PHLY Philadelphia Eagles Podcast - PHLY Philadelphia Eagles: Predictions & analysis as Saquon Barkley preps to RUN OVER Steelers

Episode Date: December 13, 2024

The battle of Pennsylvania features A.J. Brown, Jalen Hurts, Saquon Barkley, Lane Johnson, Jordan Mailata and Johnny Wilson on one side with T.J. Watt, Cam Heyward, Minkah Fitzpatrick and Nick Herbig on the other. In a matchup of CEO head coaches, Nick Sirianni goes against Mike Tomlin as two of the league’s best square off. Can the Eagles fight through the silly off-field drama of the week to win their 10th game in a row?Our PHLY crew puts the finishing touches on their week of analysis, with predictions from Zach Berman and much more. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

And welcome to the P.HLY Eagles podcast on a Friday afternoon. We are presented by the good folks at Bet365. Download the Bet365 app and use code PHLY365 when you sign up. Whatever the moment, it's never ordinary. At Bet365, it's a Friday. You know what that means? It means the professor is gracing us with his presence. What are you laughing at?

It looks like Russell Wilson is sitting to pee on that. He would never. You don't think so? I don't think so. Speaking of which, we will hear from Zach Berman in about 25 minutes or so from the Novacare complex. We look forward to that. But before that, Danes, let's put the finishing touches on the preview of Eagle Steelers. And I guess we've got to start here where we've started every show this week.

What's been your opinion from the outside looking in on the A.J. Brown, J. Brown, J.H.O.R. Yeah. Dust up, the Brandon Graham of it all. What do you make of it? Yeah, I probably could have done without it. I mean, honestly. I think it's probably annoying to the players. And, you know, obviously there are issues with the passing game.

Maybe it's more important that it got to the point where AJ felt the need to speak out that way. I was very happy with a lot of the things he said on Wednesday, you know, after the fact. And you obviously were excited about the idea. that someone else believes that a Sequin Barclay offense is not good enough. Well, I mean, I think we all understand, and we'll get more into this later, that the way the offense is playing right now is good enough to beat some of these worst teams and good enough to, you know, score a decent number of points per drive and that kind of thing against bad defenses.

Yeah, the little tease here is we're going to figure out on this episode what specific unit from recent Eagles memory this 2024 Eagles offense is eerily similar to? A unit that had me extremely concerned during an entire season of them actually, you know, looking good in terms of the numbers, but then that I was correct was an issue in the playoffs. Yeah, I mean, I was happy with the things he said Wednesday. He said, you know, it sucks to put all your eggs in one basket

and sacrifice all your time and all that and then lose the Super Bowl. And, you know, he's haunted by that Super Bowl loss. I am too, as a fan. It doesn't want to fall short again. That matches my feelings as a fan. So he's saying all the right things. I think that AJ wants to win, and that's what, like, matters the most to him.

Having said that, I can see how it can be perceived a different way. You know, Malcolm Jenkins was on John Clark's podcast. You know, I was really, there was a segue that got messed up. I thought we'd talk about playoff scenarios first. And I was going to say, speaking of playoff scenarios, John Clark had Malcolm Jenkins on. Okay. But, you know, I don't let go of grudges easily. But, you know, for the seven people in the audience who remember what I'm talking about.

So Malcolm Jenkins said that body language matters a lot, like including during games. And I'm going to, you know, I think Malcolm Jenkins is obviously not around this specific team. He wasn't teammates with AJ Brown. But he's been enough locker rooms that he understands the stuff. And he said something that I thought was like a good place to start here. Like he said, you have to want to win more than you want to be the reason you win. Like you very specifically said that. And I think it's up for debate

Like, like, which one's more true for AJ? I think he wants to win But on the devil's advocate will say AJ Brown hasn't lost a football game in over a year Like he is winning You know what I mean? And here's where I will defend AJ Because I think he wants to win

More than wanting to be the reason that they win Yeah, I think I think so too by the way But I don't think he wants to win in week 13 Yes It's to the point that you said before The Super Bowl loss hunts him He doesn't want to win now he wants this team to win when it matters.

I agree. Having said that, the fact that Malcolm Jenkins was talking about this for so long and it really seemed like a lot of the things he was saying was directed at AJ. And same with BG, another veteran who's been in a lot of locker rooms and saw teams collapse and things like that. The whole BG rant started with

we need to celebrate together and we need to do all this kind of stuff. I mean, you guys, like we were talking about how the big difference between the vibes of of this year in 2023 was that you do see the team celebrations and things like that. If you remember, like a year ago,

I was talking about how, like, Kili Ringo got his first ever sack and no one even came up to him, you know, that kind of thing. Well, Grant Calcutera just got his first ever touchdown and he had to run a maze between a sulking AJ and a sulking DeWante Smith to find somebody to celebrate with, right?

So... That's true. You know, like, I do think that there's a... that there's, like, an image from the outside that doesn't look good there. You see the defense... That's fair. The defense is all like celebrating together and everything.

Guys who you wouldn't think would be like friends or whatever seem to be, you know, things like that. And so I can see how it can look bad from the outside. And at the end of the day, like once this becomes the story, everyone has to deal with it. And you saw Jordan Maillado had had enough of it and all that. Like, I mean, they don't want to be talking about this. And so if AJ needed to say that to get them to fix the passing offense, then great. But that's also kind of a weird procedure. like AJ needs to say that in public in order for them to be like oh wait the passing offense let's fix that like shouldn't they be doing that anyway I've been thinking about this this week and we hadn't exactly talked about it but I was I was trying to think of like why exactly it is that that game in particular really bubbled over for AJ and it's I think it's my it's my supposition that like the game plan going into the game in his mind was to get him the ball like they call you saw some routes they called now some of them were like not necessarily designed for him

him where we could argue that Jalen should just give him a chance anyway. But there were some opportunities schemed up in that game to get him the ball. Yeah, I mean, the double slants especially. Right. I mean, you know, there was one where the linebacker was in his face or whatever. Right. And as we talked about, like, this is a, this has been a downward trend, the last four or five games, generally speaking, especially for the passing offense.

Right. And in terms of the targets per game that AJ is getting, and even the targets per route run, like they've been dwindling down just a little bit. meanwhile he remains the most efficient receiver in the NFL. It's like 12.7 yards per target, far and away the best in the league. Like, I think that they've been telling him that this is going to be a bigger part of the offense. And so for him to be running those routes being open on plays that he thinks are designed for him and still not getting the ball, I would imagine that is enormously frustrating now.

The same point, like maybe I'm a little too in the bag for AJ because it is my, instinct to defend him against the Malcolm comments there because I'm sort of thinking like I have I have respect for a player that I've covered there's not a single player I can think of more than Malcolm Jenkins I think like as a leader as a player he's exactly What you would want your your players to be but this is not the 2017 team this is the two thousand four four team. This is a j. Brown's team like and no no for sure for sure and the Malcolm's probably thinking about how like when you know jay jay scored a touchdown the other running backs would be the first people right to celebrate with him in the end zone somehow right like outrunning the rest of the guys on the field right and that team had a different that had a different chemistry that this team probably doesn't have but

sure he was more talented probably top to bottom than that team was Malcolm Jenkins said as much he thought that this new team was was more talented and and so I don't know I also don't know if there is something of a division is too strong of a word but if there is like a like an AJ camp and a Jalen camp sort of like dividing lines my my my guess is that there would be more people in the AJ camp in the locker room I mean maybe that's just pure speculation

and maybe inappropriate but that's that's the kind of the way I think and I think AJ Brown is right that he's looking down the pike and we'll get to like you know the what might be predictive here because the the level of defensive opponents they've faced is so bad that it's maybe not a great indication of their their true level of talent on offense? Yeah, and I think

AJ knows that and AJ even said on Wednesday like it was the Panthers and he was like no disrespect but like he's clearly thinking in his mind like it wasn't just the Panthers this week. It was like a lot of bad defenses. Right. Like we'll get to that at some point historically just protecting the ball and not and avoiding mistakes as a passing offense

is not going to be good enough. Yeah for sure. And look I mean I don't want to like as the chat is correctly pointing out it's like many days later and the whole point is that like there's been too much of this and yes I also saw him congratulate Grant Calcuttaire after the fact I think AJ is great like I'm not trying to say

that he isn't he's like I don't think his intentions are bad but I think sometimes he just like does things that create a distraction like it's been the big story this whole week like 14 that's on a nine game winning street you know what I mean like whatever but I also and that's kind of part of his point

is that like let's not wash it under the rug. Now, EJ Smith, when he was talking to Sheel yesterday, said that the 2023 team would have just washed it under the rug and said like a wins a win. I disagree with that. I mean, like last year we had a very similar thing with Devante talking about it, but I do think that's different.

