PHLY Philadelphia Eagles Podcast - PHLY Eagles Podcast | Fran Duffy’s film analysis: Is there hope for Bryce Huff and the Philadelphia Eagles’ D-line?

Episode Date: September 17, 2024

Boy is there still a lot to unpack from Monday night’s dejecting 22-21 chokejob against the Atlanta Falcons. We’ll try to start with cool-headed rationality as Fran Duffy reviews the film. Was the defensive line as bad as it looked on TV? How much is Jalen Carter being double-teamed? What happened on the final defensive drive to make Kirk Cousins look like Patrick Mahomes playing against high schoolers? And what’s up with the offensive stagnation in the red zone?Then, we take our rational hats off to unpack Nick Sirianni’s crime against coaching as Deniz Selman takes us to game theory class and explains why the decision to kick a field goal at the end of the game was malpractice. Finally, Matt Quinn joins the show to provide the voice of the fan as he and Mt. Joy prepare for their show at The Mann this Friday night (only a few tickets still available!).Join Zach Berman, Bo Wulf and the rest of the gang for a venting session of the highest order. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello, everybody and welcome to the PHLY Eagles podcast. The day after an unfathomable collapse for the Eagles on Monday night football at 22 to 21 loss. And boy, do we have a lot to get to on this show. Bo Wolf, Fran Duffy, Zach Berman. We're going to be joined in a little bit by Danis Selman, the professor. And then we're going to close with a nice little segment, a little uplifting moment.

Matt Quinn of Mount Joy are going to join us ahead of Mount Joy's appearance at the man on Friday night. But on a day when I think most Eagles fans are still pretty angry, we're going to start, we're going to try to go through everything that happened last night rationally. Fran, you have had a chance to just speed through and crunch that film. You said you finished just about 20 minutes ago. So we're going to hear all your thoughts. You've taken your voluminous notes.

We're going to work through some of our major questions about what you saw on the film. And then at the end, we're going to get to some of the big. decisions and I think what has to be a very big conversation about Nick Siriani and all of this conversation of course presented by our friends at Bet365 where it's never ordinary. Download the Bet365 app and use code P-H-L-Y-365 when you sign up, whatever the moment. It's never ordinary at Bet-365. Friend, before we get to you, Zach, how you doing? I know you're not on much sleep. You look good. How you feel? Doing well. Excited for the show. Always good to talk to you guys.

Been a busy morning of going through the numbers, watching the game, the TV cut through as much as I could, sending text. I was on Anthony's show this morning. So, yeah, I'm doing well, but honestly, I was excited to talk to you guys about this. All right. We have so much to get to.

So let's just get into it. And, Fran, my first question for you, I want to start at the end. We're going to start on the defense first because I think everybody is very well aware at how poorly the defensive line has been playing, the worst run defense in the league by yards per carry through two games. Obviously not a lot of pass rush, despite the investment the organization has made there. But let's start at the end, the final defensive drive for the Eagles,

knowing that they need to keep the Falcons out of the end zone. And they go 70 plays in 70 yards and six plays incredibly easy when you, you rewatched that sequence, that defensive possession, what went wrong, what jumped out to you, is it fixable? Yeah, I mean, a lot of it is fixable. And I would say not just for the final sequence, but for the, you know, that entire game. A lot of it is fixable. Now it's just a matter of like, these are the guys that are going to be able to fix it on the field.

So to me, just looking at that final sequence and I am planning one in my defensive breakdown to really go play by play here with this one. but you had that first completion of Kyle Pitts. They went for a long yard. That was a checkdown option for Kirk Cousins. Nicobi Dean was the nearest in coverage. The zone might have been a little bit soft, but I didn't think it was terrible in the situation.

Now, what was interesting about this, about the majority of this drive, though, was that, and Zach, was that the defensive line. All right, so this is your got to happen situation, right? These are the guys you want on the field to be able to get after the quarterback. You know that Atlanta is going to be throwing the football, all the play action stuff, all the window dressing, misdirection. All of that's out the window. These are going to be straight dropback situation.

So the Eagles go with Bryce Huff and with Josh Sweat on the outside, Jalen Carter and Moro Joma on the inside. And so those were the four that they said, these are the guys that we want getting after the quarterback. And it wasn't just a straight four-man rush on every single one of these plays, guys. They did mix things up with what they were trying to do up front. It just didn't work. So on the first play, you had a double stunt. So both guys on both sides running TE stunts where the tackle goes first in the end loops inside they picked up the stunt well Atlanta so kirk cousins has time he delivers the ball to Kyle Pitts on a little bit of a checkdown option but it goes for 11 yards to Kyle Pitts next play this one goes 21 yards to darnel mooney I'm just reading this right off my

notes if you guys can't tell on the video on YouTube here but basically this was a busted coverage essentially from quinyon Mitchell they're playing cover six and cover six is a form of zone coverage where you're playing cover two to one side and cover four to the other. And if you're playing cover two, that means you have a corner playing in the flat. And Cunion Mitchell was playing cover two techniques. So he's playing in the flat. But keep in mind the situation, where are we in this game? You've got to get depth and take away anything behind you because that soft spot in cover two is behind the corner underneath the safety.

Quinnion Mitchell had his eyes in the flat. Bijon Johnson's running into the flat. He's playing a little too shallow. and now you've got Darnell Mooney running behind it, and it gets open for a 21-yard pickup, and he gets out of bound, blanket chip able to kind of wrangle him down. Very next play, you could tell that Vic Fangio said,

all right, we're not going to mess around here. Let's put everybody at ISO curse. They're playing cover three. So now you've got Quignat Mitchell one-on-one with Darnell Mooney. This time it was just a really good route by Mooney. I thought Mooney had a good game in terms of running routes and creating separation. I saw that last week on film as well.

Great route by Mooney. He breaks open one-on-one. against Quinion Mitchell gets open along the sideline for first down. Now, on this one, they ran a blitz up front where they blitzed Nacobo Dean and they dropped Bryce Huff, the defensive end. Atlanta saw the L.O.A. And so they picked up the blitz. It was Dean versus a left guard. And so Dean's not going to win on that one. Ideally, when you run those blitz, you'd love to be able to get the linebacker matched up one-on-one with the running back. And that did not happen here on this one. So now you get first and 10. You're deep in enemy territory at this point. There was a little ball that

was thrown to Drake London right in front of Quinion Mitchell. I wouldn't put that on cue on that one. The Eagles ran a tilted front here where you've got three guys loaded up on one side of the formation and you had Brandon Graham by himself on the other side. So typically when you see teams trying do this, okay? There's two things. Number one, you are dictating one-on-one matchups. Say, hey, this is the guy that we want one-on-one. If you've got a fearsome parachute, if you've got Aaron Donald, if you've got Chris Jones, that's the guy you want lined up by himself. And then you're running some kind of twist and long game with the three-man side of that stunt. The Eagles did that. They ran a three-man stunt. It was picked up pretty well. You had Josh Sweat looping inside. He gets matched up on the

guard, but the guard's able to stop it. And BG, he tries to win with the bull rush against Caleb McGarry, and he does win, but it doesn't win fast enough. The ball comes out quickly. The ball's caught in front of quinichael. That goes for five yards. The next play, you get a bracket and so very quickly, with the game on the line, needing somebody to make a play, they're saying the guy, the only guy that we trust to win one on one is 37-year-old Brandon Grant. Yeah, it wasn't Bryce Huff. It wasn't, it was not Nolan Smith. It wasn't Josh sweat. They had sweat running. Now, sweat has been very good as a looper in those situations in the past.

Historically, that's something that he has been good at. I would say right now, and this has been the last couple of years, guys, they're not a good stunt team. They're not, you know, I want to ask Vinnie about this maybe next week because I, when Vinny was young, they were really, really good at running stunts. You look at him in Fletcher Cox and Ben and Graham, those guys, they worked in tandem so, so well. Right now, the timing is just not good.

And honestly, on the final play, they were, they ran a stunt. Actually, no, there was actually the very next play, the one that was the, the, the PBU by Vante Maddox in the end zone. They ran a stunt inside. I mean, the timing of it was really bad. It was between a joint and with Jalen Carter. And it just, the timing of it was terrible, had no chance of being able to get home. The Eagles did a nice job of running some different brackets and double coverage

concepts against London on third down and in the red zone. They ran that on that play. So cousins couldn't go to London. He settles for the second read on the backside, Ray Ray MacLeod. Maddox makes play in the end zone. I thought there was a fine no call. And that brings up third down. Credit the Falcons here for the first time in the entire game.

they did a good job of getting London away from the bracket. So they moved him to the far outside of a three receiver set. They matched him up one-on-one with Darius Slay. And London ran a ground. It was his best route of the game. He kind of sold that he was going to work inside, then broke towards the pylon to the right. He routed up Slay and he got open for the touchdown.

And Slay said it after. He's like, yeah, that's on me. It was a one-on-one situation. But again, this was a situation where up front, they didn't run, they ran one stunt on that side on that final play. They doubled team Jalen Carter. And that was it. Nobody, nobody up front could get home.

The ball came out fast and that's the game. I have a question here regarding this because I don't mean to simplify this or maddenify it, if you will. But in these hurry up situations, right? We're talking about stunts. We're talking about, you know, different things they do. Brandon Graham, after the game was saying you have to build a triangle, right? But in these hurry up situations, got to have a situation. isn't it just my guy beat your guy right i mean when i watched it back what stuck out to me

is they literally didn't touch kirk cousins on that final drive there wasn't even a quarterback hit he was not touched isn't it simply this is your offensive tackle this is your offensive guard this is our edge rusher this is our interior rusher uh our guy beat your guy am i oversimplifying it no and that's why a lot of coaches will say that it's players not plays in a lot of situations, especially when you get into two-minute drill, third down, red zone. You get into those critical down-and-distance situations, and you say it's players, not plays. And I think that that's a good situation that you could point to for that kind of scenario. And, you know, I think that the plan, the guy that you're hoping is that guy up front for the Eagles is Jalen Carter.

And for the majority of the night, and obviously he didn't, he didn't play the first two, the first two series for this defense. So, you know, we'll see if that gets talked about this week, but didn't play the first two drives. but for the majority of the night, Atlanta felt comfortable leaving Chris Lindstrom one-on-one. He's one of the highest paid guards in football. They said he's going to be one-on-one with Jalen Carter. There were times where they slid that way, but more often than not, they said,

we're going to slide to whoever's on the other, whoever the other defensive tackle is, if it's Jordan Davis, if it's a Joma, if it's Milton Williams, whoever that is, we're going to slide that way. We're going to chip defense events. There was a decent amount of chipping in those straight drop-back situations, and then we're going to leave Carter one-on-one with Lindstrom.

more often than not, Lindstrom won. And that was after he had, Bo, you and I talked about it. He had a brutal week last week against Pittsburgh. He gave up something like six pressures. It was not a good week for Chris Lindstrom. And he bounced back in a big way against Jalen Carter. All right.

