yep. Chris says if the Eagles pull a 2020 and draft a quarterback with an already paid slash

established one, who do you think they would like to see who would you like to see them draft, Frank? It's probably a little early for that conversation. But we will, uh, let's some draft coverage here coming. up. Yeah, we'll go through some names here in the coming weeks. I'm excited about that. Yes. Fran Duffy to the moon. Claude de Boussé. By the way, Kyle McCourt looked pretty good this year. Just want to put that out there. Dude, I watched Kyle McCourt this morning. He's terrible.

Literally like, stop that he was out. Do I watch this morning? God bless him, but he's a struggle a bit. Claude says tinfoil half theory. There are parts of the playbook that Kellynne Moore has to throw out because he knows Jalen won't get the ball out quick enough. Yeah, I mean, that's the part of it that we don't know when it comes to like the the state of the passing game, like the routes they call. Because again, like these are the same things we said about the offense a year ago,

largely, right? And so, all right, well, what are the things that are the same from last year? the quarterback is the same, the head coach is the same, the past game coordinator is the same, a lot of members of the coaching staff are the same. It's a new offensive coordinator. I've seen the offensive coordinator operate differently. I've seen the officer coordinator, you know,

operate different game plans at different spots. And so, yeah, it's just we don't know the why it's behind those things. Santiago says, my takes are right. James Casey last fullback in 2014. I mean, that's wrong. Right, Zach? Yeah, no, he was signed as a tight end. He was a fullback before he came to Philly, but the Eagles designated him as a tight end.

So if you look at the 2014 roster, he listed him as tight end. And they had a tight end on a practice squad in 2016. Yes, correct. Finally, and I think this is an interesting one, Zach. LB908 says, how confident are you that Hertz is being coached hard by Siriani Moore and the coaching staff when they review these plays on film? I think it's an important question, Zach, because publicly, for whatever reason, they go out of their way to never criticize anything that Jalen Hurts does. Yeah, very much so.

And I thought that was the case earlier this year, too, in particular, when Hertz was not playing well. Tampa game, you know, some of those games early on. And I thought there was a lot of kiddie glove treatment to Hertz. And because we talked about it how I think you brought up, it was right around the time that the book came out. So there's a YouTube commenter that says, I mentioned the book. you can take your shot right there because I mentioned it there, but Bo brought up the... You should mention it in every episode. No, no, no, I shouldn't.

Bo brought up the line from his first year starting when after that game against Washington on the Tuesday night, I think it was, or it was the delayed game. And Jalen and Nick were, you know, Nick was going at Jowen on the sideline, and Jalen said he lived with his toughest coach and he wants to be coached hard. you don't see that as much anymore. And so I don't know what's going on behind the scenes. I ask those questions. I try to find out. But you do get to a point in, you know, J.O.N. has a huge role in the organization, a huge voice in the organization.

And I don't want to say that he's untouchable or that he's above anybody else. But yeah, when there are mistakes that are happening repeatedly, it's a company. upon A, the coaches to coach him up and be the player to accept the coaching. I also think like if Vic Fangio was the offensive coordinator, he would criticize. We'd be willing to say that Jiland

like made the wrong decision to take the sack on the bus at RPO, right? Like it's just their specific styles. Nick doesn't really criticize any players publicly. Yes. All right. Good stuff, everybody. Fran, thanks for illuminating us.

Zach, thank you. Was there anything else from the coordinators that's worth mentioning, by the way, as we close things up. Well, we spoke to Nick afterward, after our show yesterday, and so there was more on the punt, field goal, Jake Elliott situation. Nick, interestingly, when he was asked if he would have made that decision, if he would have made the same decision, had Jake made the kicks earlier, he did not give an emphatic yes.

