After a summer full of speculation about what the Eagles offense would look like, the first game’s worth of all-22 and tracking data feel like the gift that will keep on giving.
At least until next Monday morning.
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Here are five things I spent far too long reviewing and thinking about while scrolling through TruMedia and rewatching the film of Sunday’s 24-22 win over the Washington Commanders:
1. Jalen Hurts vs. zone coverage became one of the many sticking points for the Eagles offense last season and gave way to an offseason of debate about whether his struggles to find throwing windows were more a function of scheme or his own ability.
But against a Washington defense that played zone coverage on 27 of his 33 dropbacks, Hurts was mostly solid against it.
According to TruMedia, Hurts had a 113.5 passer rating against zone, which ranks third out of his last 17 starts behind the Eagles’ Week 15 win against the Las Vegas Raiders and their Week 7 win against the Minnesota Vikings last season. The latter example is a noteworthy one given it came against Minnesota defensive coordinator Brian Flores, the primary influence on the scheme Commanders DC Daronte Jones unveiled Sunday.
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Hurts’ explosive play rate against zone was the highest he’s recorded in his last 17 starts as well, although the fact that the performance ranked seventh in EPA/dropback shows there’s still room for him and the offense to be more consistent finding positive plays against all coverages in the future.
Still, there were enough examples of Hurts finding the necessary throwing windows in there to suggest the work him and Sean Mannion did during training camp hammering the middle of the field can become a more regular component of the scheme moving forward:
2. What is Makai Lemon’s best use case in this Eagles offense?
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The answer is probably not the way the first-round rookie receiver was deployed in Week 1. Hurts targeted Lemon four times in his NFL debut, here’s a quick rundown of each play:
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Hurts found Lemon on a speed out against off coverage for a three-yard gain
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The Eagles motioned Lemon across the formation for a swing pass, but the blocking broke down and resulted in a five-yard loss
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Hurts targeted Lemon on a similar speed out to the one they connected on in the first quarter, but Hurts was under duress and threw it on a flatter angle than the route Lemon was running, resulting in an incompletion
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Another swing pass resulted in a three-yard loss, even though Lemon was able to make one Washington defender miss as things broke down in front of him
Blocking woes aside, Lemon was not billed as a twitchy gadget player coming out of USC and is probably better utilized working the middle of the field as a slot receiver tasked with finding soft spots against zone coverage.
There’s a conundrum with that, though: Lemon is a willing, but limited blocker in an offense that utilizes a heavy dose of condensed sets that will make him an important part of the run game.
There were a handful of examples of him struggling in the run game in his debut, which is understandable given the transition to the league and the fact that he’s 5-foot-11, 192 pounds. Nick Cross drove Lemon into Saquon Barkley‘s running lanes a couple times on Sunday and, in general, he’s not the conventional dirty-work receiver most iterations of the Kyle Shanahan-Sean McVay systems often deploy.
Watching through each of the 25 routes Lemon ran against Washington, my general conclusion is that he’s still a work in progress doing most of the things the Eagles asked of him. He’s not going to consistently win against man coverage from the slot or the outside and probably shouldn’t be on the field quite as much on early downs.
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The best-case scenario right now is probably getting him the ball on underneath routes tied to play-action, something the Eagles didn’t utilize much against Washington and putting him in fewer blocking situations from condensed formations.
3. The “auxiliary” blockers in this offense outside of Lemon aren’t necessarily ideal pieces either, though.
It’s something my colleague Fran Duffy pointed out during his excellent film review on Monday’s show. Johnny Mundt is the Eagles’ best and only true inline tight end, but even he’s not the type of guy you’d want matched up with bigger defensive linemen in the run game despite the fact that this system sometimes does ask its tight ends to hold up in those matchups. And outside of Mundt and Dallas Goedert, the Eagles group of skill players lack the heft most of the wide zone-based systems have prioritized collecting in recent offseasons.
Even looking across the NFL earlier this week, the tight end renaissance that’s happening in the league stands out in a way that it simply hasn’t in Philadelphia.
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Teams are putting more tight ends on the field, lining them up creatively, and leveraging the advantageous looks doing so gives them across the league. There were nine teams in Week 1 to run at least 10 plays out of 13-personnel. Last year, only the Arizona Cardinals and Eagles passed that benchmark in the opening weekend.
The Eagles don’t need to put more tight ends on the field to find their footing in a wide-zone system, but the lack of options at receiver combined with the thin tight end room will make it harder to find reliable blockers on the perimeter where Barkley will be able to create explosive runs with added space.
As for a potential solution …
4. The Eagles still used 12 personnel at a good clip against Washington, coming out with two tight ends on 26.2% of their offensive snaps (12th highest in the NFL.)
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For the reasons stated above, their most versatile personnel grouping may feature both Goedert and Mundt with Goedert in particular able to move around the formation and threaten both as a perimeter blocker and a vertical threat as a receiver.
It wouldn’t surprise me to see them lean even more heavily on these types of sets against teams that prefer to operate out of their nickel defense; Washington’s personnel and play style make them one of the few teams that would rather play in base than nickel. With the Titans’ new head coach Robert Saleh typically preferring to live out of nickel, the Eagles may be trying to deploy more heavy sets next week.
5. One final word on the offense …
While it was surprising to see the Eagles still rank toward the bottom of the league in play-action percentage and middle-field target rate, most agreed patience would be required to get a true evaluation of the scheme Mannion spent this summer installing.
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The Eagles ranked 31st in play-action percentage going into Week 2, but I would expect them to get much closer to at least the middle of the pack in the next few weeks. Especially considering the 64-yarder to Dontayvion Wicks, the offense’s biggest play of the day from the group, came from an under-center play-action look.