So the final drive itself, any other major takeaways other than, boy, that was ugly. Yeah. I mean, honestly, it was different stuff with each one. They changed up coverage calls. They changed up pressure looks. They tried to blitz. they tried to stunt. They tried to just go straight four-man rush.

So I wouldn't say it was like, oh, they just sat and pre-vent defense, and they just went with a four-man rush. They tried changing things up schematically. Atlanta just had the answers or the Eagles who just made mistakes, say, in those critical spots. Okay. Let's get to the second part of this conversation about the defense, and this is specifically the run defense, and let's focus on the defensive line as part of it.

Bejan Robinson, 14 carries for 97 yards, 6.9 yards of carry. Tyler Algier, nine carries for 53 yards, 5.9 yards per carry on the season. The Eagles allowing, I believe, 6.4 yards per carry to opposing running backs. That's the worst in the NFL from a defensive line standpoint. Does this look to, is there reason to believe that this is adjustment to Vic Fangio's scheme? Or is it simply these guys just don't have it right now? I think that there probably is some of it being an adjustment to the scheme. I think that you could say that for some players in some positions.

And I obviously, without talking to the guys, understanding where they're at from a mental standpoint, that's tough to say. I do think that that's fair for the guys up front because they're being asked to, you know, play some different techniques in terms of their gap responsibilities and things like that. So what is that? Explain that a little bit. So instead of playing like a straight, hey, like this is my gap. I'm responsible for the gap between the guard and the center. There are times where, you know, and Vic Fangio kind of bristled at this at times in the summer. The gap and a half or two gap. But essentially, it's not always as cut and dry as this is my gap and that's what I'm responsible for.

So without getting completely into the weeds, that's essentially, you know, that's the difference. At times, certain players and a certain call may be asked to play more than just one gap. Can I ask you a question before we can get going? Because this sounds so familiar, right? For Eagles fans who have been following this team for a decade plus, Zach, you will remember. this sounds to me like the transition from Jim Washburn's defense to Billy Davis's defense, right, and the responsibilities on those guys. And then what then happened was the transition from Billy Davis to Jim Schwartz and everybody's like, oh, well, we're finally doing what we want

to be doing. Having gone through this already, Howie Roseman and Jeffrey Lurie, I'm so confused about the fascination with bringing in this defensive style, given the investment that they've had in the position, he doesn't strike me as a perfect marriage. Is that fair? Are you asking me, or Fran? I don't know. Or both of us.

Yeah, no, look, I tend to not be in favor of over-complicating things on the defensive side of the ball. And maybe that's why I am partial to Jim Schwartz's defense because, you know, one common response that I heard from players often is it allows you to play fast and think fast. And I don't like it when you're in week, you know, when you're eight weeks into this, right? If you think about when training camp started, so six weeks of training camp, two weeks of the season now. And you're saying you need to adjust the scheme. No, like, there's, there's only 17 cracks at this. You know,

you can't pick your head up in November and say, all right, we're, we're finally catching up this. Like, it's incumbent upon the coaching staff to institute a scheme and it's incumbent upon the front office to have personnel that fits that scheme that allows you to make plays. Like, if, you know, don't overcomplicate it. And I, I am with you there that if they could have foreseen some type of adjustment, then I think that is, that's problematic. And by the way, like the history of Vic Fangio lately is that it takes at least. at least a season, sometimes two seasons for like these results to, to carry over. And so not only, not only Zach, do you like prefer the, the Jim Schwartz style, but the numbers bear it out. I mean,

Jim Schwartz's defenses are significantly better historically than, then Vic Fangio. Sorry, go ahead, Fred. I was going to say that the one thing I would say to counter that would be that you had Sean decides the defensive coordinator to start the year last year. He comes from Fangio. And a lot of that is while it's not exactly the same and there were certainly some changes and you changed to Matt Patricia halfway through, a lot of that core stuff was there. And while Jonathan Gannon didn't come from Fangio, a lot of the stuff that he brought was of that same ilk and they did do some similar things. So while it wasn't exactly the same and there might be some terminology changes and all that, I think from a technique and from a structure standpoint, there were some similarity. So the adjustment

shouldn't be quite as long as a year or two. So when do we say the, issues personnel. Is it too, is that too alarmist here after this game? Or are we at a point where you say like, this is who your pass rush is? This is who your run defense is. This is what we expected of, of them, but they're not at that level. I think that so, you know, let's let's talk about the run defense a little bit, right? So in this game, to me that there were, there were mistackles again, and that was an issue last week against Green Bay. And it was an issue in this one. And there was mistackles at all three levels. There were guys in the D-line. There were guys a linebacker and guys in the secondary that mistackles. So you have those. But to me,

the bigger one was just being able to defeat one-on-one blocks. And one big culprit of this certainly was Zach Bond, a player that was celebrated a week ago. But the three of us talked about it in the show last week was that Zach Bond, like, yes, what he did as a pass rusher, helping out of the disguise and coverage, things like that. He showed up with some splash plays in the game. But I thought in the, the run game, he was okay. He wasn't terrible, but I thought he was just okay. A little bit tentative getting downhill. I thought Nacobi was better in the run game. In this one, I thought you saw Atlanta get up to Zach Bond too often. And a lot of these cut blocks from Chris Lindstrom, the right guard from

Atlanta were getting Bonn on the ground. It was like three, four, five times where you saw 53 on the ground with his jersey. The numbers pointed straight up at the air. And to me, that's a, this is a guy that has not played linebacker at a full-time basis. We're going to make him use his hands. We're going to make him play linebacker. And I thought Atlanta did a good job of leveraging that. Now, a lot of what they did was, it was called outside zone, where you are essentially trying to stretch the defense, create some weak points, create some stress points. A lot of people think of outside zone as an outside run play, but outside zone is created

to hit right up the middle. You're finding you're trying to create that crease, stress the defense, put your foot in the ground and get downhill. Too often, it was on Zach Bond's side where he got cut. He ended up being on the ground. And that's the soft spot where the defense was able to. to get gashed. Now what about on the edges? Because I want to get to Jordan Davis, but but on the edges, it did seem like those guys particular lost contain a few times. Is that fair? I mean,

Huff lost contain in the second half. They came out and they ran right at him like three times on one drive, two or three times on one drive. And he lost contain a couple of. And then we didn't see Huff for a driver to. Now, he came back in late in the game, obviously, but we didn't see Huff for another driver. So and honestly, like if we're going strictly off run defense, like no, Nolan Smith is a better player than Bryce Huff right now. And I don't think it's close because there were a lot of apples to apples comparisons playing front side and backside where it's the same block, same run, same the executing assignment for the defensive end in that situation.

And Nolan Smith was flat out better and did it a better, better clip than what Bryce Huff was asked to do. And so if you're not going to get the pass rush juice from Bryce off, which the Eagles are not right now, if you're not going to get that and you're not going to get it from Nolan Smith, that he's still coming along, then I'd rather get the guy that's going to be better against the run and be able to help you more in that way. Okay. So I do want to ask you about Jordan Davis because obviously it's a run defense is a team problem. It is not an individual problem necessarily. He alone is not responsible and he's not on the field all the time. He played just about 50% of the snaps last night. But the entire idea behind drafting him 14th overall trading up for him is that he has the theoretical power to be a one,

man run defense wrecking crew, right? Right now they have the worst run defense in football. How much does that fall on Jordan Davis? I would say that of the issues that played the Eagles defense, especially in the run game on Monday night, Jordan Davis might not be in the top five. I don't think that that was like that that was a big reason why they gave up a lot of yardage on the ground. Now, I will say that Atlanta did, again, they did a lot of the outside zone and a big thing with the outside zone, you're trying to get those guys on the move, on the run. And so if you're Jordan Davis, who's a large human being, he's going hard on the run runway. And then on the next play, he's going hard on the run on the next play. And then he's going hard of the run the other way.

He did seem like he ran out of gas, but he was not the only one. A lot of those guys looked like they were struggling by like early second quarter, mid-second quarter of chasing these run plays, you know, because it's not about necessarily chasing the running back. It's more you're chasing your gap. And so as, you know, if you're Jordan Davis and you're lined up between the left guard and the center and the left guard in the center are booking it to your right, you have to chase that. You have to chase that gap to the right. And so even if the run doesn't come your way, you spent a lot of energy in that on that rep. And so I do think that that certainly impacted his, his effectiveness in the game. But, you know, we saw some other guys come in. I have

Thomas Booker really flashed. He did a nice job. The Eagles made some adjustments to the zone run game as the game went on. And I thought they got better. as the game went on from that standpoint, but still the miss tackles and the guys unable to defeat those blocks, that was the bigger culprit in this one. So I guess like generally speaking, one to 10, what's your confidence level that the run defense can be fixed to like a league average degree? I would probably put it at like a seven or eight. Like I think it can get fixed because it's to me it's not like a, it's not, it's not

Zach Bond. Again, you can kind of write it off as, hey, you know what? Like the willingness is there. He made some violent stops in the game. He's got some flashes downhill against Green Bay. I thought he did some good things. You're not going to always play against this kind of system. They're going to play against this kind of system this week against New Orleans.

But you're not always going to play against this kind of situation. So to me, it stands to reason that they can get better. But they're going to have to prove it. They're going to have to go out and do it because teams are going to keep pushing that button until they prove that they can stop it. All right. Well, we have a long show today. We got lots to get to, so everybody buckle in. We're going to be here for a while.

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So look, it's that time of year, right? We're getting into the fall and fall allergy season. I know that it affects my family, my wife and my son. son both affected by fall allergies. And they started in August, and we've still got a couple months left where this is going to be a big issue, not just in our family, but in families all across the region. And the main culprits of fall allergies are ragweed and mold and other allergens such as plants, such, you know, sagebrush, tumbleweed, pigweed.

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save a little bit of cheddar, you can go over and go to the right aid brand as well to get some of those antihistamines. you can try a ketazine as well, available also on a Rite Aid brand or a Zyrtec medication as well over the counter. Still not enough relief. You can always ask a right aid pharmacist if a different type of allergy medication like a decongestant might be helpful for you. You can always ask your Rite pharmacist for recommendations on ways to get relief during allergy season. All right, Zach, do you have any updates for us?

