Eagles All-22 Film Review: Observations from the win over the Panthers

Hello BGN, it has been a while! However, I am back and will be having a film piece after each game from now on.

I will be breaking down film on my Twitter account and then uploading the tweets with some more analysis in this piece. I obviously cannot post everything so I will focus on certain things each week that stand out to me. I might see something a few times on film but only upload one example as you don’t need to see everything, so you will have to take my word if I say that I have seen something multiple times.

I am going to break down the offense followed by the defense each week and I will post the plays in order so you can see how the game played out. Sometimes I might focus on a specific area, I will see how each game plays out. I am simply choosing the most important plays and highlighting some players that stood out to me. As always, let me know your thoughts in the comments and I look forward to discussing the game with you all. Let’s get to the film!

OFFENSE

For the first 4 drive, the offense was basically RPOs, screen passes, swing passes to the RB, curl routes and the occasional run. It was a complete disaster. Nick Sirianni must have expected the Panthers to come out blitzing and aggressively getting up the field with their defensive ends but they did the opposite and the Eagles took way too long to adjust. Some of the calls had absolutely no chance of working.

Something I’ve noticed with Jalen Hurts is his inability to read RPO’s correctly. I’m convinced he makes up his mind too early and fails to adjust to late movement.

Speaking of Hurts, this is a tough play to make, but I would love to see him work on stepping up in the pocket without dropping his eyes.

On the plus side, he did show a good example of this later which proves he can do it!

Moving onto another 2020 draft pick! Jalen Reagor doesn’t play with great effort and, to be honest, he’s a bad route runner. He can do some things with the ball in his hands but I think the Eagles need to reduce his snap count and target him as little as possible.

Hurts had a couple of really bad misses that he will probably still be having nightmares about. Sirianni finally adjusted towards the end of the first half and had a couple of lovely play calls.

*In the above clip, the seam route is run by DeVonta Smith and not Quez Watkins. I was shocked when someone pointed this out because to be honest I didn’t realise Smith could fly like this. I also LOVE the little hand up in the air when he knows he might come open.

Once again, another missed read in my opinion.

After a pretty horrendous start, Hurts does deserve credit for not completely going in the tank and making some lovely plays at the end of the game. I credit Sirianni for adjusting too when he realised the Panthers were sitting on the short passes and limiting YAC.

DEFENSE

This was a completely different defense than we have seen before from Jonathan Gannon and it was really interesting to watch. The Eagles mixed up coverages, disguised coverages and even had linebackers depending on how the Panthers lined up. There were a lot of 5 man fronts in this game which helped limit some of the Panthers play action rollouts with Darnold. The Eagles immediately lined up with a middle-field safety and man coverage which has not happened much this year...

When the Panthers went base the Eagles countered by completely switching the LBs and playing TJ Edwards and Davion Taylor. This is an interesting combination as Taylor is extremely athletic but I thought Edwards had the best game of any Eagles linebacker.

The Eagles still played a lot of 2-high but they mixed up their coverage far more than they had before. THey also moved Slay around for the first time this season. I don’t have the numbers, but I would guess Slay lined up over DJ Moore basically everytime Moore was lined up outside. I didn’t see him follow him in the slot which was when Moore had most of his success.

Breaking: an Eagles blitz!!

TJ Edwards playing in base suits him as he is great at this.

Slay was not the only Eagles cornerback who turned up Sunday either. I thought Avonte Maddox and Steven Nelson played well.

Breaking: an Eagles stunt along the defensive line! Gannon clearly adjusted this week and started running some things we haven’t seen much on tape this year. The Eagles defensive line has run stunts really well the past few years and they had success with it this game a few times.

I loved how similar Slay’s second interception and Nelson’s interception were too. I really was impressed by both of them this week.

That will do for this week. It certainly wasn’t the prettiest game I have ever watched but I was glad to see the defense show some new looks and the offense adjust (albeit too slowly) throughout the game. Until next week.