Breaking down the Eagles’ Week 2 film

I often get asked questions about NFL Game Pass, the service most of us in the media use to watch coaches film of NFL games.

From a fan perspective, it’s great to get all the condensed games after the fact without any of the fluff. From a writers’ perspective, it’s pretty doggone awful. Mainly because - and not unlike a newborn Targaryen - every time a game is born the Football Gods flip a coin in the air the media world holds it’s breath to see how it will land.

This is a long way of saying that Game Pass’ coaches film quite often is a jumbled mess with a blank screen and we’re left to deal with it, because these things are time sensitive. During the season new film is like ice cream, it’s relevancy will melt quite quickly. We did our best on The Kist & Solak Show #120 to break down what was available from the broadcast copy and “coaches film” regarding the Philadelphia Eagles Week 2 loss to the Atlanta Falcons.

It was difficult to break down this game for a couple of other reasons. Losing three key players before the game or incredibly early into it ripped out a whole chunk of what the Eagles wanted to do offensively. This entirely eliminated the use of 12 personnel but also forced the offense into the very basic passing attack we saw Sunday night.

“The Eagles went from twelve play-action passes in Week 1 to just three in Week 2, and those three weren’t under center with longer developing route concepts, they were all from shotgun. Speaking of which, only four under center snaps all game, three of them in short yardage situations...

80% of their snaps came from that last year, but the inability to mix it up and dial up shot plays hurt them along with not having the guys you’d want executing those shot plays, so there’s not a lot to go off of here from a personnel and scheme perspective.” - It Me, Michael Kist

It also hurt the running game, which was best with 12 personnel in Week 1. There were other factors as well, like Isaac Seumalo having his lunch stolen repeatedly by Grady Jarrett & CO. and undisciplined or unexciting runs from the backs.

If you’re interested in tracking Miles Sanders’ progress, I’ll be posting all of his meaningful reps on my YouTube channel that I use to post clips here or in this thread.

On the defensive side of the ball, I temporarily lost my mind and said the Eagles got their best linebacker play from Nate Gerry, but he really was the only one to make any kind of meaningful play in the game. Two weeks in a row of poor play from the linebackers is concerning and I’m very much hoping for the speedy return of the promising Kamu Grugier-Hill.

We also talk about Jim Schwartz going ham sandwich with the blitzing, which means he did it around a league average. It mostly worked and had some fantastic wrinkles that disguised the defense well. That was until he hung a fat one over the plate for Julio Jones’ 54-yard touchdown.

There’s tons more covered in The Kist & Solak Show #120! Listen in on the media player below or click here if the player doesn’t load! New to podcasts?! Check out our guide on how to listen to BGN! FLY EAGLES FLY!