Well, Jeff McLean reported that John Carter, the reason he did not start. the game is disciplined from being late to a team event last week or a team meeting last week. So that was on my list to ask Siriani yesterday. I got two questions in. One was about decisions and another one was about AJ Brown. So I'm glad there's some clarity there. Okay. Well, let's spin this to the pass rush then and Jalen Carter is inclusive there.

Now, you said, Fran, that you were a little bit surprised that there were not a ton of double teams on in this game. It was mostly him and Chris Lindstrom fighting it out one-on-one. What did you see from that battle? And are the Eagles getting enough from Jalen Carter giving the expectation in his three two games? Yeah. I mean, the big thing is that when you are a defensive line and you are getting run on the way that the defense was getting run on and then play action becomes a factor. And again, especially the outside zone play action where you're constantly chasing back and forth, all of that level of misdirection really limits your ability to be able to get after the quarterback on in every down basis.

And then you get into those regular dropbacks. That's where you're, all right, hey, this is it. And that's what made that final drive. So frustrating is that you're taking away all of the bells and whistles. And he's, all right, let's pin your ears back and go. In those situations, the Eagles are not getting enough from Jalen Carter, from Josh Sweat, from Bryce Huff.

You go down the list. You had one sack on the game. Milton Williams, able to get home down in the red zone on third down, which was a big play. But that's just not consistent enough. There was the stat from NextGen last night that we talked about. Kirk Cousins left the pocket one time in this game. He left the pocket one time. The pressures were not enough.

The hits were not enough. Only one sack. So, yeah, they need more from the pass rush, certainly, if this defense is going to take that next step. Do you think that the game plan from the Falcons caught the Eagles by surprise? We spent so much time, obviously, talking about how unique that first game for them was, just all shotgun, no under center, shotgun and pistol. Obviously, they brought back the under center and the play action stuff last night. did you get the sense from watching that that was something that caught egos with their pants down a little bit?

I don't know if they're surprised, right? Because that was what we, that was the assumption going in was this is the way that they were going to play this season. The bigger surprise was how they played a week ago. And so to me, you had to be ready for either outcome going into this game. And to me, obviously,

they went back to what the assumption was. It was almost entirely, I have to look at the numbers, but from my charting, it was all 11 personnel, all three receivers and one tight end on the field, which that's what we assume. with Zach Robinson, the offensive coordinator coming from Sean McVeigh and the Rams,

that they were going to live that way. It was not any heavy personnel from the reps that I charted. And so, yeah, it was more under center. It was more play action. All the things that we expected that they didn't show last week. Why did last week look the way that it did? I mean, that's a question, I guess, only they can answer. But they went back to what the assumptions were preseason-season-wise in this game.

And just by the numbers on true media, you know, they had no snaps of play action in week one. and they were just sort of league average in this game with just under 14% in this game. So they obviously brought it back. Let's do a little Ace Hardware temperature check here on the pass rush, Fran, with our friends at Ace Hardware. We take a look at which Eagles are heating up or cooling off. Visit Ace Hardware Home Services online at www.orghasthardwarehomeservices.com to get started on your next project, I guess rank for me, who you have the most faith in. in this pass rush group in in like elevating their game because you know we've talked about they

they hit kirk cousins i think twice last night three if you count the the brandon graham called back penalty one sack against the guy who was as immobile as as as kirk cousins is who do you believe it i mean i think you still have to believe in jalen carter you all three of us have seen what he can do on the field the eagles fans all saw what he could do on the field last year but we we saw him this summer. We know that Jalen Carter is better than what the output has been through these first two games. And so hopefully he's able to kind of get back on the right track. So I would list him at number one. You know, after that, I would say it's tough. In terms of who you have the most confidence in, obviously Josh Sweat has the most pelts on the wall. Bryce Huff had one year of production last year.

But you need to see it from both of these guys. Certainly with Huff, if he's not going to be an every down player, now look, he was not an every down player for the Jets. Right. And so if maybe he's sliding into a role that he's a little bit more comfortable with. That said, in what we've seen from him in the dropback situations, he had that last night on that final drive. He wasn't getting home. So that's tough to say is like, all right, what does he need to do to be able to get back on track?

I think when you look at this group as a whole, it's probably Josh Swett and Brandon Graham are the ones that you're expecting to have that next jump. And Milton Williams, I would say, is another guy that you would say he can give you the most as a rusher. Yeah, you know, when I, I, I, uh, I, I was thinking about this. One of the things about doing a daily show year-round is that there are plenty of receipts, right? You can't say, like, I thought this and that not be true.

I think one of the things that might have been overstated from Eagles fans was the Eagles traded their best pass pressure away. And the thought was, well, they were replacing him with Bryce Hop. And it's like this one-for-one swap. And then you have this excess money to redistribute. elsewhere. Well, Sondredic was an elite pass rush. Bryce Huff has upside, you know, but it was, you didn't know if he would be that. And I think right now what they're missing is their elite pass rusher. And I think they're feeling the effect of that. Like to me, Bryce Huff needs to be significantly better. The contract calls for it, the role calls for it. It is problematic. It is problematic

that they're not getting any past rush juice from Bryce Huff. And I was talking to someone behind the scenes last week who was basically saying, like, you're making too big a deal about the run defense, the, you know, like the first, like if he, and it's essentially what Bo has said. Like, if he's providing value affecting the quarterback, that's, that's why he's here.

The problem is he's not affecting, he's not affecting quarterback. So the other warts, like, stand out even more. Yeah, he can stink against the run. That's fine. If he's going to get after the quarterback on third down, that's fine. Just put him on the field on third down. But he doesn't have that juice right now. If he gets a sack on that final drive, no one's talking about him against the run last night.

Now, Zach, you mentioned it. I mean, it's it's fanciful. It's hard to believe it could even be possible. But do you think there's any appetite for the Eagles to put in a call to Joe Douglas? I mean, you're asking me. I would. I don't think it ended particularly well with Well, it's not starting particularly well

That's true. That's true. You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, Hassan seems to be like said on his principle here, but I think they barely missed this on Reddick. I would call, but I don't know what the type of resolution is. And I think both teams are kind of or I think both sides there are kind of hunkered down. I mean, the Jets just lost her. and John, like the Jets need to sound Reddick, right?

But, yeah, it's like, it's, I think all three sides are not better off here. I think that there is, like, if the Eagles are going to make a move, it's already. This is where it would come to try to find somebody on the edge. I imagine, you know, I bet, I bet Jailix Hunt's going to get some defensive snaps next week. Like, let's just see what he's got because they are, they are desperate for answers here in the past rush. And we will, we will see how it goes moving forward. So that's your ACE hardware temperature check, pretty much cooling down for the entire group. And Zach, from a roster building standpoint, I mean, we're going to get to Siriani because to me, this loss insularly is entirely on him.

But there are major big pictures problems about the team that are roster construction. The state of the defensive line right now, how much do you put on Harry Roseman for that? Oh, well, quite a bit. And I say that because, like, you use, I'll use Howie's words here, not how his words against him. I'll use how his words to support this. Howie says, like, if, you know, if you say you believe in something, then your actions have to support it, right? And they, they've made, like, they're, they're the state of their defensive line or their pass rush, let's say. It's not for a lack of investment or a lack of investment or lack of. resources. It's not like linebacker, right? They've spent in the past three years, three first round picks on players on the defensive front, if you include Nolan Smith, right? Bryce Huff was their was their big signing this offseason. Josh Sweat, even though he took a haircut, he's still, you know, $12 million player. I mean, there's they, the investments they have along the defensive line are significant here. The fact that it's not producing, then it's not for the lack

of investment. It has to be the evaluation or the deployment of that. But this is, you know, if they're underperforming at linebacker, I would say you're getting what you're paying for. If you're underperforming on the defensive line, I'm saying you did not construct this well. All right. Let's move on a little bit. You sort of touched on the linebackers. So I think we can gloss over those, Fran. Aside from the final drive, what did you make of the way that the corners played in this game? I thought they played fine. I thought that they did some good things in moments schematically. I mentioned some of the double teams and bracket coverages on Drake London. And they did that selectively against Kyle

Pitts in the red zone at times. And so I thought they did some creative things from a coverage standpoint. Look, to me, watching the, watching the film back and even watching the game last night. I didn't walk away from that. You know, the final play, Darry Slay gives up the, you know, the touchdown. You know, Quinion Mitchell has the brain fart there on the cover two play and then gets beat on the next rep. Overall, I did not feel like the corners played poorly in this game. To me, it's more about the front and what that looked like as opposed to the secondary. That near pick six that, or that near pick that Quinnon had a very nice play. Yeah. One thing that was noticeable, they played dime a couple times and Keely Ringo.

On the inside. Yeah, he was the dime player, not Cooper DeGine like last week. And not Isaiah Rogers, which you would have thought if one of these guys has the inside skill set, it would have been Isaiah Rogers, right? So that was interesting. Maybe Ringo more physical, I guess, but interesting that they're finding role for him and that Isaiah Rogers was not part of this defense at all. It could be that, hey, Ringo's a bigger body and trying to deal with Kyle Pitts.

Maybe you'd want him there as opposed to, but you also think that's what you want Cooper DeGine for as well. So I think that that's, that would be interesting some of the track. Just a quick breakdown of the defense personnel per true media. They were in nickel 87.9% of the snaps. They were in a three, four, six point nine percent of the snaps. They were in a dime, 3.4% of the snaps.

They were in a four three, one point seven percent of the snaps. There you go. Let's let's talk general Fangio thoughts from this game, Fran, just the way that he approached it. I thought the blitz numbers were, according to True Media, a little bit higher than even I was expecting. I mean, they were on the low end just under 20%, but it didn't feel like he was blitzing that often.

I know there was a couple on the last drive, but your perception of the way that he approached this game. Yeah, I'd want to go back and just see which ones they categorized as blitzes. There were definitely more of like the exchange rushes where a defensive end drops out and a linebacker comes. But even then, it was. And these numbers do change sometimes. Yeah, it was certainly not as many as last week against Green Bay.

But we talked about that. That was unlikely going into this one. I didn't think that they were going to blitz cousins often, just because of how fast the ball typically comes out with him. And when they did blitz, it wasn't particularly effective. So I don't blame them for not blitzing more. Yeah, the long touchdown. That was a blitz there.

