FanPost

Stone Cole Focus #1-What’s Up With Shady?



Hello all, and welcome to what I hope (time permitting, which for a grad student isn’t a given) will become a regular series. This season I’ve finally taken the plunge and gotten NFL game rewind, because I’ve realized I need two watches of each game-one to follow the ball, and another to actually watch individual players. Instead of just keeping this analysis to myself, I’ve decided to do a service for the BGN community by cutting up some all-22 footage (H/T to mycatsnameismilk for talking me into upgrading to the plus package-I can’t believe I was gonna try to do this with just the broadcast footage).

The Eagles’ season to date has been characterized largely by the underperformance of the two faces of their franchise, Nick Foles and LeSean McCoy. Foles’ issues have been analyzed in-depth elsewhere, so I’m going to focus on Shady. He looked alright in weeks 1 and 2, but in the past two weeks his stat lines have been putrid and some claim he’s looked "off" in some way. This is frequently attributed either to a turf toe injury he suffered before the season, or to a big hit he took from a Washington headhunter football team member early last week.

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In order to shed some light on exactly what’s going on with Shady, I dissected every touch he had last week against the 49ers. By now we’ve all seen the stat line ad nauseum (10 attempts, 17 yards), and it’s generally agreed upon that at least some of this blame can be put on the cobbled-together offensive line, which last week fielded two original starters and only one playing in his original position. I sought to quantify how much of this woeful outing can be put on Shady getting victimized by his big uglies, and how much was him not making plays he should have/not trusting holes. Instead of showing each and every play, I’ll just show a representative selection of the fingers that can be pointed. Let’s dive right in!

Q1, 3:32, 1st and 10

Shady’s first play of the day was a screen, not a running play. Numbers look good-hat on a hat on the right side of the field, where Shady will be going (with the run play threatening OZR to get the defense moving in the wrong direction).

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However, as the play develops Matthews decides to block a man away from the play (yellow line), instead of looping around Ertz to engage the defender who will eventually make the tackle (red line):

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Leading to no gain on what could have been a nice jaunt.

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Q1, 3:10, 2nd and 10

The first thing to note here is the numbers advantage: there is a hat on a hat in the box. I’ve read in some places that SF was daring Philly to run all day, but I think this is only a half-truth. By my count on Shady run plays, there was a numbers advantage (defined as either equal or more Philly blockers in the box) on exactly half the plays. On this particular play, run was definitely the right choice:

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As the play develops, a small hole opens in the middle with a lead blocker out front. The TE to the left side of the formation is peeling off the combo block on Justin Smith to take on one of the LBs, and Molk has the other LB lined up (yellow lines). However, instead of hitting this hole, Shady bounces this run to the outside right for a gain of 1:

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I can’t say with 100% certainty him hitting the initial hole would have been a huge gain, but it probably would have been more than 1 yard. I put this on Shady not having trust in his blockers.

Q2, 14:38, 1st and 10

Another favorable setup for Philly to run. Hat on a hat in the box:

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All looks good initially, the center is moving to the second level to engage a LB and Herremans is peeling to engage the other. Shady gets ready to hit the hole:

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Yet by the time he gets there the pocket has collapsed, leaving him to burrow forward for a 1 yard gain:

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If you were wondering, I would say the majority of the blame on this play was Molk getting owned by Ray McDonald. He seems agile like Kelce, but doesn’t seem to have the same strength. This play demonstrates that Shady’s distrust of his line isn’t really unjustified.

Q3, 8:06, 1st and 10

This is a play where the numbers do not favor Philly to run. The initial setup is almost identical to the first play I showed, with favorable numbers for a Shady screen to the right, and a box that is stacked against Philly:

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Instead of faking the handoff to Shady and then tossing the screen, Foles gives him the rock at the mesh point:

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By the time Shady has the ball in his hand, Justin Smith has beat Peters (yes, it happens unfortunately, yellow circle) and is right in his face. Shady cuts to the outside for no gain. This play is a demonstration of two things: Jason Peters is fallible, and Justin Smith is really good.

Q4, 13:53, 1st and 10

I use this play as a demonstration that sometimes the blame on a bad running play isn’t on Shady or the line; in this particular example whoever made the playcall is who you need to point the finger at. Two things to note pre-snap is the numbers advantage SF has in the box and the distance between Cooper and the CB guarding him:

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I didn’t do a great job of capturing it in this image, but both the receivers immediately turn to Foles at the snap and are clearly waiting for the ball, so that leads me to believe its Foles’ option to throw the swing pass if the numbers are good. Instead, he hands off to Shady, who has a defender in his face as soon as he has the ball, thanks to Tobin getting completely ragdolled out of the way (yellow circle):

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That ended up in a tackle for a 4 yard loss.

Q4, 5:55, 1st and 10

This was a good choice for running. Hat on a hat in the box. As the play develops, Shady sees a hole so big he must have thought he went back in time to 2013. As Shady gets the ball, it looks like he has one man to beat (red circle) between him and lots of green grass:

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But instead, Dennis Kelly whiffs on his pulling block (yellow circle) and Shady is forced to bounce to the outside for (somehow) a 5 yard gain:

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It’s hard to believe he wouldn’t have broken Bethea’s ankles and gotten a lot more had Kelly been able to complete the backside seal.

By my final count, 7 plays can be pinned on the blockers/Foles, 1 was Shady bouncing to the outside when he shouldn’t have, and 2 were no fault because they were decent gains. My takeaway from this exercise is that if you’re worried about Shady’s health, exhale. He looked physically fine; the only fault to be found was him not trusting his line to hold a hole open for him to run through. As you can tell by the count above, this is a very justified lack of trust; more or less every member of the offensive line was guilty of losing control of their blocker at one time or other, resulting in +/- no gain.

Moving forward, there are reasons for optimism. The biggest is the return of Lane Johnson from his suspension, which also allows Herr-dawg to move back to right guard, the position he looks most comfortable at. There’s also competition to be considered: there aren’t many defenses that are as well-coached and QUICK (seriously, this really stood out when watching the all-22) as San Francisco’s. There’s also the natural progression of Shady gaining trust in his blockers; Molk and Tobin will hopefully improve as they gain experience.

Sunday will be the first chance to right the running game ship. St. Louis also boasts a talent-laden front 7, but they can be had in the run game, as our friends in Phallus Faillas Dallas Arlington showed us a couple weeks ago. I get the feeling Lane’s return will open things up a little bit, which will instill some confidence in Shady and hopefully get his YPC a bit north of 2.

Hope you enjoyed reading; comments and constructive criticism are welcome!