The Ringer NFL Show - The Play Sheet [VIDEO]: The Eagles Defense is Ruining Their Title Shot

Episode Date: January 3, 2024

The Philadelphia Eagles recently gave Matt Patricia more control over their defense, and the results have been abysmal. Once considered Super Bowl contenders this season, the Eagles defense has had a multitude of schematic and personnel-related shortcomings in their past few matchups. Can Philly turn it around in time to make a playoff run, or are they stuck in the mud with this group? Watch 'The Play Sheet' on Spotify or YouTube every Wednesday at 8 a.m. PT. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Howdy? I'm Ben Solect is the play sheet. So a weekly episode we do on Wednesdays and it's a video pod. So click into your Spotify app. Click on the feed, watch the episode and enjoy. The opening script. Eagles defense is a big problem. I want to rewind to last weekend in November. Okay, just ate Thanksgiving dinner. Bellies nice and full, watched a lot of football and the Philadelphia Eagles are 10 and 1. They just came off a thrilling overtime win against the bills. In fact, they beat the Cowboys Chiefs and Bills in consecutive weeks and they control their destiny with the best record of football in the NFC. Now, they do have to have a some problems. Everybody's aware of these, right? They are 20th in defensive success rate. 26th in defensive EPA per drive. This is clearly a below average unit. This, despite the fact that they have big contracts doled out to Darius Slay, James Bradbury, and Avanti Maddox in the secondary, to Josh Sweat, Hassan Reddick, and Fletcher Cox along the defensive line. This despite the fact that they spent first round picks on Nolan Smith, Jalen Carter, and Jordan Davis on that defensive line, despite the fact that they traded midseason for Kevin Byard. There is so much talent poured into this defense and it's still an underperforming unit. Enter December and the

wheels really come off, right? They give up 42 points to the 49ers, 33 points to the Cowboys, lose back-to-back games, lose control of the NFC, and accordingly, they make a coaching change. Before a Monday night football game against the Seahawks, it's announced that defensive coordinator Sean Desai is no long, okay, so he's still the defense coordinator. It's just he doesn't get to do any defensive coordinator things anymore, like calling place. That's all, it's off of his plate now and it's been given to Matt Patricia. If you're like, hey, who's Matt Patricia? He's the ex-defense coordinator of the New England Patriots, turned head coach to the Detroit Lions, turned to offensive coordinator of the New England Patriots. He's been a senior defensive assistant

with the Eagles all season. In news that is shocking the nation, the Matt Patricia change didn't work, okay? They lost to the Seahawks on a game-winning Drew Lock Drive, and then they beat the Giants, right? And that was the Tommy DeVito Tyrod Taylor-led Giants. But it's not like the defense got that much better. Still, they were in a position where if they won their last two games against the Cardinals and the Giants, the Eagles would win the NFC East. They'd be the two seed. And then, against the Cardinals, the Eagles delivered their worst defensive performance by success rate in the last 17 seasons. It is the third worst, single game performance of any defense this season, better only than the Cardinals against the Niners, and that one time the Broncos gave up 70 to the

Dolphins? Yeah, those were the only two defensive performances worse than what the Eagles did against the Cardinals on Sunday. So what made offense so easy for the Cardinals against the Eagles on Sunday? And can the Eagles defense be trusted at all in the postseason? Let's go to play action. Short answer. No. Long answer. The Cardinals ran for 221 yards. All right. And they did so because the Eagles are very predictable in how they try to defend the run and then really, really liable with their second level defenders. They're not good. This right here is a bare front. We got to start with this, right? We are in a five down front. This is the front of the Eagles want to defend the run. with five down defensive lineman.

They're going to have Jordan Davis, who's that early round, early pick, right, that first round pick out of Georgia. He can be their nose tackle. They draft him to run these fronts. And then their defensive tackles, right? They're either going to be in the gap,

like Mill and Williams is right here, right? He's attacking this gap. He's between the guard and the tackle. Or they're going to be more like Fletcher Cox's, where he's lined up head over the tackle, right? This player's a little bit more of a one gap player. This player's a little bit more of a two-gap player, right? He might play into here and might play into there.