Yes. And it left C.J. Garner-Johnson exposed. He kind of sat on it. And there was nothing there. I think he thought the ball was going to get out quicker than it did. Or, yeah, he thought the ball was going to get out quicker than it did. That was a cover zero blitz. So there was zero help in the middle of the field, but still, I mean, he lost on the route,

CJ and then missed the tackle after. So a double negative there for, for CJ Gardner Johnson. Yeah. How do you feel about a second week in a row, too, that that's happened? Yeah, how do you feel about, about CJ? Because the play he makes on fourth down is an enormous play. It should be a game winning play, right? And it's a play that you probably don't see made by almost any defensive back in the league,

right, meeting Bejohn Robinson in the hole, laying the wood, and stopping him there. the guy is a maniac. He's their maniac, right? Siriani's running over to meet him on the sideline. He probably should get penalized for taking his helmet off, even though it was after the play. But, I mean, there's high volatility in what he's bringing, which for the safety position, you know, just the name of the position, right? Safety. I don't know that he's bringing peace and comfort to Vic Fangio right now, but I don't know, you know better than I and you've watched the film so far. So tell me what you think. The last time he was here in Philly, he made up for any of that volatility by creating those big plays and creating those turnovers. And so if that does start to happen with C.J. Gardner Johnson and this iteration of this defense, then that would pay off. It's like the, it's like the Bryce-off conversation where you're willing to look past some of those warts if you're able to create the big plays on top of it.

We just haven't seen the big plays yet from C.J. on his end, but two games in, we'll see if that can start for him. Any other big takeaways from Fangio's game calling? Um, no, I think we've hit on most of the big things. I've got a, I pulled, guys, I, I pulled a lot of plays to break down. I don't know how many I'm going to use, uh, for the breakdown. I'm just looking to see. Yeah, I downloaded 87 plays to my computer from this game. So, um, I've got a lot to, uh, to comb through over the rest of the day and into

the night. But, uh, yeah, there's, there's a lot to cover. I'll be doing it on my breakdowns on, uh, all pH. Okay. Well, we look forward to that. Uh, and by the way, Kirk Cousins in this game, 2.74 seconds average time to throw, which was 26th in the league over 65 games in the first two weeks of the season. That was after he was 2.5 seconds in week one. So he was able to hold the

ball a little bit longer. However, the quarterback in the league who has held the ball the longest on an average time to throw in any game this season, Jalen Hertz in this game as we prepare to move to the offensive side of the ball before we do that. Anything else on defense that's worth touching on, Fran, before we move up? No, I think I'm good there. Well, before we move on to the offense then, let's talk about our friends at Indeed, because if you're Jeffrey Lurie and you're looking to get a head start on the job market, Indeed might be able to help you out. If you need to hire, you need Indeed.

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Join more than 3.5 million businesses worldwide that use Indeed to hire great talent fast. And listeners of this show will get a $75-sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash all-city. Just go to Indeed.com slash all-city right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash all city terms and conditions apply, need to hire, you need indeed. I want to tell everyone about game time because we are, this is a fun time a year right now where obviously it's football. football season. It's college football season, but also the major baseball playoffs are around the corner. Sixers and Flyers are going to start soon. You are probably going to need tickets. And where I go for all my tickets is game time. By the way, comedy as well. I enjoy comedy and I've gotten comedy tickets on game time. Game time has a new feature called Game Time Picks that makes getting tickets for your favorite live events even easier. Game Time Picks filters out all the fluff to show you only incredible deals on great seats so you don't need to waste your time

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Download Game Time today. What time is it? Game Time. All right. Let's talk offense, Fran. 45 minutes in. We're just starting on offense. I'm telling you, it's going to be a long episode.

We've got a lot to get to. I think that's worth it for unpaid. hacking the game from last night. So Jalen Hertz in this game, Fran, obviously we saw more from his legs than we did last week. A lot of successful scrambles. He goes 23 of 30 for 183 yards and a touchdown at the interception at the end of the game. Also adding 85 yards on the ground on 13 carries by EPA per dropback.

It was a top 20 percentile game. He joins just Josh Allen and Baker Mayfield. or no, sorry, Josh Allen and Derek Carr as the only three quarterbacks in the league who have had a top 15 EPA per dropback performance in both games this season. But I'm curious when you watch those dropbacks and all the time that he had in the pocket,

in this passing offense without AJ Brown in this game, were there guys, were there open throws that he was turning down, was he leaving the pocket too early, was there meat left on the bone in the passing game? I believe you're muted, friend. Beautiful. That was a great point, though. Yeah, right. I was on such a role.

Obviously, look, there were a lot of scrambles in this game. And so there were examples of everything you laid out. I think most of the time the scrambles were justified. And I think that he was doing a good job with it. I think there were a couple times, especially late, where he left a little bit early or maybe he had left some meat on the bone. That said, most of the time when he did, even when he did do that, he came up with a positive play. The one that comes to mind, there was the big play. against the Blitz where he rolled through his right and he found Devante Smith.

Devante made like that acrobatic catch along the sideline. That was one of the, that was actually the first time this year where, that I can remember anyway, through the first two games, where there was a blitz call and the blitzers coming. And instead of going to the hot route available, Jalen kind of dropped his eyes, ran around, and made a play. Now, Jehan Dodson was the hot route on the right side. That's where the blitzer came from.

There were a couple times in this game where Jalen threw it right past the blitzer and right to the hot route. and it was perfect, like exactly how you draw it up. On this one, he decided instead that he was going to roll around. He ran over to Devante side through to Devante, and Devante came through and made the great catch. That was one play out of probably like seven or eight scrambles. But I think overall, I thought he did a good job in his decision making with those scrambles.

Okay. You mentioned Dotson. Johan Dotson in this game, one catch for six yards. Yep. Dallas got her drive, I believe. Three catches for 38 yards. I mean, if you had a whole week to game plan your offensive structure without A.J. Brown, you would think that those two guys would be involved. Perhaps that this is a result of the A.J. Brown injury happening late in the week.

If you're just catching up, the news is that A.J. Brown's going to be on for a couple weeks is what he told Lisa Sauters. But in terms of the usage, I mean, Dotson was on the field plenty. Were you surprised that those guys weren't more influential in the offense? and, you know, were they open or were they not getting open? Yeah, I mean, I thought that there were times where those guys were getting open, but it all depends on where they're at in the terms of the progression as well. You know, and so I didn't think that there were multiple cases for both Dallas Goddard and Jaha Dodson where it's like, oh, like they're next up in the progression.

Jalen sees it and he's not throwing their way. Now, could they have done more to try and incorporate those guys? Yeah, like, I don't know that that Britton Covey should have, should have six targets versus four for Dallas gotter. Seven. It was called back on the whole. Yeah. That's right.

So it should have been seven. Now that one went for first. Yeah, right. It would have been his longest of the day. It would have counted for a third of his yardage if it had hit. But I think when you look at just the overall, like, because again, most of Covey's catches either were on the little RPO bubble screens or they came on where he was a hot route. And so it was like, all right.

Jalen is abandoning what the play is essentially. like he's not going through his progression. It's blitz. It's hot. So I'm going to Britain Covey. He's the option here on this one. And so look, I mean, because that's the other thing, too. Like Dallas, it was, he didn't get two of those targets until towards the very end of the game.

And so it was most of the game and he only had one target. I think with, with A.J. Brown out, they have to find more ways because that's, that's one thing that Nick Siriani consistently says is that, and he said it on Friday or Saturday, one of his final press conferences of the week is that, yeah, like this past game is going to funnel. It's because AJ Brown, Devante Smith, Dallas Goddard. And the proof is not in the pudding with that one. That does not always appear to be true.

Does he look good to you, Goddard? Is he cooked? Yeah. No, no, I don't think he's cooked at all. I think Dallas Goddard is a really good player. You know, I think it's, you know, when it comes to like wide receiver and tight end usage and an offense and, you know, how often they're targeted, there's so many factors that go into it and you almost kind of take it like a play-by-play situation.

For whatever reason, like the targets just have not. found him and in this game they did not. I feel bad. Like, keep, it sounds like I'm ragging on Britain Covey, which I'm not doing. But the reality is this. He got a lot of targets there.

And do you think part of that is because the Falcons wanted the ball to go to Britain Covey? Like, is that something defenses do where, you know, it's kind of like you hear in the NBA, well, this guy's open because we want them to be open. Like, we want the ball to find. him because we wanted to take that shot.

Do you think that there was a part of this, you know, because Joe and Hurst said after the game, like Britt and Covey made some of these, you know, clutch catches, but do you think that was kind of the way the Falcons wanted this offense to funnel? I don't think so. You know, I think that, you know, because if you are the playside linebacker being read on an RPO, number one, you don't know that that play is happening where you're going to be an RPO. And you don't know, because you're not looking at who the wide receiver is outside of your peripheral vision.

you don't know if that's Devante Smith that's being targeted on a jailbreak screen coming back at you or if it's Britt and Covey being targeted on a bubble screen going away from you, right? So I don't think it's necessarily that. I think that's just, hey, like this is Covey's usage in this offense right now is he's going to be underneath like the little little screens. And he's going to be the hot route option if he's out there on the field in this game, Jalen Hertz required both of those services more than what we saw from Dallas gotter. There weren't a ton of vertical throws in this offense in this game. You know, so I think that when you look at Goddard and where he can be most impactful, that's down the seam, intermediate routes.

And we've seen him in the past, like some of those easy button like shallow crosses and the RPO's. He hasn't run those in the first two games. And so we'll see if that usage is able to change here this week against the Saints. If they say, hey, you know what, like that's a way to try and get him incorporated into the offense is maybe we run more of those RPO's where we throw it to him in the flat. And we saw it this summer, guys. I mean, there was the open practice at the link where he caught three touchdowns.

Like those are the kind of plays that we just haven't seen from Goddard so far through two weeks in terms of his role in the offense. In terms of the way that the Falcons defense approached this game, friend, what jumped out to you? And I did notice we were expecting more big blitzes again. According to Truman, only two of them. Now the Jailen Hurts over two incomplete passes on both of those plays. But what jumped out about the way that the Falcons defense approached this game? nothing super surprising. I haven't looked at the numbers from true media. I will say that just looking at, you know, the, the, when I was charting, they ran man coverage more in this game, but not to a high amount. It was still primarily zone coverage on their end. Structurally, it was exactly what we saw and what we expected. I think it was a heavy amount of zone coverage. They played almost entirely nickel in this game, no matter how the Eagles lined up early on, it was all nickel. They, as Sequin Barkley in the run game, really started to get. heated up. That's when they started to play a little bit more base. And no matter how the

Eagles came out, even if they came out in 11 personnel, Atlanta said, yeah, we're going to play in our base defense and make it prove it through the air. So I think that when you look at the way that they played, nothing really shocked me. Are we ready yet to talk about the interception? I know you wanted to ask about the offensive line. Can I jump ahead here? Because I don't think the interception is getting enough attention today. Yeah, go for it. What we got? What? What? Well, I was trying to follow the order, but So that's what I'm saying.