DeVante Smith said that after the Giants game where he said, I don't care if we have 11 wins, like we're not playing well. That was after a three game losing streak. Like, you know, like so it wasn't, it was almost too late. And maybe that's why he's, doing it now. It's like let's not wait for

losses. And in this case, like, it might just be that one loss that matters, you know? And then we've talked about this too, but setting aside the specific like action of it, I do think part of the frustration for AJ and like for fans is that man, like if

we are running the ball this well, shouldn't that make it easier for the passing game? Yes. Yes. And that's what AJ Brown is saying. Like, if I'm getting one on ones, like I'm going to win those matchups, right? All kinds of kinds of things to discuss there. I mean, both in terms of the running game being good.

Like last week we also saw like there were almost no third and longs in the whole game. They did a good job staying out of those. And still, like, they couldn't design anything good. You know what I mean? Look, watching the game live, like just sitting in the stands watching live, like the perception is sometimes different than what it ends up being after the film. But like the whole game, I was like, what is wrong with Jalen today? Like, like that's my thought, right?

He's so tentative. He's making poor decisions. The film completely confirmed it. like you know, Fran's been through it. He's done a bunch of those breakdowns. And I was talking to Fran earlier this week about like the time to throw being longer this year. And like, you know, every like every single stat and chart we could come up with that showed that like, you know, stylistically and tendency wise. He's closer to 2021 Jalen than he is to 2022 Jalen, which which is a little bit disturbing, right?

2022 is the year where he had the shortest time to throw that he was that he had the highest success on those short throws. You know what I mean? But it's also funny how you look at all this stuff and like the rate of non-throws is the highest it's been. The average time to throw is the highest it's been. Like the sack rate is the highest that's been. But his scrambling efficiency is way up. And so a lot of those non-throws end up being okay.

His overall EPA for dropback this year is actually the highest it's been in his career, which people might be surprised. But part of that is because they're all so close to each other. Like it's like basically, like no matter what happens, him and the Eagles offense like end up being at exactly the same level. They always end up being like six, seventh, eighth,

you know, something like that. They're better at one thing, they're worse than another or whatever. Now Jalen said explicitly on Wednesday that the focus of the offense has changed. And I feel like he's... I thought that was interesting for him to say. Yeah, I thought so too.

And I feel like he's internalized it. If he's saying it to you guys, right, he's internalized it. And he's also talked about earlier in the season. there was another quote that I that I like remember that he said that when he was comparing the different ears from each other with each other he said last year we just turned it over too much

like that's like what he took away from last year and because this year also started that way I agree with what Zach said on the show a few days ago that he's being too careful to avoid turnovers because he's thinking about his role more as don't lose the game rather than go win it right and that's probably what's frustrating AJ, right? Because AJ is the vehicle through which he goes and wins the game, not the one where he

checks it down to Jahan Dotson and doesn't lose it, right? Yeah, it's, it's so disappointing because it is, as you're saying, it's as if Jalen has, and this is too easy, but like made the decision that, oh, if we're a run first offense, then I need to be a stereotypical game manager, run first quarterback when the opportunity is for you to be a run first offense, but still go out and like, you know, make explosive plays when you do get the chance. Yeah, do you think it's surprising that he is just kind of willing to be that?

Yes, I do. It's weird, right? I do. Yeah, you would think that like the ego and all that kind of stuff would, like, drive him to be like, no, I'm, I like, you know, I was an MVP candidate, like, you know, do years in a row.

It's bizarre. Yeah, I think it is bizarre. One of the ways that it's manifested and I know you guys have talked about the sum is like the number of deep passes that he's trying has fallen off in a really weird way in the last four games. It wasn't that high to begin with. Like weeks 1 through 10, 13% of his passes were deep, deep being 20 plus air yards.

That ranked 11th in the league. In the last four weeks, it's down to 2%, which is obviously dead last in the league. That's wild. It is really wild. I mean, and that's starting with the Washington game, you know, to put like a thing on it. Now he is throwing more to the middle of the field, you know, up from 31st to league average. I have no idea like why this is but the last four weeks

he's also thrown to the left like more than double the amount that he's thrown to the right so he's first in the league of throwing to the left which I only bring that up because like remember what he never threw to the left yeah exactly so I thought that was weird now the time to throw and the sack rate and all that have remained high throughout this whole time

for what it's worth the two teams that have throw the fewest deep passes in the league are the Eagles and the Lions are also like the top two favorites to win the Super Bowl So is that 2% of dropbacks or throws? 2% of dropbacks. Right. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's higher for throws since there are so many Sox and Scramble. He's it around, you know, he's it around 20% on throws. I was looking at it just from an AJ perspective earlier that only one attempt towards him 20 yards downfield the last four weeks. Like that's wild. That's not good. Yeah.

No, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And I mean, yeah. We were talking about like what two or three total passes in four games. Okay. Yeah. All right. Beyond the deep passing game, were you surprised? So no Dallas Goddard. Yeah.

Last week. So the Eagles, obviously, Grand Calcutera becomes that top tight end. And they brought up both CJ Usama and E.J. Jenkins not, but they didn't lean on 12 personnel last year. No. I mean, we saw much less 12 personnel than we saw the first time Goddard was out. If you remember when Goddard was out the first time, they strangely went to heavier 12th personnel than they had been doing with a lot of Calcutera. and Jack Stoll, that cutting Jack Stoll is looking like not the best decision. Some would argue more of an impact on this year's team than the Christian Ellis decision was, given that Christian Ellis... Not true. Jack Stoll was playing like an insane number of snaps.

Like Chris Schenell is the best player on the best special teams in football. But he wasn't playing at all on defense. So... Not enough. He should have been. There were just eight snaps of 12 personnel and none of 13 personnel in this last game. That was by far the lowest multiple tight end. usage this season, just 14%. Been averaging around 38%

multiple tight ends for the year, which is like second or third highest. So, like, and it's not like the game script dictated that or anything. Like that was like a decision. Sure. Johnny Wilson and Jahan Dotson had close to equal snaps in 11 personnel with a heavy influence on Jahan Dotson in

kind of two minute drill type situation where it's going to be heavy passing and much more Johnny Wilson when it was when it was going to be running. I don't know, man. And like, they're getting nothing out of Jahan Dotson, like just nothing. I mean, like, you know, putting him on the field and having him run that backside, nothing route is like, like, if you're a defensive coordinator, you can just check, like, which side of the field Johan Dotson's on and, like, put all your coverage on the other side. I don't, I mean, listen, obviously that trade has not worked out.

He's like one of the least efficient receivers in the entire league, if not the least efficient wide receiver. But it is, this is one where it is, it has now been this way. for three straight years with whoever wide receiver three is. Yeah, and so it's hard to, it's hard to decide how much of that is. Zikaas was probably the best one. Yeah, and even,

not that he was losing time, but he at least did some, you know, dirty work and things like that. And that's kind of what they're trying to use Johnny Wilson for. And he's okay at it. I mean, they're, they're pretty much better off just having it be a dirty work type guy. Let's like, you know, Zach Pascall, Johnny Wilson.