It was more you take everything into account. So my interpretation of that was they were certainly factoring in how Jake Kelly's been kicking. So Michael Clay today said that he's not, so he said a few weeks ago after some Jake misses that he'd be more concerned if Jake was spraying kicks to both sides. And Jake did miss one left and miss one right. But the one that he missed left was the extra point. and Michael Clay said that they jumped off sides there. He kind of takes that off the board because the whole operation wasn't rushed. And he said on the field goal, he kind of intimated that it wasn't totally on Jake.

That part of that was the operation. He didn't want to say what specifically in the operation was the problem. The Eagles are staunchly defending Jake Elliott here. Like we said, I don't think they have a choice. He's their kicker. And by the way, he has earned equity. But this is absolutely something to monitor. He was 0 for 5, obviously from 50 yards of season,

and he was 0 for 1 in the preseason from 50 yards plus. So 0 for 6 if you include preseason kicks. So this is absolutely something that should be on their radar. And I imagine that it is on their radar. And then there's a lot about how, you know, Nick's interpretation was actually similar to what I had said on the show. which is that I respect when the group is like self-aware enough to say they didn't play well to say they need to get better. And that was kind of Nick's spin yesterday was that he thinks it's a good thing that the team was kind of hard on themselves after the game.

But he does want them to find joy because as we've discussed, when they were 10 and 1 last year, it wasn't a particularly joyful place to be around. And so that is a emphasis from Nick. And it is something, by the way, too, that Michael Clay brought up. in the meeting today for the team to have joy, or the meeting yesterday, rather. All right. Well, as we push forward the rest of the week, we will try to find our own joy as well.

Santiago checks in with one last super chat, says, is Jalen concussed, but so full he seems fine, I'm assuming so far. Yeah, I mean, it was a while since that commander's game, but he certainly was never in the concussion protocol. So hard for us to say from here. All right. the way, I just want to say,

uh, got some messages on, uh, blue sky that I missed. Eric Drew in my thank you's yesterday. I'm sorry for that. I miss Matt Ruth, uh, who even had his wife tune in,

um, hoping you should be proud of the 271 P HLY podcasts that he listened to last year. Wow. So Matt, you definitely deserve, uh, credit,

uh, for that as well. And then as I am, I, I have a, few other people that deserve mentioning, including Zach, yeah, including Zach R, who sent me his, his top podcast and Ph.LY Eagles was number one on that list. So thank you to you guys. And look, if I, if I didn't mention you or you still want to get your submissions in, you didn't know where to find me.

And I'll find time during the next two weeks to thank you as well. trying to figure out how many days that is. No, that can't be right. I don't know. What do you mean? Well, 52 times five, but think about that. Okay. Two, six.

About 271, you said. Yeah, no, so I'm saying. So it's more than five days a week. So it's, so we, we do 260 shows, not including vacations, but then we have some of these extra shows, you know, game day, you know, during the season, we're doing six shows a week. So he's, he's tuning into, you know, more than five days a week of shows. Yeah. What I was trying to figure out is how much of his year was spent listening to the show. Ah, okay.

Like over a week, over a week's worth of his entire year. Spend listening to us, Bicker. Yes. Someone said to me, I don't know if I said this on the show, we're just in a casual conversation, that they feel like they had been watching a therapy session during the past year. And I don't know whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, but in any event. There's always a good thing. Yeah, there you go.

How are we doing? Are you asking me? What's our check-in? Yeah, what's our check-in on our relationship status? Oh, we're great. As long as the audience is happy, we're here to entertain, to inform, to make you think, to make you laugh, that's what matters. Okay. That seems like a promise for nudity in the year, 2005.

That's what the audience has been asking for. All right, that'll do it for this episode of the PHAY Eagles podcast. Handsome Rich and Les Bowen behind the desk tomorrow for our Wednesday show. And then the three of us back on Thursday. And then Friday, Professor Danes joins us as the Eagles prepare for the Pittsburgh Steelers, a good test and really the only good defense that the Eagles play like the second half of the season. So a good test for this passing game. We'll see what happens.

Thanks everybody for watching and listening. today. We'll talk to tomorrow. Thanks to Julia, and as always, we love you.