And then on the outside, they're going to have Asson Reddick and Josh Sweat. operating is kind of like outside linebackers and these guys are your your edge defenders right they're going to stop everything from coming to the outside when you're facing a bare front as an offense right you don't really have the ability to run to the interior because there's there's these three defensive bodies that are mucking up a lot of these interior gaps and then obviously there's going to be linebackers coming downhill and filling what you want to do against this front is you want to kick out these ends and then run into that sea gap right there right between the tackle and the tight end between the tackle and

in the tight end. That's how you'd like to attack this front. This has been barefront one-on-one with Ben. Let's get to the place. So the first thing the Cardinals start doing when the Eagles are in that five defensive line personnel and they want to be in that bare front is they start screwing with alignment, right? They go right here two tight ends into the boundary right, into the tight, the narrow side of the field. And to the field side, to this wide side of the field, they put two receivers and they spread them out. With this does, it takes a son Redick right here. It pulls him off the line of scrimmage and force him to play like an actual linebacker role. So Son Reddick played more snaps in coverage in this game than he has at any point this season.

And it's because the Eagles just kind of let the Cardinals by formation pull him off the line of scrimmage, put him into coverage roles by putting wide receivers out here. So firstly, we're screwing with formation, which is smart. End zone view. Okay, so we put two dinners on the field and we got the personnel we expected, right? Eagles want to be in their five down front. But with formation, we pulled Assan Reddick off the line of scrimmage, got him out of the box, and we pulled Keely Ringgo a corner into the box, into the run fit, right?

Corner not as good as defending the run as a defense a line. linement is. So now this is nice and easy, right? They shift James Connor over, right? Pull him from the left side to the right side. And then we're going to run GT counter. All right. Nice little power play. Down block. Defensive tackle. Down block right here. We're sealing these defensive tackle, these run stoppers out of the run. We are pulling both the guard. He's going to take out Josh sweat as he comes up field. And then we're pulling the tackle as well. GT counter. All right. What this allows us to do, right? And we get, we get Tray McBride climb to the second level. He's going to stop this linebacker from coming. Look at the wall that the Cardinals get.

it here, right there, these two down blocks, beautiful. And then Tray McBride to the second level on Shack Leonard. There's no chance, right? So now it's just James Connor following tackles, following blockers. And the key block is Nick Morrow, playside backer against the pulling right tackle, Paris Johnson in the hole. You like your tackle against Nick Morrow every day of the week and twice on Sundays, right? You like your tackle against any linebacker, usually.

But Morrow, like the Eagles linebacking situation is tough, right? Morrow was a street-free agent. They cut him outside of camp. him back in the year. He is not good at taking on contact, not good at surviving the point of attack. So you love, you, you want this match of every day of the week. Because once you win this block, now it's James Connor up against Reed Blanketship, up against the safety filling from depth. And James Connor is going to win that plant, read Blankenship, pick up the first down every day of the week and twice on Sundays. So now we can watch it through. Down blocks here from the left side,

pullers from the right side. I mean, he's untouched through the first end of the second level. So when you, when you know the front you're going to get, you go tight ends into the the boundary, you spread it out to the field, you pull that corner in, and then we just hand the ball off to the back, we run it to the weak side. And they did it all game long later in the game's second quarter, right? The core of the formation here looks the same. There's actually a receiver over here this time and a receiver over here, but that four-man surface, right? One, two, three, four, that four-man surface remains. That's what we want to run to. We got bare front again. Look over Josh sweat is, man. Look, look, where he's lined up, and then we have the defensive tackle here inside of the

offensive tackle. The C-gap is wide open. The D-gap's wide open. This is structurally, this is unsound defense. At the snap, you are losing in this bubble. In the running game, we talk about bubbles, right? When you have spaces between defensive tackles, right? You have a little bubble right here. When you have this space this big and there's no linebacker stacking it? Because in the last play, the Eagles were in five down defensive line,

and then they had two backers. They had Nick Morrow and they had Shaq Leonard. Right? They were in a five-two looking defense, where like a three-four. Right now, they are in five-down defensive line. in one linebacker, and then they have five DBSs. There's three safeties in a corner and a corner,

515, which is very ugly, and it hasn't worked for them at all. And it's bad, and it's not good, which is what bad means, but I'm upset. So we're just going to run to the C-Dap. It isn't that hard. This time we pull the center and we pull the tackle, but it's going to play out the same way.

We're going to go down-box, we're going to climb to the second level, we're going to kick out Josh Sweat, James Conner's just going to follow everybody. It's going to play out the exact same way. Look at that double team. Displacement, train McBride to the second level. And now you're asking Kevin Byard to fit from depth, right?

Kevin Byard is the primary ball fitter here. It's 10 yards off. And then Josh Sweat gets bamboozled, right? Josh Swett thinks this is some sort of like pass action. Like this is actually going to the boundary. And so he doesn't set a hard edge. Look at, what? There's no, 33 yards up field.