Like, at least they're serving some function. Do you think like, I mean, Jack Stoll was out there for like 30, 40 snaps a game at times. Yeah. And they're not interested in having C.J. Usoma or E.J. Jenkins be out there that long. I mean, E.J. Jenkins, I don't think they really went out there at all. How dare you? I mean, he played like three snaps in this game.

Get him the ball. Okay. I mean, maybe it doesn't matter like who the fifth, you know, skill position guy is who's out there. But I just like that I thought that was an, I thought it was interesting that. much less 12 personnel kind of coincided with the passing game looking so bad, you know. All right, we have much more to get to on the offense. We're also going to get to Danese's breakdown of the Eagles' playoff scenarios right after this. And then after that, we'll hear from Zach Berman.

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Okay. Danes, four o'clock window this week, two big games, Eagles, Steelers, Bill's Lions, do they matter? Whether one matters depends on what happens in the other. And it's actually kind of very nice that the games are played at the same time this week. That has nothing to do with the playoffs scenarios.

They've been scheduled for the same time for months and it just kind of happens to be this way. But the way it works, so just the general update first on what the Eagles need for the one seed, they can't win the 15 and two tiebreaker. So they need the Lions to lose twice. And they almost definitely need the Vikings to lose once as well. It'll depend on strength of victory,

but it looks like the Vikings are going to win that. So they probably need them to lose as well so that the Vikings finish with one more loss and so do the lions. Now, the Eagles will win the tiebreaker against the Lions if the Eagles lose to the Steelers and the Lions beat the Bills, which might seem counterintuitive

because it's bad to lose and it's bad for the other team to win. But because these are AFC games, that would be the only AFC loss that anyone has this year. And so if they end up finishing in a tie anyway, then the Eagles would actually win the tiebreaker at 14 and 3 over the Lions if, you know, if the Steelers is the loss,

and the bills is not the loss for the lions. For that reason, what it means for this Sunday is basically for the Eagles, it's all or nothing. It's either win and have the lions lose, in which case you gain a game and you're tied with them now and you just need them to lose one more game.

Or not. And by or not, I mean like, it doesn't matter if both games go badly or only one game goes badly. Either way, what you need going forward is the same thing. You need the lines to lose twice. And the Vikings to lose once.

Like that's it. Okay. So if the Eagles, if the Lions are winning by, if you look up at the scoreboard and the Lions are winning by 30 on Sunday, the Eagles game at that point, like, doesn't matter. Like, and by that, and it could still be caught. The only, right? Caught for the two seed is extremely unlikely.

Okay. So I'm not going to entertain that for too long. It's possible, though. Of course, it's possible, but it's very. Don't root for the Eagles to lose. No, no, no. But it doesn't matter. It's very, very, very unlikely to have any significant,

any impact on the playoff seating. Okay. And the reason is because whether you win or lose in that situation, you're going to need the lines to lose twice and the Vikings to lose once. Like win and you're one game behind without the tiebreaker, lose and your two games behind but with the tiebreaker. So both of those things are the same. Like in both cases, you need them to lose twice.

So, and the same is true with the Vikings tiebreaker, by the way. Losing the Steelers would also give the Eagles the tiebreaker against the Vikings who finished their AFC schedule already without any losses. So now, like, yes, you're right that it could matter. for the two seat. It could also matter if there's a tie game. You're always the one of the games. You're always the one. I don't know if I'm always the one. I did properly

predict that Raider Storgers would possibly go to that situation. But yeah, no, I mean, it's just weird. I'm very grateful that these games are at the same time. Let me put it that way. Because if the lines played at one o'clock and won, it would have taken all the juice out of this game for me.

Because I would just be sitting there knowing that it basically doesn't matter. What do you think is the population of people who are feeling the same way. This is what I'm for, Bo. I'm trying to educate people. I feel like all I've done is, you know, try to educate people about the playoff tiebreaker scenarios. Like, that's been my main role in society for the last four years, you know.

Thanks to you guys. And you know what? I haven't noticed this before, but it's occurring to me now and I feel like if I don't bring it up, then Zach would get on me because you are wearing a bit of a Zach hat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just a generic straight color hat. No logo. Yeah.

No logo. Yeah. So I want Zach to know that it's, he's not the only one I'm going to give Guff to for that. There you go. Yeah. You're just a, you're just a fan of. I wore it. It was like an homage to Zach on the show before.

So yeah. No. Okay. Anything else playoff scenario wise? Yeah. The other scenario, since you're talking about how the Eagles can get caught for the two seed, I should mention the Eagles can clinch the NFC East on Sunday with a, win and a Washington loss.

Washington plays the Saints at 1 o'clock. And they can also clinch the two seed, being at least the two seed. And for that, they need to win, have Washington lose, of course, to clinch the division. But then they also need Seattle to lose on Sunday night football. And they play the Packers at home.

So it's not, you know, like, you know, Washington will probably win against the Saints, but like it's not impossible that the Eagles would already have the two seed locked up on Sunday, which would, of course, then, lead to, especially if the Lions win, it would lead to, like, questioning next week

about, like, do you start resting guys? Do you start taking it easy and things like that? Okay. And then if you want to do, like, a real quick look ahead at the, like, the playoff odds, like who's likely to, you know, be the opponent and all that? Because you were talking about this. Right now, based on gambling market odds,

there's a 41% chance. It'll be the commanders coming here on Wild Card weekend. 21% chance. It'll be the Packers. And then you've got a 16% chance of actually getting the buy. and then, you know, like, it's like 5% or less that it's like Tampa Bay, Minnesota, Atlanta, etc. So, okay.

All right. That brings us to the man himself, the man for whom no logo is good enough. That's right. Zach Berman at the Novakar Complex. How you doing, handsome? I'm doing well, Bo. I'm doing well, Professor Selman. Nice to see you guys.

Yeah, good to be on. What's the news? What's the scoop? What you got? Yes, it just got out of the locker room. It's been a busy week here at Novocare, as you can imagine. And, you know, it's the same messaging from the players that all the stuff from the drama from the week isn't necessarily affecting them. You know, John Carter spoke today about how Brandon Graham apologized to the lock, apologized to the team.

You know, Devonte Smith spoke about how A.J. Brown saying, passing isn't necessarily about one person. It's about the whole group. So, yeah, they're kind of moving on from that. Then it was interesting. We, uh, hearing Sequin Barclay speak yesterday and kind of about A.J. Brown and, and, uh, the role he has in the, in the locker room, like hearing Seq, hearing Seekon talk about how, how good of a player, AJ Brown is. You know, I, if you recall Brandon Graham's daughter interviewed Sequin for a piece earlier this year, if you were a, weeks ago and was asked who's the best player on the team and

Sakewon said AJ Brown and I asked Sakein about that yesterday and Sakewon said that think of someone like the same size as him the same you know same same height same weight speed but Sakewon but AJ catches the ball much better and Sakewan said him and Daniel Jones used to marvel at the way AJ Brown just so smoothly catches a pass. So there's been a lot of AJ Brown conversation in the locker room, as you can imagine. But I've also been speaking to a lot of the guys about the Steelers as well, because this is quite a big game for the Eagles. Okay. And what do you have on that front? Well, so actually, Kenny Pickett, Kenny Pickett,

someone who obviously played for the Steelers, was there for two years. I spoke to Kenny. I spoke to Kenny yesterday. And him and Makea Fitzpatrick actually had an awful. He called it a back office in the locker room where they used to watch film together. And he spoke just about the way Minka can diagnose plays and just how smart he is on the back of the defense. The stuff that's fairly obvious to anyone watching, the emphasis on forcing turnovers. Like you really feel that when you're in the Steelers building. spoke to Zach Bond today about someone he trains with during the off season, a close friend of his from college, and that's T.J. Watt.