Okay. So then ask about the offensive line. Ask about the- Building a crescendo here to the end of the game. Let's just get the offensive line out of the way. I mean, there's five people involved. Like, how does the offensive line look to you, friend? Knock out the offensive line. Okay.

That's a little tease for what's to come. Because I got some thoughts on the interception. Offensive line. All right. So here's what I think. offensive line and pass protection. They did have a couple issues with some stunts. There was a couple third down stops where

Becht and Lane Johnson had issues with it. Another one came through a little bit later. We saw that last week as well. I don't think that that was like a huge, huge issue, but that popped up at times. I think overall, like, and this goes to, you know, Jalen Hertz and his execution against the Blitz. The offensive line at Sequin Barkley have been like impeccable against the blitz so far.

The way that they pick things up, even, you know, it's because it's twofold. it's Jalen understanding like, hey, like, this is where I have to go with the football if I'm hot, if there's a blitz are coming. But then also like making sure that everybody gets a hat on a hat, running back knows where to go, whoever the most dangerous is, where are my eyes going to be? They have been really, really sound from a past protection standpoint against the blitz. And so that was something I feel like I wrote down on my notes numerous times in this one. And Jalen deserves credit for that too for calling.

No doubt. Corrections, right? Absolutely. And I would say like pre-snap, Jalen has been really, really good through two games, really, really from that standpoint, especially for a guy that's doing it for the first time, I've been very impressed with how he's operated in that part of the game. Now, you know, you have to do. An insightful framing in the conversation between him and Kelsey in that interview on ESPN

when they were talking about like even if you're wrong, you're right, because he's the one who knows where the weaknesses are. So it's a little bit different than if Kelsey is calling it because he's the one calling it, even if it's the wrong call, he'll know it's the wrong call and he'll know that he needs to get rid of the ball. Yeah. And that's, it's, I think we're seeing that play out. And so I think that that's certainly been really good for Jalen and his development.

It's been good to see him do that. Newer side, like, I'm like, man, like you just didn't see this last year. I wrote that like three or four times just from this game. So I think that's been big. Offensive line in the run game, this, to me, like last week, it was a lot of stalemates. It wasn't a lot of like, oh, man, look at how they moved Green Bay off the ball. In this one, guys, I was so impressed with the offensive line. And this is what to me, you were expecting.

from the Eagles' offensive line, what you want them to look like. I thought McHie Bechton looked really good in this one. Elaine Johnson, I thought looked really good. Cam Juergens had some really good flashes. Milata, the tight ends at the point of attack. It was a little bit mixed results for the tight ends, but I think both guys had their moments. They used gap run schemes. They use zone blocking schemes.

The QB run game, everything that you like about the Eagles run game over the last four, five, six, seven years really came to roost in this one. And ultimately, it was just that, you know, Atlanta made some changes schematically in terms of how they were lining up. They started leaning more into their base defense and more odd fronts to try and take away the zone run game. And so then the Eagles came back and they said, all right, well, we're going to run more gap stuff with more pulling linemen. And then they started to load the box more. And that's when you saw the instead of it going for seven, eight, nine yards, those runs were starting to go for like two, three, four yards. Maybe that played into the final decision making and my final drive. All right. Now let's get to the final drive. And Zach, I think you are right that in,

in the post game show, we probably did not spend enough time. unpacking the interception itself because the situation is 27 seconds left. You're down by one. You have a timeout and you're on the 43 yard line. So realistically, you need 15 yards to give Jake Elliott a shot, you know, 20 yards to feel comfortable. And you're going to have like five plays if you, you know, if you're being playing it out the right way to try to make this happen. And Gillian Hertz throws an interception. So tell us what, what, on your mind about it first, Zach,

before we, we ask Rand about it. Yeah. So, if, and understandably so, so much of the attention went to Nick Siriani's

decisions and the defense's inability to stop them on that 70-yard drive there on, you know, to take the lead. But I remember sitting there, looking at the clock, saying the Falcon scored two early.

The Eagles have 34 seconds and two timeouts. With, you know, with the way kicking is right now, the way Jake Elliott is, is now realistically, you're looking at, if you get 30 yards, you're getting a kick inside, you know, a field goal under 60 yards, right?

If you can get it within the 40-yard line, you're, you would take that for a game-winning field goal, right? And you have two timeouts and you have, you can still spike it. You have the sideline to work with like there's, and the first play is productive there. You have that pass to Goddard. And so that's the situation you outline. there where now they're at the 43 yard line with one timeout, 27 seconds, 15 yards to go. Jellin throws it up.

Like it was, to me, it was a low percentage pass and it would advise play. It's a bad shot. And I know he said after the game, Jesse Bates made a play on the ball. I thought he just like threw it up there. Like I thought it was a, it's the type of throw you make if there's 12 seconds on the clock and you need to get, you need to get in the field goal range there, right? And, but with, to me, it just kind of lacked situational awareness there. And I thought that given the fact that there was all these other things that happened in the final two minutes, that kind of got lost.

In real time, I don't know if I really kind of gave it the blame for lack of a better term that it deserved. Nor did I, I agree. back. When I watched it back, I'm thinking, like, they can win this game. Right? Like, there's what, who was he throwing to? He put it up there. He floated it up there. And to me, it was a bad decision and not the type of decision that a franchise quarterback should make in that situation. It was also very similar to the Seahawks game, right? In addition to like that Kirk Cousins drive being like the Drew Lock Drive and all of the, the, the, the mirror. of 2023 reflecting back on the beginning of this season, it was a really bad decision from Jalen Hertz because, I mean,

they had a lot of time to work with, relatively speaking, and the timeout, like he can just throw that ball away. So what happened on that play, Fran? Well, just so happens. I have the play in front of me, and I'm looking at it as well so I can talk through this. Obviously, it was the last play I watched about, you know, 10, 15 minutes before we, before we started the show. So it's a three by one set.

You've got Devante Smith by himself. to Jalen's left. You've got Sequin Barclay in the backfield lined up to him to his left as well. To the right side, you've got Dallas Goddard as the number three receiver. Britain Covey is number two and Jehan Dodson as number one. Now, Atlanta comes out in a pressure look. You've got five defensive line and down. It's three defensive line and two linebackers, but five guys up on the line of scrimmage. And they play man-to-man coverage. It's straight cover one. It's a five-man pressure. So it is a blitz with a long stunt. It's a really tough one to pick up where you're sending one guy around four, around four defensive linemen. So it was a really long stunt for the offensive line

to pick up. Now, it took time to get there, but the Eagles had a vertical concept worked in. Now, the one thing I would say, comparing this to the Seattle play from a year ago, that Seattle play was A.J. Brown lined up outside the numbers running a straight fade. And it's just like, hey, like, let's just chuck this up. This is more of a three level stretch concept that teams are, you know, the teams use. This is, I think this is a perfectly fine play call given the situation. they're certainly looking for a chunk. Now, this comes down to how it's coached. What is the situational awareness here?

Do they want Jalen to work the intermediate route first and then go deep? Is it like, hey, work the deep route first and then work your way down? That's the one part we don't know. But what we'll say is right now you've got Devante Smith. He is running a post corner route. So he's working against AJ Terrell and man-to-man coverage. It's essentially a double move. He's going to work towards the inside towards the post.

and then he's going to break on a very deep corner route. Now there's a little bit of contact about 15, 20 yards down field with Terrell, but Devante plays through it, but Bates is able to beat him to the spot. Now, the reason why I mention that intermediate route is that that route is run from Britton Covey coming from the other side. Covey is quick. He's not the fastest. And so while a lot of people will look towards the intermediate route in this situation,

I think that some people may point to this and say, hey, this is where the ball should go. I do understand Jalen in this situation against man-to-man coverage with D. Alford right on on Covey's hip. Say, hey, you know, I'm not going to throw this route. I'd rather take my chances going to Devante Smith. And if you complete it, you're going to use your last time out and you're not getting that much. Right. And he'd be better off just throwing it at the ground at Cubby's feet, right? Yeah, I mean, Covey is running his right.

He's hitting his break at the Atlanta 45. And so, you know, it's past the first down marker. It was not like an eight-yard game that he's turning down. but pretty tight coverage in that moment. And again, with that looper coming around, with that blitz are coming around. And so, you know, Jalen says, hey, this is going to be the throw.

I'm going to throw it to Devante here. Yeah, I didn't love the decision. But again, I kind of see what he's looking at there in terms of just letting his guy go make a play. Devante had to fight through the contact there. And I think that affected his landmark ultimately. But Bates was able to go out and make a play outside the numbers. I just think there's two things that can't happen.

in there. You can't take a sack. You can't throw a pick. Right. There's enough time on the clock that if you live for another down, that's okay. Yeah. No doubt about it. I think you're right that we have not, we didn't talk about enough last night. And I do

think that this is an echo of Jill and Hertz over the years. Like, end of game, end of half, situation stuff. Like, game situation stuff is not a strength of his. We saw the Jets game last year, right? Like, his ball protection and like his understanding of the clock and timeouts and stuff like that,

it leaves you wanting a lot of the time. And in this situation, friend, if they recognize that this blitz is coming, is this a too long developing play? Should there have been a check free snap here? You know, I think they, again, in that situation, like if he throws it to Dallas got it in the flat for four yards, like my guess is that we're not out. we're probably complaining about that today. We're probably not happy about that outcome.

You know, so and that, if I remember right, as I closed the play, if that, that probably was the answer there in terms of, if I want to get it out against pressure, that that's a tough one to say because that, and that's the thing is that when it goes, it goes back to that conversation we had about Goddard versus Covey, well, Goddard was chipping the defensive end on that play. So before he was releasing out on the route, you know,

so that speaks to where he was in the progression. He's a checkdown in that situation for Jalen Hertz. not the primary or even the second read on that play just because of how it was structured. Okay. Yeah. I mean, think about it like big picture, you know, Gila Hertz is being paid to be the franchise quarterback and a guy who like, you know, if Patrick Mahomes gets the ball in that situation, we can't compare him to Patrick Mahomes, but if a top five quarterback, a top 10 quarterback gets the ball in that situation, you expect them to drive them into field goal range with, with that amount of timeouts,

that amount of time. And he came up short. And, you know, he played it, he played an otherwise pretty good game. But there's no doubt that, like, that that haunts him. That's, that's not a good enough job. Now, he did get hit on the play. Like, that's, that's one thing to acknowledge. So I, you know, he, he couldn't really step into the throw. But I put it in harm's way. That part I agree with. Yeah. Like, I, I thought it was, when I was watching it back, I said I should have made a bigger deal about this. Okay. All right. Anything else on the offense before we get to the Syrian decision making at the end of the game, friend?

