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Break down of potential future Eagles HC Greg Roman's offense.

We all know current Eagles head coach Andy Reid is going to get fired this off season. What we do not know is who is going to take once he leaves. The hottest candidate is of course current head coach of the Oregon Ducks, but another very hot candidate is current Niners offensive coordinator Greg Roman.

I'm not going to write to much about his back ground as Stanford has a really good write up of his background before joining the Niners here.

What I am going to do, is break down how his current offense with the Niners operate. I will show some of the formations used and then try and project how the current Eagles players would fit into that formation. I have chosen two plays to begin with, there in my opinion shows how creative Roman can be and how much smoke and mirror he likes to use.

For all the people who have watched at least one Niners game over the last 2 seasons, it is clear that Roman's offense is heavy run based and then pass of the play action. The offense is not a traditional run heavy offense there just line up in base formation and run out of the I formation, instead he will often line up in an unbalanced formation (Instead of T-G-C-G-T, you got G-C-G-T-T lined up). Also TE's is a big part of the offense because they will often line up in Tank (1WR-2 TE-2 RB) or Heavy (1WR-3 TE-1 RB) formation and its here I think the Eagles current personal would mean a slight difference in formations. With the Eagles I think Roman would run Ace (2WR-2 TE-1 RB) as the most common formation and not really that much Heavy.

The first play I am going to talk about has actually been broken down really well by Matt Bowen of Nationalfootballpost.com here.

The thing he did not show, was the diamond formation the Niners lined up in at the beginning of the play, this formation is a formation the Eagles wouldn't really run because its a Pistol alignment, but the Big Wing formation would defiantly be a formation I could see the Eagles run with its current personal. The diamond formation is shown below

On this play the Niners are in Tank personal, with Gore, David, Moss, Walker and Miller. With 2 TEs and 1 FB, the Pats clearly think run first, but still has to respect the down field receiving of both Moss and Davis.

So how would this formation translate to the Eagles current group of players? I would use Jackson, McCoy or Brown, Havili, Celek and Moore (Right now Celek and Moore are the only 2 TEs on the roster for next year and Moore is more skilled than Walker). Because of Jackson's deep speed the safety has to cheat over on him and then either Celek or Moore should be wide open.

The next play I am going to break down is a play from the Niners first game against the Packers. The Niners come out with regular personal (2 WR-1TE-2RB), with Crabtee, Moss, Davis, Gore and Miller, but instead of just lining up in the I, they start off by showing empty back field as shown below.

But Alex Smith will audible (I have no clue if its just smoke and mirrors or if its a real audible), into a Weak I formation (FB is off set to the weak side of the formation) and it can be seen below

While this play only went for 5 yards, its shows the creativity of Greg Roman and how he likes to use his personal in different ways and try to create match up problems for the defense.

So how would the above play work with the Eagles? As my WRs I would use Maclin and Jackson, while neither are strong run blockers, you have to use em on running plays or the defense would just be able to guess the play. My TE would be Celek as he is a good all round TE and therefor wouldn't tell the D if its run or pass either. My FB would of course be Havili, as he is a very good pass catcher and therefor would sell the fake really well and my RB would be either Brown, Lewis or McCoy as all 3 can catch the ball well (Its here I miss Westbrook as he would have been a match up nightmare in this kinda of offense).

I hope people have enjoyed the read and if people like it, I am open to breaking down more plays.