Because you heard Nick Siriani say today how everything kind of what their turnover starts with number 90. And Zach Bond says that when you train with T.J. Watt, you see why he's as good as he is. And spoke about the maniacal obsession that he had. during the off season. And Zach even asked, ask, ask, how long can you keep this up?

And he said, TJ knows when to taper down right before the season to kind of get going at the right time. But Zach was there at the same time. TJ moved from tight end to, you know,

edge rusher. And the two of them keep in touch. They're excited to see each other this weekend. DJ Watts actually checked in quite a bit about how well Zach Bond's been playing this year. So that's come that's come up You know I'm in Nick Siriani's press conference today

One thing that he spoke about was it was actually it was a good question from Dave Zangaro About um Don't ask so surprised Why they I'm not surprised at all about the uh how they put celebration how they watch celebrations in Monday's team meeting which Nick had mentioned earlier in the week and Nick said he got the idea from Steve Kerr. He studied the Warriors culture and how they really emphasize joy. And joy is a word that I heard quite a bit from Nick during the offseason.

So perhaps you're studying Steve Kerr at that point. I asked Nick about this concept of joy a week ago. You heard Nick talk about joy in the postgame speech. You heard Nick talk about joy on Monday. You heard Michael Clay talk about joy on Tuesday. So this is not like when it keeps coming up in multiple spots, it's not by accident. So it's just something to kind of keep on your radar there as well. You know, I wonder if the team meeting on Saturday night, they're going to be bumping some Mount Joy.

One can only hope, right? Actually, speaking of music. Either that or watching the movie joy with Jennifer Lawrence. Or eating almond. I have not seen that. But speaking of... Hold on. Zach's about to tell us that they listen to my prerogative today at practice, I believe. Yes.

So the question is, did you know that song, Zach? No, I did not. Look, I think it's important to admit what you know and admit what you don't. And I did see Jail and Hertz dancing, which you don't see as much during practice. I recorded that. And other people, including people, you know, team officials, were kind of noting like the relevance of this. song that was being played, my prerogative. And I did not know my prerogative, but then I looked up the lyrics and I can see why one would,

yeah, one would find it applicable to the week that the Eagles have, have this week. But it certainly seemed intentional for my prerogative to be playing during this three-minute interval when we get to watch them stretch before practice. given the amount of people you talk to about the Steelers matchups Zach I'm curious how many of them were focused on the max sharping revenge game you know that did not come up one time that did not come up one time you think you're you're thinking you're covering all the angles as a reporter I don't know yeah no that's that's that's that's that's not one that I pursued to be honest with you but what's your now my favorite uh Nate Herbig Nugget

Your favorite Eric Nugget is that he floats in water. Well, it's not just that he floats in water. It's that his proclaimed best talent is his ability to float in water. Yes. I mean, how good must he be at floating in water? Well, I've never been to Hawaii. I've always wanted to go. Next year is my 10-year anniversary.

Maybe I'll go. but I imagine in Hawaii you're floating in water quite a bit so he's probably become proficient at floating in water I know it is easier to float like where on the on the Earth's population what percentile water floater is he it's much easier to float in salt water by the way than not than than freshwater you know like like in Turkey do you think it's about the like weight distribution of his body is it just is it maybe it's accumulated time spent on task is it hereditary like

is Nick Herbig as good at her. That's a good question. That's right to get to the bottom of him. I'm curious what you're about to say about Turkey. Well, also, my second favorite, my second favorite, Nate Herbert memory, of course, is the preseason game when the Eagles had to, he was on the field and they had to switch corners

from like the 10-yard line, and Nate Herbig switch inside to the field was so exhausted. One of my favorite moments. Probably have my time covering the beat. He was hoping they'd lose like 30, on the play before. So what's the turkey story? Oh, just the Mediterranean

is particularly very salty like around where it gets to Turkey. Oh, I floated in the Mediterranean. And so it's just a lot. I'm such a world traveler. Oh, I was in the... I would be insulted, but Bo used the same exact voice to imitate ESB to start the show.

So, ESB. Oh, that was, that was just a generic reporter. Okay, well. I uploaded in the, I was in the Dead Sea back in February, 2013. That was a pretty cool experience, right? Yeah, I mean, that's even saltier, sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Bad boy, died looking at your good looks. Yeah, for anyone who goes there, I would say, like, did I lose you? No, you're there. Oh, sorry. Right. For anyone who goes there, I would say make sure you don't have any cuts anywhere on your body, you know, because you feel that salt quite a bit. Where were your cuts? I had a cut on my knee. Like a, and yeah, my knee hurt quite a bit.

What happened to your knee? I don't remember. I mean, this was 11 years ago now. You never had to cut on your knee? It doesn't seem like a weird thing. It's a weird thing. I think that's actually, yeah, you scrape your knee somewhere. Yeah.

That's, I don't know why you're so incredulous that would have to scrape on their knee. I do want to get, so some other nuggets from the locker room this week. Well, actually, please check out all p.hly.com, maybe later today or tomorrow. So I do this each year, I suppose you can say. Devante Smith goes through his Heisman ballot with me. Oh, fun. Yeah. So I have Devante Smith breaking down his Heisman ballot.

And it's a fun exercise. Is it, I imagine it's chalk at the top. No way, there's no way he's not going with the presumptive favorite number one. You have to read to find out. You will have to read to find out. Good tease. Good tease. But I can find that.

I will finally become a diehard. I can say with Devante Smith, there's always some mystery involved, right? There's, you have to peel the layer a little bit to find out more. So I need to say, when I went to his locker, you know, I waited out the group interview. I mean, Devante probably thinks I'm like, really. weird about this because I've been asking about it for three weeks and you know I've been that I reminded him like three weeks ago and then last week I said that you feel your ballot out and then I gave him a reminder earlier like on Friday I just want to catch up with you about the

Heisman so I waited out we went through it and yeah he he gave me his his his breakdown Well, it'll be interesting. If you recall last year, he... Go ahead. No, if you recall last year, he was bullish on Malik Neighbors. You know, he said Marvin Harrison's going to be drafted higher, but he had Malik Neighbors higher on his highest-in ballot. Oh, interesting.

Now, do you get into the mechanics of how he actually votes? Like, is it like an online submission? Is it like a secure portal type deal? Does it, is it mail-in? Oh, good question. No, I know that he had gotten an email about it the other day or a few weeks ago. And then he actually got a text message this week reminding him to get his ballot in. So he is not an early voter.

He is a down-to-the-wire vote. You know what, though? I mean, at this, 2024, who's checking email? Text is a place to find me. I totally agree with Devonte on that. Really? Oh, I disagree. I disagree.

agree. They're very... And the text should have a... Email gets lost. And the text should have a link to the voting thing. You know, like, it shouldn't just be like, check your email.

It should be like, here's the link, vote right now kind of thing. I want to push back on this. I mean, I know I'm here to talk about the Eagles, but if I can push back here, I think the reason you say emails get lost is because you have like 30,000 emails.

Correct. If you delete emails, if you sort of, scroll it to take the time to read through your emails. Yeah, email should get wrong. If it's really, if it's really important and you really need to get a hold of me, text me. So I think that there's different degrees here, okay? Because you don't want to text someone, something that's email worthy.

You don't want to call someone about something that's textworthy. And you don't want to meet in person with someone about something that's call worthy. So there's different degrees here, right? Also, if there's, it's the length, too. If you're going to send a two, three paragraph message, three paragraph message, you don't want it to be a text. So that, that's, that's probably better over email. My threshold for it is this. Something that I want to type out on my computer is email.