No, I think that, you know. Aquan looked good. What red zone play calling? It feels like they lean away from Seekwon, which is a little odd. Yeah, I'm going to write about this because I did pull some examples of what happened on some of these third down calls because the third down offense was not very good. The red zone, obviously. Because, you know, it was late in the game. It was like fourth quarter.

and we're looking at and we're like, all right, like, Jalen Hertz has played pretty well today. Sequin Barclay is running well today, but they've only got 10 points on the board. A big part of that was just because of what was going on in the red zone. So I don't think it was like anything egregious. It was more just like, all right, like this is what led to this incompletion on this third down or this is why Jalen Hertz had to throw it away instead of completing his past of Dallas Goddard. So I didn't think it was anything like from a play calling standpoint. I think it was just more of this is what happened on some of these plays that led to the outcome.

Okay. Now, coming up in a little bit, we're going to have Matt Quinn of Mountjoy join the show. Talk a little bit about his reaction to the game last night, what the tour has been like in the show coming up at the man on Friday night. But before we do that, let's bring on the professor, Danis, who was in the stadium last night and has been itching to game theory splain us on Nick Siriani's decision-making at the end of that game. Daniz, I give the floor to you. Yeah, thanks. I hope you guys are doing better than I am today. The early part of the game, I thought Siriani got most of the tactical decisions right in this game. I thought going for it, fourth and four from the nine in the first quarter, I thought that was fine. I've heard people complain about that.

I think that's fine. Early in the game, he went for it, fourth and three from the 41. That was good. I thought kicking the field goal down to it to take the lead. I agreed with that one. All the models agreed with all of these as well. going for two to go up three early in the fourth quarter fine the one I was most proud of him for

was declining the intentional encroachment you know everyone in my section is like pointing like yeah we got the first down and I'm screaming at the top of my lungs decline that like decline it and I was surprised that he heard me you know like because I'm so far up like I just he was he was proud of himself he basically ran a victory lap around the bottom of the stadium after doing that yeah I mean you you could tell that was one he he must have spent like two weeks in the offseason preparing for that exact situation because he was very proud of that and look football's a zero sum game to use a game

theory term if the other coach wants to do something you don't want to let them do it right so they wanted intentional encroachment you should always decline intentional penalties and that was that was the right call now let's get to the reason you have me on the fourth and three cooper oh yeah no I thought we were going to be a bit that I never told Fran how he did in Swooping. Completely unacceptable. I did rest. Fourth and three from the 10, up by three, 142 left in the game. Now, there are a lot of different models that tell you things.

A lot of the models are very wonky in late game situations. I'm not sure if they've all been adjusted for the new kickoff rule. I'm not sure that they all adjusts very well for the psychological element, which I definitely want to talk about. According to Ben Baldwin's model for what it's worth, if you convert there, it's a 100% win, right? If you fail, it's an 85% win. And if you kick the field goal, it's 89%. And what I want to pay attention to there is how little difference there is between failing and kicking the field goal. Like when you fail on the fourth down and give them ball at the 10-yard line,

you still have an 85% chance to win the game. Kicking the field goal only adds a little bit to that. Now, that's assuming you flat out fail. According to those numbers, as long as you think you have a 27% chance of making it, you should go for it. And Ben Baldwin's numbers, of course, are, you know, like, that you should have gone. ESPN's model had it as an even clearer go. Baldwin had it as 92 to 89 that you should go.

ESPN had it as 95 to 90. So it's a 5% win probability difference to go for it rather than kick the field goal. Now, I've heard, you know, I listened to WIP a little bit this morning. I'm just curious what people thought about this. And I'm not surprised that most people are wrong about this. I mean, most people are defending using the field goal. There's this idea of like, okay, let's kick the field goal, go up six. It's insane.

Here are the problems. Okay, here's the thing. I think most people understand that if you make it, you win the game, right? Most people understand that. I think most people also understand, to some degree, what it means to be up six, right? You're up six. They need a, you know, they need a touchdown. You know, you can defend all the way to the goal line, et cetera.

The thing that I think most people are wrong about, at least the people who are defending the decision, is the prospects of failing on fourth down and being, just being up three. Being up three with them at the 10-yard line, that's the thing that people don't understand, like, how not bad that is. It's really not that bad. In fact, there's an argument to be made, factoring in the psychological element and the fact that offenses are usually irrationally conservative in those situations. I think Eric Eager had a column about this where he used some anecdotal evidence about this. Teams that are down three typically will play for the field goal.

They are going to be very conservative as soon as they get into field goal range. In fact, you know for sure they're not going to go for it on fourth down once they're in field goal range, right? so they don't have four downs all the way down the field. And they are less likely to throw the ball into arms way, things like that. So, of course, it's possible they still score a touchdown, but it's much more likely that they just kick a field goal. And there's a psychological thing that people usually miscalculate. I've just noticed this.

I notice this like when I teach my risk management class at Wharton. I also notice when I just talk to people. People underestimate how good it is to be. tied. Like getting it, getting it to a tie and being in like a 50% win probability, like when you're down by eight, people don't realize like how unlikely it is you're going to win that game. You need to score the touchdown, need to get the two-point conversion, and then you're still only tied. You still only have a 50% change. And so kicking the field goal there and tying the game, not the end of the world. There's something unique about being up three, right? If you're up by one

or two, I get it. You kick the field goal so that a field goal doesn't beat you. If you're up by four, then you can kind of defend kicking the field goal because you're like, okay, well, they're going to need a touchdown either way. At least let's not have them win with a touchdown. But when you're up by exactly three, you have the two psychological elements both kind of working in your advantage. One, they're going to probably play for a field goal. Two, and you might not want to think about it this way,

but your defense is a little bit less likely to play prevent, a little bit more likely to be a little bit more aggressive, play like a normal defense. And then the other part of it is, if they do kick the field goal, which is probably what they're going to play for, it still doesn't beat you. You still have a chance to win in whatever time is left. And also, of course, if it gets there, getting to overtime.

And I mentioned the ESPN model. And so they should have the, they should have whatever slightly coin flip advantage in overtime. Exactly. All those things. Now, the Ben Baldwin and ESPN models, I already mentioned, the next gen win probability model implied that the win probability kicking the field goal and failing on the fourth down were more or less the same. Like it seemed like if you kind of like backward engineered their numbers, it seemed like they had not getting the fourth down, just failing, flat out failing,

and kicking the field goal were the same win probability. And if you believe that, that means that going forward on fourth down is essentially a risk-free gamble. If you get it, you win the game. and if you don't get it, you're in the same situation that you were already accepting by sending Jake Elliott out there and kicking the field goal, right? And so this is something where I don't think people realize how not bad being up three is and how potentially bad being up by four, five, or six is like that range of four, five, six, where you are forcing the other team to take risks and even Kirk Cousins is chucking it down the field, right? the guy who famously throws it short of the sticks on every big play of his career. I mean, in that situation, he's going to take risks because he has to. And it actually reminded me of the Super Bowl, right? You know, I take any chance I can to take a shot at Kyle Shanahan.

I'm going to get here. I'll mention a decision that Kyle Shanahan made in the Super Bowl that I didn't really hear anybody criticize. He had fourth and four from the nine in overtime with the ball first, knowing the chiefs are going to get last ups. And he kicked. the field goal there. And I didn't hear anybody criticize that. And you could, you could argue, like, how can you criticize that? Like, you're going, you're taking the lead in overtime in the Super Bowl. Of course, you're going to, you're going to take the three. But what happened after that? The chiefs get nine yards on their next three plays. It's fourth and one from their own 34. And they had to go for it. And so they did, and they end up winning. Now, look, that's hindsight.

But it's a rare case where being tied would have been better than being up three. Like getting the points isn't always better. Because in that situation, if the, it had been a tie, the Chiefs would have punted, 49ers would have had the ball, sudden death, with the ball. Instead, because they were up three, they induced the Chiefs to go for it, and the Chiefs went for it. You should probably go for it all the time on Fourth and One, but Andy Reid wouldn't have. That's the point. You're taking away that psychological advantage of the other team being too conservative away from yourself. And that's exactly what Siriani did yesterday, and I don't think there was nearly enough, nearly enough made of it.

And a lot of people are letting him off to look for it. Also, can we stop kicking him? it into the end zone and giving the team the ball at the 30 in these situations? I think that's the new, that's the new not going for it on fourth down. Like, like, trust your coverage team and try to, you know, get them down at the 15 or 20, which is what seems to happen when they actually do kick it into the landing zone. So I'm annoyed by that as well. Well, and if you know you're kicking it into the end zone, I think, I mean, this is, this is the framing to me that is the easiest to understand when they're facing that fourth down decision, the only way we're going to lose this game, is if the Falcons score a touchdown.

So should we give them the ball on the 30 or should we risk giving them the ball on the 10? Make them go 90 yards to win the game instead of 70 yards. With less time. That's right. Yeah. And I think a lot of coaches are making this mistake. I mean, I was like the Falcons shouldn't have kicked it into the end zone either.

They had like 30 something seconds left. They could have killed one play worth of time just with the kickoff. That's another thing that it does, of course, is the time goes off the clock. So, yeah, I think coaches are getting that wrong. I think that'll probably, if the rules stay the same, I think people will figure that out eventually. But that's something that they're getting wrong. Now, people, you might ask me about the passing on third and three.

That play worked. I mean, the play worked. Like, like, I think, you know, like, you know, I'll defer to Fran about, like, exactly the defense they were in and whether that was the right play call for that. But, I mean, in terms of passing it there and those 40 seconds, I think if you know you're going to go for it on fourth down, that's not that bad of play.

Like I know a lot of people say, like, run the ball there, and then you can maybe you can push it in or whatever. Maybe, but, I mean, that play worked perfectly, and the play had been run earlier and worked earlier as well. So I don't know, I think. But don't you think you only run that play if you're going to go for it off with now? Not enough attention paid to not going for. What's that?