There's no one at the point of attack. Oye. It's very ugly. Now, when you're predictive, defensively. I give you multiple tight ends. You give me a five-man front. It isn't just the run that gets affected. It certainly was the case in this game, but it's also the pass. Here the Cardinals are, again, there's two tight ends, right? It doesn't look like it. We got tight end, tight end. This is James Conner at the top. This is 12 personnel. So what did the Eagles give them? Gave him four-down

defense alignment and there's Sassan-Radick flexed out. They wanted to be in five-downs. They thought they were going to get two tight ends. They're going to get Kyler under center, back, back here, we're going to run the ball. So Hassan-Radics on the field, five-down defense alignment, right? But he's got to get flexed out to deal with this wide formation, the spread formation. So now after Kyler Murray, who are you going to throw the ball at? I'm going to throw the ball on it's on Reddick. Right? It's structurally, if your solution to multiple tight ends has to be being a five down front

because you don't have the off ball linebackers to survive, then you're going to end up in positions where Redick has to play the pass, right? They're going to flex them out. And then can you protect him? Can you hide him? You don't have the coverage personnel to do this. And so they're going to hit them. right back at it again.

13 personnel. Tide end. Tide end. Tide end. Running back. We got one receiver on the field. What formation are the Cardinals going to get out of this very clearly run personnel?

Five wide! Right? You are, look up where Reddick's lined up. Reddx like a nickel. It looks like a slot corner. That's just on Reddick. When, now when I as an office coordinator, get you in a spot where you've got five down defense

while I'm in on the field, I'm in spread, right? I'm in three by two open shotgun. The menu of coverages that are available to you are so limited because you can't do anything with this player. This is a critical player. You want to run any sort of match coverage? You want to run any sort of man coverage?

This guy's really, really important. Whoever's playing that position right there. And currently it is a outside linebacker. It's a edge rusher. I got you. I win, right? And so even this time they don't end up targeting Reddick, right? They're going to get the same seam runner and then they're going to get a little underneath

it from Greg D. Dorch and that's what they end up throwing right there right so like okay red it goes in collisions i don't have to throw that though i can just throw Greg Dorch as a wide receiver one-on-one against shack Leonard in space because you just got out you have to run zone you have to run functionally spot dropping zone because you can't run anything else once I get that player in that position easy pitch and catch we just keep moving football now a lot of the reddick coverage reps end up being like underneath targets to slot receivers tight ends and running backs which if you're losing to that you kind of live with it right that's part of a

playing ball, at least you're not losing to 40-yard throws down the field. The problem is, is that trying to solve this issue with Reddick getting flexed out, the Eagle started to deploy other defensive machinations, which sucked, and they went right back to losing to the running game. The problem with losing to the run like this is that it's really hard to stop the snowball from going down the mountain, right? We can see that structurally here. They're in barefront, right? But what they want to do, they want to get to a different defensive spacing than they've been giving the Cardinals because they're losing. And so they're going to actually blow. Blitz Shaq Leonard right at the middle here.

And we're going to bring Mill and Williams across and we're going to bring Jaylon Carter across, right? So we're going to change the presentation. Because if you think about it, if we get another look here, it's like double team here up to this guy and then we pull right here. Well, firstly, we have the opportunity for penetration to win for us. Secondly, with Shaq Leonard coming down the mountain, right?

We're going to be able to beat these pullers now because Shaq's going to be on top of the polar's way faster than they anticipate. We're going to be about to muck all this up. So we've been losing in this run, let's change the picture a little. bit. So you can see right before the ball snapped, there comes shacklin and he's coming down. So structurally you start to change stuff. The other thing is that you start to take advantage of individual players. This is Josh Sweat. All game long, sweat's been getting this. Humphrey's moving away from him, double team go climb to the second level. And then a polar comes and earholes him right here.

He steps down and bang, he gets sent this direction. So he's going to be at the snap really fast, downhill and to the center, right? Because we're bringing pressure off this side. He wants to go in collision. He wants to cause problems for these. pullers. What are the Cardinals actually doing? They're going to seal them off with McBride, and Humphreys is going to pull outside of him. So we've been hitting you, we've been hitting you, and now we're going to okie-doke you. Now we're going to ole you. And we're actually going to hit you from the other side, right? And so this pitch comes, there's no hard edge, right? Shack Leonard stepped down. So now you've got Nick Morrow in pursuit against a wide receiver. Okay? This is your,

this is your starting backer against Zach Pascoe's a wide receiver. You can't play that. It can't, it can't play. Like it's just it's you you we have to be able to win that engagement at some point. Okay. So we have that issue. The other issue here is now we've got reed blank and ship safety film from depth because the Eagles got to do this now. And then on the outside here is keelioringo. There's a corner off screen. Reed's got to stay inside of this block. Force Connor up and then force him outside. Stay inside of this. Take this away and force him to keely ringo. But reeds been the guy making the tackle's all game. Rees been the guy making the play's all game from depth. So what does he do? He tries to take two for one.