Something that I want to, that I'm willing to take my phone is text. I'm a better texter on my computer than on my phone. but but I do have you know if it's and and then like if I'm texting someone I want to be relatively urgent for the for the reply if it's an email they can get back to me 24 hours 48 hours right that's so yeah I I deal it differently it's also easier to catalog emails than it's text I'm deviating off course here but the only if the only thing I disagree with you there on is if I text you something you do not have to respond right away unless like it doesn't doesn't have to be. If you want to respond to my text a week later, that's fine. Everybody's got

stuff going on. No. No, my pet peeve is not responding. And actually an issue that I, I said this on the show a few times, is that I promise you I would not text when I'm driving. And so, but I'm in the car more now with this new job than ever before. So it's not a new job anymore. We're 16 months into this. But, so there are a lot of times when I get a text in the car. Yeah, there's a lot of times when I get a text while I'm driving and it just takes me, you know, and then I forget to respond and then the text goes by. I really beat myself up if I don't respond to a text. Be easy on yourself. You got to drive yourself through the mud, though, if you want to get better.

Absolutely. All right. I don't actually believe that, by the way. I feel very strongly about that, Dennis, like very strongly about that. You got, you got, I tell, I tell my wife, I tell my kids, you got to feel it. If you don't feel it, you won't fix it. You got to feel it. So, yeah, if I do something wrong, do you have, like, one of those,

like, draconian, like, self-flagellating things that you're, like, macing yourself with in the back? Like, how, this is, it's a little dire, the way that this all sounds. No, I mean, if I get beat on a story, if I don't have a good show, if I don't, if I screw up with something, you know, if I don't, an interaction with somebody that should have been better. Yeah, I need to feel it. Absolutely. So I will beat myself up over it. It just sounds like a tough way to live, man. That's how you get better, right?

I mean. It doesn't have to be. progress is on the other side of discomfort. Not self-hate. Anyways, it's not self-hate, but it's, it's, it's being honest. It's, to bring it back to the Eagles, it's similar to what the Eagles are doing this week, okay? Because I feel strongly about this. I tweeted this out, but I do want to get in the, in, in the habit of like,

outlining a few strong opinions for the show that or some, some thought-out opinions for the show. And one thing that I feel strongly about, and I've referenced this, is that I think what AJ Brown said after the game was productive. I think the way the Eagles were after the game was productive. I thought one of the issues last year was that the Eagles swept things under the rug, that there were things that were festering during the season. They were surviving these close games. There were issues that were not necessarily seeing the light of day. And I recall actually talking to Devante Smith after it might have been the Giants game last year, where. he was not pleased with how they were playing.

And I asked it there was the Alabama in him. And he said like you, you have to play up to a standard. And you have to acknowledge it if you don't. And I think that is so important. So I think it's actually a sign of growth that the Eagles were honest this week, that the Eagles recognized it. Devante spoke today, by the way, about why he felt the need to kind of say that after the Panthers game, why they had the reaction they did.

after the Panthers game, because there have been other games this year where the passing game hasn't been electric, right? And he said that they felt that game was the opportunity for the passing game. He felt that they weren't, like, Sequin wasn't getting off early in the game, and there were opportunities in the passing game. And so the reason why the players were harping on the passing game afterwards was because they thought there were opportunities for them to make big plays. and we don't need to go through all that. Fran did an amazing job outlining it. You can see that on all p.hly.com. You can see that on our show on Tuesday.

But I also, I think one of the fascinating things for this game this weekend is if the Eagles come out passing the ball, while it might seem like an overcorrection. This is actually the way to play Pittsburgh. And this is an anecdote that I got yesterday, too. I asked Saquan Barkley about Mike Tomlin because I'm really curious what, about, you know, people's interactions with Mike Tomlin, playing under Mike Tomlin. The way people think about Mike Tomlin,

you mentioned the regard that Janwin Hertz holds Mike Tomlin. And Sequin says he's spoken to Mike Tomlin one time. And that was when the Giants played the Steelers was before the game. And Tomlin came up to him before the game and said, it's going to be a long day for you or a long night for you. I forget which one. And Seekwan said he kind of like left it off. And then he went on and he had 10 yards.

And so I looked this up. 10 yards would have been generous. He had six yards on 15 carries. Six yards and 15 carries in that game. The Steelers committed that game to taking out Sequin Barcl, to stopping Seacquan Barkley. Now, the Eagles are a better team than the Giants. Eagles are better offensive line to the Giants.

But I did a podcast in Pittsburgh earlier today, and I speculated that Mike Tom was not going to allow Seleon Barkley, or his plan is not going to be able to allow Selelein Barclay to beat him. And the Pittsburgh podcasters, they did a great job. It was the Steelers Depot. They were breaking down all 22, the last three games. And they said, absolutely, that's going to be Tomlin's approach here. Now, people were saying the same thing about the Ravens, Rush defense.

The Eagles were able to have success on the ground against them. But Fran outlined the amount of single high that the Steelers play, the amount of man that the Steelers play. There should be opportunities in this game for Jayhwin Hertz and A.J. Brown to have, you know, for Devante Smith to make plays through the air. So if the Eagles have a big passing game this weekend or a productive passing game

this weekend, it might seem like an overcorrection, but I think it's actually the way to play Pittsburgh. And you think back to Cleveland, the Cleveland game, Jim Schwartz, I thought did a good job limiting Seekwon Berkeley. And that was the last time Eagles had like a really effective passing game.

Just to follow up on what you know, Zach was saying about how Tomlin told Seekoine was going to be a long night and all that this week terrell austin their defensive coordinator and his presser uh said that you know and i'll just read the quote he said i think the first piece you put on the board is hey what do i need to do to stop the run it's not really a big chess match you got to figure out what defenses you have that are solid against the run whether it's three receivers or 12 personnel bottom line we have to be able to stop the run so we're going to put groups out there that we feel can stop the run and that's all he said

about how like he's going to play against the eagle so um you know i they they haven't actually been good at stopping the run like that's another that's another issue i mean they're they're third in um in EPA per dropback allowed but 12th and EPA per rush allowed same with success rate they're better against the past than they are against the run they're higher in dev o a against the past than the run they do emphasize it but they haven't actually been good at it and in particular they haven't been good at stopping uh shotgun runs so for what that's worth jack do you want to get going or do you want to stick with us through the break i would love to stick with you all right Right. Well, everybody else, you stick with us as well.

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2024 Eagles offense is in many ways eerily similar to a different Eagles unit of recent vintage. Yeah, so let's zoom out a little bit and take a look at this Eagles offense this year. There's sixth an EPA per drive in the NFL. And they haven't really played a single, like other than the Tampa Bay game, and even that game was like 34th

percentile or something like that. By APA per drive, they haven't really played a single bad game. I checked, and the Eagles' worst game is the best, worst game of the year by any team this year. So if you just take every single team's worst game of the year, the Eagles' worst game is the best out of those. So basically, they're pretty consistent that way. Now, they're only 12th by DVOA, as you know, everyone's been referencing 17th and past DVOA and all that. And the reason that there's such a big discrepancy between the actual efficiency numbers, An EPA per drive might sound like a nerdy stat,

but it is the most correlated to actual points scored of any of these stats. So if you're good at EPA per drive, it means you're scoring a lot of points, and that's obviously correlated to winning games. When you look at the reason the DVOA is so low, it is absolutely because of the strength of schedule. And when you look at the opposing defense is faced by this Eagles offense, the Steelers are going to be the only defense on the schedule.

looking at current DVOA rankings. That's a top 10 defense. The only one. And they're eighth. Yeah, they're the only one and they're eighth. And it's not just that. 13 of the 17 games are against defenses ranked in the bottom 12.

Now, that's crazy. There are only 12 teams in the bottom 12, obviously. The Eagles have 13 games against them. Now, of course, that's because you're playing, you know, three of them twice. But still, when you just say the, like, when you just list the rankings of the defense's, face, 32nd, 30th, 29th, 28th, 27th, 26th, 24th, 23rd, 22nd, 21st, 17th, 17th, 11th, 8th, that's it. And so this is like historically, I mean, it's, to say that it's the easiest

schedule of defenses faced by any offense in the league this year would be an understatement. It's one of the easiest in history. And, like, if you were to just randomly choose teams, it'd be like one in 500 chance that you get, like, no top, you know, like no top 10 teams in your first 13 abonance, you know what I mean? Like, it's crazy. It's like all those guys getting COVID that one time. I mean, it's all, not quite, it's not quite the one in like seven billion chance of that. But yeah, it's very similar. So I'm going to ask you, Zach, can you think of another?