Yeah, I mean, yeah, you're going to pass the ball on third down if you're going to pass it on fourth down, too. If you're going to be willing to kick the field goal, then run 35. five seconds left more on the clock. If that's how you're going to play it, you got to know going into the series, right? The time only matters if you don't get it, right? So if you think that they're selling out against the run and Sequin's going to be open in the flat with something built in so that he doesn't throw it away or something,

like, you know, like, you know, but yeah, I mean, look, I understand that part of it. I think the same kind of built-in conservatism that people have that make them not criticize the field goal is the same conservatism that has them criticizing that pass. So I think, I think that, you know, I think if you're okay with going forward on forth, you also have to be okay with passing them all there. Because the time only matters. I'm going to combine, yeah, so I'm going to combine two thoughts here, because I, I said this last night, and I wrote this, and I agreed with Professor Selman. I didn't mind the past there because the play worked, right? But to use kind of the logic that was outlined here, okay,

was you need to go into that third down, knowing that you're going to go for it on fourth down for the numbers that Professor Selman outlined. So, and I really didn't think this way until I was listening back to the show and Ben Bo brought this up on the postgame show, was that if you run the ball on third down, you can make that, you could throw the ball on fourth down there,

knowing that if it's incomplete, the clock's going to stop anyways, right? because it's a change of possession. So I defended the passing play there because it worked, but knowing that you shouldn't kick the field goal, regardless, your third down play should be influenced by the fact that you know you have two downs there. So I would run it on third down, let the clock tick. If you don't get it, then you know you can pass it on fourth down,

because if you don't convert on fourth down, the clock's stopping regardless. Yeah, it's a muddled sequence for sure. And you have to wonder on all of these third down calls what Kellen Moore is being told by Siriani about what's going to happen on fourth down and how that's a important question to ask Nick on Wednesday, I think, is what was the dollar? You could argue that if Kellen Moore, if Kellen Moore is told, we're going for it on fourth down no matter what, you know, unless we lose like seven yards or something. If he's told that, then maybe he does call around, right?

Maybe he's calling that pass because he thinks it's his only chance to get. get it. And if that's the case, it's bad process. Now, the fact that the play works, like, makes that bad process not look so bad, other than the drop, obviously. But the, the process isn't good if that's the case. That's a muddled sequence all around. If you recall before the pass, they had Fred Johnson out as a sixth offensive lineman, and it looked like they were running a let's try to get them to jump off side play. And it looks like Matthew John did. This is what he spent all his extra time on was designing cool new ways to try to draw guys It looked like he was chewing out my lot of because Judon sort of jumps.

I think Landon Holyfield on Twitter is the one who first pointed this out. And you can tell that Nixon's insult about this. Yeah, he's very upset. He says, you know, get your head in the effing games or something. I think if you flinch there as an offensive lineman, there's like a 50% chance they call a false start. I mean, like, the guy was barely in the neutral zone. He was in the neutral zone for like a split second. He got right back off.

Exactly. It might not have even been a new. I'm sorry. You've got a great offensive line. You have the better players. Enough about let your nuts hang and all this stuff and all this false bravado and and pimps stepping all over the place. If you're not willing to make the bold decision when it matters, we saw it in the Super Bowl.

And every time they have a big opportunity to be bold, Nick Turtles. He does the conservative thing. Like, I'm sorry. It is awful that decision. you didn't vote did you like the fake the fake tushbush with grand calcatera on fourth and three i mean like really believable that he had three yards and loss he worry about uh game management instead he spent it on on these plays and he never made it to you know chapter two of game management for dummies i think that's simplistic but i mean i don't think it's mutual exclusive um but yeah

i i i hear your point i i do i do agree that nick tends to for all the talk about how aggressive and forward-thinking the organization is, Nick tends to lean toward being conservative, especially in money situations. Yes. Yeah, I mean, we remember the fourth down in the Super Bowl where he punted as well. I would still love to know, like, what the process is in terms of, like, we know Doug had. Had Epignetti, Ryan Pegnetti. Right.

Like, does he have someone in his year that he's just ignoring in the situation? Because every single model here says it's an obvious go on fourth and three. Like, there's no model that says that it's close, even. I mean, like we're talking a five point difference, a three point difference, a four point difference, depending on the model you look at. So every model is going to tell you to go for it. So that means that either Nick is ignoring the person or there is no person, right? And I'm very curious which one it is.

there's there's a person i i mean nick is nick's getting the information um like i i i'm confident to say that the way the organization is structured uh they're they're not going a blind eye toward the data here but nick ultimately has a decision to to kick the field goal or to go for it fred what is that shirt you're wearing

it's uh an ultimate dad shirt uh and i'm going to i'm going to be it's a recline minor and it said, I'm just resting my eyes, which will be me in about two hours. So that's fantastic. All right, Danis, thank you so much. We will talk to you on Friday for your regularly scheduled show. But we appreciate you, you drop it into drop some game theory on us. All right.

Talk to you guys later. All right. Again, no swooper results. Oh, super, super. I mean, what are we doing here? Let's do it for 90 minutes waiting for this. Let's go through it. Let's go through it.

Zach, you hit on at least one of the following happens on the Falcon's first possession. You had the Kirk Cousins under center play action, so your poo-poo platter delivered. You did not get Kyle Pitts, 54 yards receiving, and you did not get one of the best ones of the week. The score at the end of any quarter features a larger number, perfectly divisible by a smaller number. So you hit one in this super, but you have your seven turkeys remaining. Bo, the Falcons score no more than 12 points did not happen. Sequin Barclay and Drake London have more total yards than Bijon Robinson and A.J. Brown that does hit. Zach's connection is spotty on the postgame show

Crystal clear from ZB from the link So good job there And then Jeremiah Trotter does not play a single snap On either punt or punt return Just like he surprisingly did not do in week one That did not happen so I also have one point Through this first week tying Zach With two turkeys in hand now Fran

Who dipped into his future turkeys To get the Eagles win the game Of course that one did not deliver And would have delivered him a second point but no. He has Sequin runs for at least 100 yards. Did not happen. Should have happened. The Eagles complete a pass using under-center play action. Should have happened. Did not happen.

The Eagles complete an explosive pass out of an empty set did not happen. And at least one player's run from either nine-yard line. That did happen several times. And so it's a three-way tie. 0.33 turkeys all around. Watching why, I think there was one step under center play action, and it resulted in a disastrous sack. and I was just, I was upset about it as an Eagles fan,

but kind of chuckling at what France reaction must have been. That's what we hope to bring Super. Super brings a little bit of levity when otherwise the game is dire. When the first punt got down at the eight, I was very upset. But thankfully, it was a couple drives later. We had a few plays from the nine in hand. Sequoan, I mean, Sequin, what did he finish? 95 yards on the ground.

One less penalty. maybe a run on a third and three somewhere along the line. Could have, could have, should have, would have. Yeah. But oh well. All right. Thank you, Professor. I have one last thing to talk about, guys, before we get to the Matt Quinn interview.

And it's on the Siriani thing. And I was just thinking about it all day long and thinking about how Jeffrey Larry must view this whole thing. And I think he went to bed last night. and woke up this morning regretting the decision to bring back Nick Siriani. I think that that's an overstatement.

I know that you do. But here's what I'm thinking. What does that be? I know that you do. I think the poetry of it all, okay? Last night, you've got Nick Falls in the building and you've got Bill Belichick in the building, right? The guy who you flirted with last year

and the guy who is the perfect, emblematic example of what being bold brings you as a franchise, right? Nick, Nick Folls walking over to Doug Peterson, hey, how about Philly, Philly? Yeah, let's do it. Like, let's do the bold thing. And this is an organization where you are emboldened to do those things. This is an organization that cares about the analytics and the things that in the big picture give you an edge. And in this game, when Jeffrey Lurie gave Nick Siriani the opportunity, okay, I'm bringing you back I need you to get better at these things.

And he's on the sideline in week two, not having the sideline comportment that we know that Lurie wanted him to work on this offseason. And he's going on tilt about not, you know, Jordan Milana not flinching. And it's taken him out of making the correct decision at the end of the game, the decision that should have won them in the game,

a decision that ended up losing them the game. I think that Jeffrey Lurie in his heart of hearts knows that he thinks he probably made the wrong decision. And that doesn't mean that this season's not going to still turn around. You know, they could be fine. The schedule is generous enough. Maybe the defense turns it around. Maybe A.J. Brown comes back and they can still go out and win 10, 11 games and win a playoff game or whatever.

But I really just knowing Jeffrey Lurie and the way that he thinks and the things that he cares about, I would be shocked if he is happy. And, you know, I went to the dentist this morning. I imagine that Nick Siriani's meeting with Jeffrey Lurie's, you know, this week is going to be much worse than the dentist. That's going to be worse than pulling teeth. I feel like Jeffrey Lurie has to be absolutely livid about what he saw last night. Well, there's two separate things. Yeah, you can be livid about what you saw and then also think, you know, then also not have regret at this point.

Like those are two. I agree with you. He's livid about what he saw for the reasons that you outlined. As far as the decision to bring them back, one thing that I do know about Jeffrey is he's steadfast about not making decisions with incomplete information. And two games is incomplete information. So now, if this is, I think he could have that sentiment in week 15 if they're a middling team

and these kind of decisions happen. But I don't think Nick Siriani went to bed last night having these global thoughts about bringing Nick Siriani back. I think it was more of the livid about the way that transpired. So I don't think there's these sweeping conclusions because

it is a long season and the information is incomplete right now. I side more with Zach on this one. I think that if this were to continue then obviously that that's when decisions will be made but not that he would make a decision right now anyway. I don't think he's that kind of owner.

but I do think that we've got to let the season play out until he feels that strongly about it. I'm not saying he's going to fire him. Of course. I think he thinks he made the wrong decision. You said that you would be shocked if he doesn't regret that right now. And I'm saying I don't think he's operating in those terms. Like it's.

Yes, I would be shocked. Okay. Well, I disagree. Because I don't think he's thinking globally two games into the season. Like I don't think he's, I don't think he's sitting there evaluating. I'm not saying he's writing off the season, but I think in his heart of hearts, he thinks they would have been better off with this roster with a different head coach right now. I don't know. I mean, I don't think.

I'm not reporting this, but that's, that's my feeling based on having been around the decisions he's made for over a decade. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. We have a few super chats to get to. Claude says, do we know if Huff dropped into coverage in New York? I wonder if Fandjo's dumb scheme is screwing him up.

Fran, probably not the problem with the price off right now, right? No, I would say not the problem. Plenty, I mean, again, just going back to that last drive. There's no frills so the Atlanta offense, like, hey, like, just pin your ears back and go, and he was not winning. So that's going to have to change here in the coming weeks. Idiot Sandwich says, do you think Howie is planning moves to fix this? Zach, I will let you take this one.

Yeah, I mean, I think that, They'll continue looking until the deadline, but it's often hard to make like serious consequential moves at this point. But I think you hit it on the head. I think edge rusher would be absolutely where he would look if there is a change. And I don't know the evaluation of like Jadavion Clowney, but you look at teams like Carolina. There are going to be teams that are out of it pretty quickly here. And those are the teams that you kind of look at. They have veteran guys who you can go after.