Gets put outside. Now you got two defenders here to the outside, nobody on the inside. James Conner turns up field. So you got bad scheme, but then you got personnel problems too. So here we are now, third quarter.

Once the run starts, hard to stop it from snowballing. Give us a little too tight end look. We don't care anymore. We're going four down defense alignment. No more of this barefront nonsense. You're getting redick flexed out. You're beating us in the C gap.

No more. We're going four down. And then we're going to play one gap with everybody else. Linebacker. Linebacker. Bring a safety down in the box. Bring a corner nickel, corner down. We're going to have a body for every gap and we're going to play four down and we're

going to be okay, right? Wrong. Motion, Greg Dorch, right? So now we get to this, this familiar position, right? We get this four-man service over here. We get two receivers to this side. Reddick doesn't have to flex anymore. That's nice. But now instead of running all this gap power nonsense, we'd run duo. Double team, double team, double team. Movement off the ball first level. And now as the back, you just pick your gap, right? Maddox has to step down. Shack has stepped down. They have to worry about these gaps.

Maddox is overaggressive coming downhill, so we just bounce this thing. Michael Carter, balance it out, one guy to beat into the corner. Eli Ricks. Oh, one more time. It's very tough. It's a tough look for the young man,

and then read Blankiship Jason, Matt Ethan yards down the field. So, okay, you're going to go four down on us, but you can just keep running on you a different way, right? When you have significant personnel deficiencies at the second level, linebackers fit in the run. And when you only have a very limited menu of ways to solve the run for you up front,

they put two tight ends on the field, you have a very clear response. You are going to lose over and over and over again in the running game. You don't have solutions. You are predictable in your deployment of personnel, and you are limited in the personnel you have access to. You got nothing in the bag. Right now, offensive coordinators can yank Matt Patricia on a chain. And that's not to take anything away from Drew Petsing, who's the office coordinator for the Cardinals, has looked great in year one and has me believing in the Cardinals long term under his offensive tutelage.

He's been awesome. But in general, I mean, this is 101 level manipulation stuff. Like, oh, if I just put two tight ends on the field, I'm always going to get this look. And then I can line up in whatever formations I want, run whatever I want and pretty much know your coverage, know your run fits. Like I, this is unbelievably simple, unbelievably easy to handle. When we started talking about the Dac-Prescott, Mike McCarthy, Brain Trust, and Dallas are talking about Ben Johnson in Detroit, Kyle Shanahan in San Francisco,

anybody who's anything in the NFC is going to be able to beat this Eagles defense structurally. They might lose the every so often play to some of the Eagles star talent, but on the X's an O's on the chalkboard, ballgame. And remember, this is the defensive switch the Eagles invited. This is the one they went out to go find. They said, we haven't been good enough. let's start doing this. And it's been, it's been a mess.

It's been poorly coached. It's been poorly executed and it doesn't win. And so right now there's no like solution waiting in the wings. O'Darious Slay is coming back from injury. That's not going to make enough of a difference. Oh, Avanti Maddox just got back. He's going to get his sea legs under him. It's not going to do enough.

Oh, like Jalen Carter, Jordan Davis. Their Snapcats have been down recently. They'll be fresh for the playoffs. It's not enough. They do not have the talent in the second level of the defense. at the linebacker position to be successful as a defense in the NFL. And that comes back down to one man. Howie Roseman.

No general manager has so freely and gleefully flouted the linebacker position like howie Roseman has over the last decade. And the overarching logic of it is sound, right? Build your defense through the pass rush and through coverage. And generally, that's been successful for Roseman. He's had two different teams go to the Super Bowl under two different defensive coordinators in recent years based off of that premise, a really good pass rush and good coverage at corner.

But there is a limit to how much you can ignore the linebacker position and still remain a fieldable defense at the NFL level. You can only go so far until your poor linebacker play is so dramatically limiting to the defense that you can't succeed with anything. And that's where the Eagles have arrived. So nothing is changing for this team this year. They are going to lose in the playoffs and they're going to lose because of their defense. They got offensive issues too, but for the purposes of this play sheet, they're going to lose because of that defense. This upcoming off season, a reckoning probably has to come for the front office's philosophies about team building.

You can only push linebackers so far until the entire defense breaks. And that'll do it. For us on the play sheet, thank you so much for watching. Thank you to Cory McConnell for producing the episode. Thank you to Matt Patricia for being employed by my favorite team and coaching our defense. I've loved it. It's been great. Review and subscribe and comment and have a happy new.

You already had a happy new year, but keep having a happy new year. And I love you very much.