Zach looks like he's falling asleep. When you look at the last four, sorry to put you to sleep, Zach, but here, here, it's going to get, it's going to get good. No, you're not at all. What recent Eagles unit looking at just the, the, the, the, the Siriani era, had the best EPA per drive on their side of the ball over these four years? because this Eagles offense does. Efficiency numbers heavily inflated by an incredibly weak schedule on their side of the ball,

like this Eagles team does. Easily the team's biggest concern going into the playoffs like this offense does. And a coordinator who is possibly, and I'm being generous here in the analogy, possibly a fraud. I don't know if that's fair.

Well, I know you're referring to the 2020, you're referring to the 2022 Eagles defense. The 2022 Eagles defense, which was fifth. by APA per drive as a better APA per drive than this year's defense, but I don't think anyone would say that this year's defense is worse than that defense. That team

also faced a schedule that included just one top eight offense all year and that was the Lions in week one. They played six games against teams in the bottom eight and we all knew going in to the playoffs that man, once this defense plays against a good quarterback and a good good offensive

team, it's going to be trouble and sure enough it was. Now look, Gannon was clearly and obviously a fraud. The question now is, so we're not even going to debate that. That's just, that's just fact. Now, the thing that we can debate is Kellynne Moore. I don't think Kellynne Moore is a fraud.

I take Fran at his word that he's, you know, I mean, I believe he is Kellynne Moore. I don't believe he's posing as someone else. He studied the, the whole, you know, Dallas offense in, you know, much more in depth than I have. And I remember playing those Dallas teams. I remember, like, watching their film as well. and it was exciting. It was interesting. There was more emotion.

There was more like, you know, kind of cool play action, things like that. The thing that I think this is like is, I don't think Kellyn Moore is the best offensive coordinator for this particular task. Like he talked about how he needs to have better sequencing and things like that this week and Expresser.

But I don't think it's the sequencing as much as he just hasn't been able to gather the proper ingredients that fit together with what was already in play. And the thing I thought about is, like Stanley Kubrick is my favorite director of all time. Really? Favorite film director. Yeah. Incredible films, you know, Clockwork Horror and Shining. Zach's favorite, Lolita, you know. He made a movie called Pads of Glory with Kirk Douglas, which was awesome. And then Kirk Douglas' next movie was Spartacus.

And they hired this other guy, Anthony Mann, to direct Spartacus. And they started making it. They started filming. You can tell you're getting worked up. Here we go. Everything was in play. Kirk Douglas is there. Anthony Mann is the director, but Kirk Douglas is kind of really calling the shots, you know? And he ends up firing Anthony Mann.

And he says, you know, I know a guy who can come in and direct this movie, and he brings in Stanley Kubrick. And I don't think it's really debatable. I think Spartacus is easily Kubrick's worst movie. And the reason is because it's not really his, right? He was just like here. Like, here's everything. Direct this. the crew's in place, the cast is in place,

the structure's in place, and he's brought in to do that, and you don't want Stanley Kubrick for that. I am Jonathan Gannon. That was a Spartacus reference. I thought that was pretty good. It's the least Kubrickian Kubrick movie, and this is the least Kellynne Moore offense, right?

And it's like you need a different guy for that. Like when everything's in place already and, you know, whatever else, or you just have to have it actually changed. change. And we haven't really seen enough of a change. And it's almost still this issue where it's like, the offense devolves during games. Like, it devolved in the last game. Like, let me read you the list of plays. Not if you're talking about their first two drives onward. Well, no, but but like, but but but but but but schematically like if you look at the situations where they really needed to have something on that last drive, they ran that same RPO counter with the

ISO slant to AJ twice. It worked the first. time. It didn't work the second time because they were onto it. They run the same. They have like three or four different counter runs, which is kind of cool. They have a pistol counter. They have a shotgun counter with the with the tackle in the guard pulling. They have one with the tight end going in motion. They have the bash counter where like the running back goes the other way. If you want to see how this plays out, join us on all phtly.com. Thanks for watching on TV. Extremely cool variety in the run game, which we know Jeff Statland mainly designs. Really good sequencing by Kellyn of calling those runs. But the way that it marries to the past

I mean like when they did have to drop back and pass, they run the same rap concept that they ran against the Ravens multiple times and they were all over it. The rookie linebacker from the Panthers was like undercutting that. He like knew it was coming. So that led to an incompletion and then the and then the next play, the one to Calcutera just before the punt. That's like a that's like ISO stop route to AJ. Like that's the plan there. And it was covered better this time and Jalen bounced around forever. And by the time he hit Calcutera, he wasn't able to get any yak or anything. and then they ended up punting. They know what field goal range is there.

So that's like a, you know, they didn't get into what they thought was fuel goal range there. So, I mean, that's, that's a place where in a game where the Panthers have all these exotic like rush penny packages and dime packages on third and long, they got into those like twice the whole game.

There were almost no third and longs in this game. That's exactly when the OCE should be cooking. It's third and three, like great. I'm going to bring out like this, well, here's my problem with just painting. that we're going to talk about after the game, like, oh, you got this guy open. Instead, it's like the same mesh play that they always run, and that didn't work either. Sure.

But here's my problem with just pinning it on Kellan Moore. You're telling us that no matter how you split it, the results are the same over each of the past four seasons for the Eagles offense, right, by EPA for Drive. Yeah, but shouldn't it be better? Like, you brought in AJ Brown and you have Shake 1-Marcly. If it's the same level of performance for four years, there are two constants, Nick Siriani and Jalen Hertz. It's probably them. but it's Nick Sierraani and Jalen Hertz with Miles Sanders and Jalen Rager

Sure and then it's Nick Siriani and J.J. Brown and Sequin That means that this is not really Killamore's offense? I mean I understand that. But if Shane Stiken can take Jalen Rager and Miles Sanders and make it be as good as Kellan Moore makes A.J. Brown and Seekwan Barkley, isn't that a problem? I mean, like, this roster is better than the 2021 roster. Sure, but maybe that means that it should result in the same outcome.

It's a Nick offense or it's there taking Jailen instructions on the kinds of plays that he likes to run. Like, it doesn't, I don't think there's any way to look at this team and think this is exactly the offense that Kellyn Moore wants to run. Jalen just talked this week about how he's running different plays because the offense has changed an identity. Do you think it was his idea to make it an offense that doesn't include throwing the ball down the field?

I mean, that seems like a weird thing for the quarterback to do. I mean, there's a lot of things that seem like a weird thing for the quarterback to do. The quarterback, the quarterback is weird. And I've talked about this before. The head coach on the quarterback are both weird. If they were more normal, the narrative around an 11 and 2 team would be different. I think all quarterbacks have to be weird. Go ahead, Zach.

Yeah, but Jalen's extra weird. I think a lot that happened last year was because of Jalen. And I think earlier this year, they had an offense that tried to maximize Jalen. And they switched to this run-based offense after four games because they were turning the ball over too frequently. and they weren't playing the way they needed to play. I think Jalen's more of the common denominator here. Now, I think Jalen's a good player. I think it's a really good quarterback.

We've seen it. I mean, if you're, if you, if you debatably outplay Patrick Mahomes in a Super Bowl, you deserve considerable respect. No, and not debatable. I don't know. He outplayed Patrick Mildon in that game. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think it's really good in the second half to that game.

Patrick Mahomes didn't have. you know um you know that i mean we don't that there was a turnover that we've already talked about we've already talked about who he's going against when when by the way but wait i i just want to say um because we are deifying shame stuyck in here and calling jonathan gadden a fraud and i i got along great with shame but i i do know if he took a stroll poll of people in the nfl right now about who's doing a better coaching job this year jonathan gannon or shan stuyken my guest is Jonathan Gannon would probably be higher on that list. Well, that is similar to the Kellynne Moore's job here.