Now, the Eagles have been burned in the past by trading for veterans. guys, but I don't think you're going to get someone who really moves the needle, like, you know, like what Brian Burns was last year, what Bradley Chubb was when he got, you know, you're not going to get like a 25-year-old pass pressure right now. Maybe a, what's this name? Genard Avery? I saw Jimi Kempke said that, that Bryce Hoff is basically like a $17 million year, Janard Aver, which is a good way of putting it.

it right now. Yeah. That is tough. And then last one, friend, for you, Chris says, how optimistic do you feel about the Saints game now? Short week, crushing loss, Eagles never play well in Nola. It seems like a season-defining game. I believe the line has already moved all the way to Saints minus three. Wow. It was minus one last night. Yeah, it's tough to feel confident about it, just watching the Eagles defense and then watching the Saints offense. I mean, again, what the Saints have been doing from a like structure standpoint from their run game and everything. It's exactly what the Eagles just faced, except they've been doing it at a higher rate.

They've been doing it much more effectively. That's why watching the film this morning of the Eagles defense, I was like, man, I feel like I just watched a team do this. And I was like, yeah, oh yeah, I just watched the Saints do this to the Cowboys yesterday. The Saints defense, I've always been a fan of what Dennis Allen does defensively. That's not going to be a tough matchup or that's not going to be an easy matchup either. This is going to be a tough out for the Eagles. The Saints are not going to roll over.

obviously. So that's going to be, that's going to be a tough game on Sunday. I just want to say the schedule is out for this week. Nick Siriani will speak tomorrow at 12.10 p.m. The Eagles have a walkthrough tomorrow, a short week. So they're going with the Wednesday walkthrough. And then the coordinators speak Thursday at 120 during locker room. So it's one of those things where they're, you know, they're really busy. They can only fit it in this one period of time, right?

And it's Thursday, too. So, yeah. They've already moved on from it. Oh, either. Yeah, no, but like they've already moved on. Yeah. So anyways, yeah, that's a schedule for the week. Okay.

All right. Any other thoughts on where things stand because the three of us will not speak and get until Thursday? I think we're now, we're 35 in. I think we cover it pretty well. Yeah, we covered it pretty well. All right. Well, thank you guys. And I will now transition to our little cameo interview with our dear friend, the official musician of Birds with Friends, the singer of the lovely E.J. Jenkins ballad for the Ospreys and the lead singer of Mount Joy, who was playing at the man on Friday, 8 o'clock. Get your tickets now, only a few still available. And if you see me there, give me a little nod and all that good stuff.

So Matt Quinn, our official tight-end expert, breaking down Dallas Goddard's usage. We close out the show today with our tight-end expert, Matt Quinn of Mount Joy, who's coming to Philadelphia on Friday, but we're going to save that. That is not the most important thing. The most important thing today is we've got to find out why Dallas Goddard in a game without A.J. Brown only has four catches for three catches for 38 yards, four targets. What's going on, Mr. Tight-end? I don't know.

I don't know if that's what you want your tight-end specialist to say, but I don't know. I don't know. I guess, like, maybe this is a hot take, but I've been hearing like a little bit of, you know, what everyone's been saying about the game or freaking out about the game. Like, I didn't think the offense was terrible. I thought they had chances. Like, you know, obviously, I didn't really have an issue with them. going forward on fourth down in the first half there.

Totally agree. Got to marry the analytics. We know the coach Flynnism. Yeah. And if you just think about it, they went one for two on those fourth down decisions, and they got a touchdown out of it, which is better than if you got two field goals. Yeah. I guess that stuff doesn't bother me.

Obviously, I'm not sure what's going on with Goddard situation, but yeah, I don't know. I didn't feel like the offense was terrible. I obviously would love to see more Calcutera. as the tight end guy, but... How about E.J. Jenkins? Yeah. Also, it does seem like, you know, I know you guys talked about this a little bit,

but I'm always half joking when I'm giving tight end takes because I am not a tight end specialist. Yeah, this is an inside joke for, you know, for the sickos. Yeah, but it does feel like there have been a few times, actually, where, like, Calcutera, like, at least last night, there was a moment where he was, like, literally tasked with blocking Matthew Judon on, like, an important block in the play. for a runaway.

And he got slanted in the backfield for a big loss there. But and it does make you think, like you have Jack Stoll. Like, is this an overthink in terms of. Jalen trusts him? Trust him. But I do like, I like a cafeteria, though. So I hate to throw him under the bus. I don't know.

That's my overall hot take is that I actually thought the offense was fine to good at times. They just ran the ball a lot. they, so there wasn't a lot of scoring that's going to happen when you do that. But I don't know. Yeah, only eight possessions in this game. So, yeah, I mean, on like a per drive basis, they were pretty efficient on offense and move the ball. Give us the sort of the lay of the land. You are, you're in Charleston right now.

When you're traveling, you're watching a game like this, what was the experience like last night? I'll tell you what happened is I was really tired. So I, but I walked to a bar to watch it. And there was this guy who was like, maybe I was sitting at a bar. The guy's like maybe rooting for the Falcons. He kept questioning all the Eagles decisions like that. You're in the South. Yeah.

He was like, he looked at me. He was like, kind of like doing like the concussion uncle thing. He's like, go for it on fourth down. You always take the points. And I was just like, I don't know. I mean, you know, the analytics said to go, you know, because they flashed it on the screen. Yeah. He saw that, of course.

I was like, I don't know. The analytics said to go for it. And he's like, it's going to end up costing that, which of course it did, which pisses me off. But it didn't. Yeah, I know. But it cost them to not go for it at the end of the game. I agree. But anyways, so like half time rolls around.

I'm like, I got to watch the rest of this in my hotel. So he was too much for me. So I bailed. I watched the second half in horror by myself. Terrible. Brutal. What is your just, I mean, as the voice of the fan, I guess right now, how dejected are you about about this loss?

How are you feeling about the season now? Does it change your optimism? I don't know. Like, I guess for me, I don't know if it changes my optimism. In the sense that after the first game, I just felt like the defense wasn't good enough to be an elite, like, Super Bowl contender,

which to me, it's like, I'm not going to get my hopes pinned on a team that doesn't appear to even have a mediocre pass rush. Like they, I, Reddick's out there, though, you know, I don't know. That would be the most hilarious full circle than I've ever seen. And it's getting more and more realistic every down of defense that I watch. I mean, I think the most damning thing for me is just like, all right, you have Kirk Cousins and the Atlanta Falcons, you know, with no timeouts. And they've got to go and they've got to score a touchdown.

I mean, questionable, maybe too soft zone or whatever, but not even a hurry, I don't think, on the entire drive. I mean, like, he was patting the ball. At that point, you're not beating anyone. So I guess my long view is pretty unchanged, that unless they make, like, a pretty drastic move at defensive line. Also, like, I know you guys talked about it, but pretty uninspiring, like, defensive line play across the board. I think whether they've been able to just, I don't know,

I don't watch it closely enough, but whether it's, is Jalen Carley just getting triple teamed or is he just ineffective? I don't know, but yeah, I just don't think the defense is good enough. I like some of the aspects of the defense, but I think you got to have like a top 10 defensive line to have a realistic shot to win anything important. I don't think they have that. Yeah, I mean, for so long, you know, like the Eagles defense has been built around a dominant defensive line. And they've poured resources in there, but they are not getting the return on investment there. However, if you do want to get a good return on investment, this is not an ad rate.

This is a pitch for Mount Joy coming to the man on Friday, coming home. This is like a home game for you. What is the excitement level? This is also coming towards like the tail end of what has been a very long road for you, right? Yeah. Yeah. We've been out for most of the spring and summer. And this is kind of this is the stretch run here.

And obviously getting to end one of the last shows in Philly. show is almost sold out, which is insane for us. It's going to be a really special night. And yeah, I don't know. It's always like, you know, for us, it's like we can't really lose like the Eagles do. So we kind of get the best of Philly fandom without the, I mean, we could lose. Don't get me wrong. We could blow it, like, really hard somehow.

But for the most part, it's always really fun to play. playing Philly and you know I'll have a lot of like friends and family there which actually just makes it more nerve-racking but but it's but it's ultimately really really fun and if you want to come get your tickets fast I think I think they should be gone soon yeah I will be there if you're if you're looking for a you know nice a nice handout enough distance from the loss that you can you know you can you can move forward to it is it you mentioned you get a little bit more nervous that what does that like do you you know it's just like

like I think the yeah I don't know like performing in front of people you don't know versus people you do know for me is just a little bit different it's gotten easier over you know doing I've done this a few times now but yeah big flex

but yeah I don't know it's just like you'll be sometimes truly I'll be like playing a song and I'll like see a childhood friend or something I'd be like whoa you know like yeah that's trippy throws you off a little bit bit or something, but not too bad. I think it's ultimately, it's pretty special. Like, I mean, we, you know, I grew up playing open mic nights at Milk Boy and playing to

small numbers of people and being, you know, super nervous. So I try to like, I try to like speak to that person, be like, what would that dude think right now like before going on? It makes it makes you pretty exciting. That's pretty, pretty healthy perspective. I like that. We should for the, for, you know, for the really granular sitcoms, ask about how your, your performance of E.J. Jenkins ranks among your greatest musical accomplishments. You know, I'm glad you asked that because I think, I feel like you deserve a lot of credit for that. That isn't necessarily been given.

I, Beau wrote, I would say, 98% of that particular rendition of E.J. Jenkins. Yeah, but you made it so much better. I mean, I just, I just performed what the songwriter wrote, you know. And it was fun. We were in Seattle. I like, we had just done a sound check. And I knew that I knew. He just flew from Alaska.

Yeah. But I knew that the band, like, I didn't want to do it in front of everyone because it's so weird. impossible to explain. Yeah, of course. So, but we did a sound check and I saw everyone going to the green room. So I like quickly spun move, ran in the bus, locked the back door and did that in the dark in the back of a bus somewhere. So that's so funny.

They're all whispering like, Matt's working on the secret project again. Like, you know, he's trying to leave these, trying to go solo, leave the band. What is going on? And it's actually just this nonsense thing for this ridiculous podcast. Hey, it always starts as nonsense, but who knows, maybe there'll be a musical element to the PHLY show soon enough. Ooh, now we're talking. All right. Well, I don't want to take too much more of your time, Matt.

Thank you so much for grinding the film on the tight ends, but most importantly for providing so much musical genius for the Mountjoy fans and all of us here. And I very much look forward to seeing you on Friday night. Awesome. The birds are going to be all right and maybe just all right, but that's okay. That's okay. You know what? You get 15 more Sundays at least, so there's something to root for. Let's do it.

Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it. Of course. And that'll do it for this episode of the P.H.O.I. Eagles podcast for everybody who joined the show today. Thank you. We will be back tomorrow, 2 o'clock, Jamie and Rich on the show, hopefully joined by Vinnie Curry as well. We will talk to you later. And as always, we love you.

You know, Thank you.