Like different jobs are different, right? Like, I mean, that being a head coach is different than being the office coordinator for Jalen Raker. I mean, it's just not the same thing. I think like it's very telling to look back at that 2022 game since, you know, it used to be you only played AFC teams once every four years, right? So it didn't like, it made no sense to even look at the last game.

But now with this new 17th game, like, you know, two of the five AFC teams you're playing, you play two years ago, so it's a little different. Looking back at that game, Sterlosson's the same defensive coordinator, it was so crazy to just look at my film notes

from that game. Eagles were just like basically passing it on every down. Yeah. And they were running like an insane number of blitzes at Jalen. The first 13 dropbacks were all blitzes in that game, mostly man coverage. They ended up with 15 man blitzes and six zone blitzes in the game, two thirds of the dropbacks.

And this year they're kind of similar. They run mostly man blitzes when they do blitz, but they're not like a super high blitz team. In that game, A.J. Brown went crazy. He caught those three long touchdowns, including that one that clear out on dagger when he was double covered and he caught it over Fitzpatrick.

And Iso go route, a pump screen, like going down the field. It just looked so different. It was like, like, that is a completely different world than what we're seeing in the offense now. so I didn't even know what to think about like what to make of that game you know like and now Tara Lawson's talking about how he has to stop the run stop the run stop the run the run the Eagles didn't even try to run the ball

in that game so it's a very different different thing Fran talked about Cam Hayward's influence on the run game with the Steelers like while we're on that topic he lines up mostly over the left guard so Landon Dickerson has a big match up there Landon Dickerson did get called for holding Cam Hayward in that game two years ago and then elsewhere on the D-line,

T.J. Watt missed that game, but Lane Johnson did play against DJ Watt once in 2020. Watt had a sack in that game against Carson Wence, but it came on a stun. It wasn't really Lane's fault. It was actually Matt Pryor, who gave it up. That's why I'm going to bring it back. Yeah, there you go.

And then in terms of, yeah, so that's basically the stuff I had on that side of the mall. Okay. All right, Zach, I think we should let you go. Oh, I miss being a studio. you. I want to tell everyone in the audience next Friday and make sure we said this yesterday, but we will all be at the Redding Terminal market. So make sure you check that out. I'm looking forward to that. I will miss locker room, but it'll be worth it to be in person at the market.

A few quick notes. First of, I should get my prediction here. I think that George Pickens' absence is huge here. I can see a world on which Pittsburgh plays the Eagles like they get the Ravens, and this is a low-scoring game in the teens, because the Ravens are, are high-powered offense, and they weren't that day against the Steelers. But I have a hard time seeing the Steelers scoring enough to win this game. I think the Eagles win, but don't cover. I'm going 21-17 right now in favor of the Eagles. I look at this too.

So a few other things. So before I came on, you spoke about the playoff possibilities. It's going to be fascinating to see what happens in that Detroit game. and, you know, kind of how the Eagles operate during these next three weeks thereafter. I'm curious to see that. Outside of that, I want to give mention, by the way, Pete Newman has been messaging. I think he left to comment in the show and messaging on Blue Sky. He sent a Spotify rap with us, number one.

I've received a head. So Pete Newman is the name. There you go, Pete. I've received a bunch of other DMs about this. I will put another list together for it. show next week so keep sending those along. If you are, if I can do a shameless plug here, if you're in Wayne tomorrow, I will be at Main Point Books in Wayne from two to four, signing your books.

Give me your three favorite Wains. Three favorite Wains. Bruce. Okay. I think here. Embry. And Wayne Embry. right basketball player basketball uh okay is that am i incorrect there about wayne emory

uh yeah wayne emory he's okay yeah you got he's he's he's he's like uh he's my fault yeah he's the first he's the first african-american general manager and team president in NBA history uh illustrious yeah yeah and very he's uh he's a pioneer in many ways um and then i will go with i will go with uh i don't want to say her bet uh wayne yeah um i'm trying to think of of of of of a different way wrenski there you go thank you're gonna like great you're not going to you're not you're going to yeah the great one uh yeah the great one but yeah i i'll be at main point books two to four um i've been sending a number of books out to people who uh who reach out via email

uh which i read or dms instagram twitter uh And I have one, you know, I have a form that people have to submit what they want. And one of them is a first name, last name on. Is it, is it, you know, this name or that name or that name of this name? That's a shout out to Boas as well. So if you want that for Christmas or the holidays, I'm sending out, I have a big thing of books. I'm sending out Monday. So reach out to me, hopefully by then.

But I think the post, I was at the post office this morning. They said you have to get everything in by Wednesday. in order to ensure it gets there for Christmas. So make sure that if you want that for Christmas, send that over to me. And now, looking forward to next week's shows more in person. And we got, we got some special guests next week too, so tune in. Oh, that's right. All right, Zach.

Thanks so much. Good luck this weekend. We'll talk to it, the kickoff show on Sunday. And as always, we love you. I've been waiting for someone in the chat to say Dwayne, Wayne, but that's a maybe just showing my age. I think it's a little disturbing, by the way, in this game that the Steelers are known for forcing turnovers

and Nick talked in his presser today about how that's the stat that like they look at the most and all that. Just because we have been talking about how worried Jalen's been about turning it over. It's not the best that you're playing against a team that's benefited the most from turnovers of anyone. What's that?

A little ominous, yeah. And not even from a they're definitely going to do it standpoint. No, no, not. But right, but it's going to be the Eagles focus to not turn it over. Yeah, I generally think turnovers are random and like you don't want to focus too much on it and then thinking about it isn't going to prevent it as much. But it's not just that they're forcing turnovers and they have played the easiest slate of offensive as of any defense for what it's worth. Okay. Not like an outlier like the Eagles offensive schedule, but that's part of it.

They have played some good teams. They played the Ravens. They played the commanders, you know. But they're also leading the league in three. and out punts and that's not including the the turnover ones so you know 21% of their opponent's drives have ended in turnovers another 30% have ended in three and out puns so that's over half the drives they faced have ended in and those are both leading the league half the drives they faced have have ended in either a turnover or a three and out which is

obviously very very impressive okay anything on the other side of the ball that you would like to discussed. Yeah, I know this week has been mostly the offense has been the main focus, but it wasn't a very clean game by the defense last week. And one of the reasons that the offense looked as bad as it did is because they only had eight drives in the game, and that's because

Carolina kept on sustaining drives as well, kind of on both sides of the ball. Like both offenses took like all three downs to get the first down a bunch of times. And you know, that shortens the game a lot. The run game was not nearly as clean against Carolina last week.

the tackling was sloppier. There were also some coverage issues. You know, part of it is, you know, Tristan McCollum is playing instead of read Blankenship. You could blame it on that. There was a play on the first drive where they're running, it's a two by two. It's not like there's three guys on that side,

but Cooper DeGine just let his guy go on an over, thinking Tristan McCollum was going to catch him on the other side. At the exact same moment, the tight end runs an out and up, and Zach Bond lets him go, also to Tristan McCollum. So Tristan McCollens got two guys running at him and the tight end ended up being wide open.

It would have been a touchdown if Josh Swett didn't win his rush and hurry the throw. It ended up being an overthrow to zero, the second tight end. But that almost very similar thing happened last week where there was like a miscommunication and Mark Andrews was running wide open down the field. So just something to keep an eye on. Like we're nitpicking here.

This is the fourth, you know, DVOA defense in the league, first and weighted DVOA, like obviously playing really well. But there were some. moments where, you know, like Cooper DeGine got beat by Thielan that one time and things like that that we hadn't really been seeing. I was going to ask you what you think they're going to do. So there were two snaps a dime in the game last week. Alante Maddox did play 11 snaps in the game, but they were all as the safety. Right. And when CJGJ was back and he wasn't in the game and they had those two snaps of dime on the last drive, it was Isaiah Rogers. And we've been talking about how we've been calling for that now. I'm guessing it'll still be him. Maddox was practicing at safety last week so maybe that was the reason I think you're probably right

that it that was the change and it will be Rogers now but I wouldn't I wouldn't be shocked if it was just because he was practicing him safety last week with readout right I guess the the argument the question is like does the fact

that Isaiah Rogers got that week of practice now make him a candidate for that yeah exactly because he was also the first guy in at outside corner uh Sean Syed who's like the Fangio, you know, scholar, said that Fangio is like obsessive with the, like, you only have one role thing, like more than other coaches are.

So he really doesn't like it when somebody is like the back, like the dime corner, but also the back, you know what I mean? So that would make it seem like maybe it would just be Maddox again. Yeah. Because otherwise Maddox is left like without a role, right? Like with Reed coming back, Maddox won't be the third safety anymore. Right. And so what will he be then?

You know what I mean? He won't be the gunner anymore. If Sidney Brown comes back and then you start to wonder like what his role is. Yeah, I thought it was really interesting on the last drive where, and this is the reason you don't punt that ball, right? You hope not to punt that ball is when the other team has four downs to get every first down, you have to string together like four plays in a row that are successful to get off the field. And what we saw was he started that drive and just like kind of rushing four and playing zone. And it was like incomplete, incomplete. and then they got the one completion.

Incomplete and complete, they got the one completion. And Fangio said, in its presser this week, he said, you know, you need to put together four plays or get a turnover. And I think the or get a turnover part

was like in his head because once they passed like midfield, it turned into like man blitz, like cover one blitz, cover zero blitz, right? Like so I'm just reading, it was like a man exchange, then it was a man blitz, man exchange, man blitz, one drop in one zone

and then cover zero blitz. That's the one that will get dropped. And you're just, taking a big risk there like it's like on one hand yes like you're more likely to get a turnover that way but this defense isn't doesn't usually play that way you know what I mean and and we saw just like slight getting beat on that route with no safety help was almost a disaster now you could argue you could argue if you give it up there then you got enough time exactly yeah and that's the thing the Jim Schwartz thing from the Super Bowl where it's like even if

they score I'm going to get you the ball back right so I don't know if that was the thinking but it got a little nerve wracking there. Are you worried? About the defense? Yeah. No, not really. No. It was nerve-wracking in that moment,

but in general, I'm not worried. This defense, unlike the offense, has played a bunch of top offenses and has stood the test well. And I do think that the safeties are so important in this defense, like just having a backup in there probably makes it a little bit harder for everybody.

By the way, interesting thing on that, Malcolm Jenkins should know a lot about this. He was talking about Cooper DeGine playing nickel as a rookie, right? Which is what Malcolm Jenkins did. And he's talking about how he has been so good at it and has been able to keep them in nickel in a lot of situations. And he was just talking about how much easier that makes it for everybody else that they're not switching personnel groupings all the time because he said that the rules are so different in coverages based on whether it's not. or whether that's like a fifth offense,

fifth defensive linemen in the game and that kind of thing, that it just makes everybody else's job easy. It makes it easier for the safeties to like know what they're doing, like which routes to catch, which routes to match, you know, things like that. And that might have a big part of, you know, why the defense got so much better when they started playing less space. Now, having said that,

the Steelers play like an insane amount of heavy personnel, the most in the league. Right. And so I am guessing that there's going to be a, amount of matching them with base. Just like the the numbers on like like the 13 personnel that they play and the and the 12 personnel like just it's very likely that we're going to see a lot of base snaps in this team.

Defensive linemen. Yeah. Yeah. I think that makes sense. Yeah. I mean, I think so too. I mean, they run it a lot, but they're not good. You guys talked about that.

And I'll also add that it's related to not being good at running it. They're the worst in the league on first down success. Okay. It's 33% on first down in terms of success rate. They're also the worst at converting first downs on early downs. They're worse at converting them on first down. They're also 27th at not needing third down, which is my favorite stat. But they do, they've done well on third down and and recovered.

They're also terrible in the red zone, terrible in gold to go situations. Right. I made that a swooper. Right. And, you know, with pickings out, like, Arthur Smith talked this week about how they want to use Mike Williams more in that role but Mike Williams seems like a little

bit of a Julio kind of thing where they just like randomly added Mike Williams and they're hoping that he that he can fill a role he did have a couple of nice guys last week but oh really only came once yeah that's that's right Super chat from Khalif who says how do you navigate the conversation

between the stats versus the eye test with this Eagles team is it a matter of just staying married to the analytics. What do you think, Professor? I mean, I try to make that be like my main thing that I balance out, like, especially now with true media, like it's so easy to cook up charts and look at numbers and things like that. I always try to spend more time with the film than with the numbers. It might not be clear because the stuff that I tweet out and everything is more numbers based and Fran handles the film stuff so well on the show. But like, I do try to spend a lot

of time just like looking at the film and being like, okay, this is why they're doing that, this is why they're doing this. And I'm guessing coaches are kind of the same, right? Like they're looking at the numbers. They know the percentage chance of zone or man in certain down and distances and things like that. Khalif is probably just talking about like the way to evaluate the team. Like, you know, whether is this offense really the sixth best offense and things like that?

And I think that that's the discrepancy that that is bothering everybody, right? It's like this is a nine game winning streak. The team's 11 and 2. They're like really high in Super Bowl. a lot. It's like everyone thinks they're good, but it doesn't look good, right, at times. And so, yeah, I think, I think that's a real thing. And if it makes A.J. Brown feel a certain way,

then it's, then it's also like a real thing. This is the only chance we're going to get before the playoffs to see them play a real defense. So let's see how they respond. Yeah, no, that is, that is absolutely right. And then a couple of fun facts, I guess, like, debatable. Yeah, it is debatable, but there's a,

there's like a lot of Georgia bulldogs going on when the Steelers have the ball here. They're right tackle Brojerk Jones. Yeah. And they're like almost offensive lineman, Darnell Washington. We're both teammates at Georgia with all the Georgia guys on the Eagles. And so Nolan Smith against Project Jones in particular

will be like a head-to-head matchup of college teammates. So that's kind of fun. Can you make sharping notes? You know, Sharping was inactive last week. And I'm guessing he's going to be inactive this week. Now we do know your favorite Isaacs, Isaac Sayamile memory. Oh, the starting guards. Yes.

So he's still one of the starting guards, just not here. And I do think that with the other guard, Mason McCormick, being a fourth round rookie. Getable. And mostly against Jalen Carter, you would imagine that the rookie center will be sliding that way a lot. And that'll leave Isaac Siamalu on an island against his former teammate, Milton Williams. So that'll be fun to watch. There you go. Always been a big Isaac Samaula fan.

I love Isaac Sama. Yeah. All right. Something's got to give. Sorry, I'm not going to, I'm just going to Okay, yeah, yeah, something's got to give here. Steelers haven't won in Philly since 1965, but Russell Wilson has never lost to the Eagles.

Is it Russell Wilson or is it Wilson Russell? It's Mr. What the hell was it? Unlimited, yeah, that's right. My God. Okay. Anything else? No, that's it.

Okay. Thank you, everybody, for joining us for this week of shows. Thank you, to Denez, for being here today. Thanks to Zach for checking in. Make sure you subscribe to the channel. Hit the like button. All that good stuff. Evangelize.

Shout out from the rooftops for all of us here. We thank you for watching for Wayne Fonce. And all of us to you. We wish you a happy holiday weekend. We'll talk to you on Sunday kickoff show at like 345, 350-ish with Fran and Handsome Rich, half-time show, and then the post-game show with Fran. myself and Vinnie Curry looking forward to it a big game on Sunday battle for as Mike Tomlin termed it the state championship so there you go uh we will talk to on Sunday and as always

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