Eagles All-22 Film Review: Observations from the bad loss to the Giants

Well... that was disappointing. I found that a thoroughly frustrating watch. It seems quite clear to me that the Eagles are a better team than the Giants but a few too many mistakes cost them this one. Let’s just get into it.

OFFENSE

Sirianni clearly came out and wanted to throw the ball more this week. The Giants were stacking the box and I am guessing he wanted to catch them off guard a bit. However, Jalen Hurts didn’t play well, and the Eagles quickly focused on the running the ball a lot after the first two drives. I am going to break this down slightly differently this week and focus on the passing game first and then do the running game after, rather than doing it in the order of how each play happened. Let me know if you prefer this way or not!

Anyway, let’s start with a positive, shall we? This is a hell of a throw. Great job by Hurts/Quez Watkins being on the same page and knowing what to do if the deep shot isn’t on. Love this play a lot.

Let’s defend Hurts again early on! I will not blame him for this pick. I don’t even really blame Watkins as I think it should be DPI but as a wide receiver you must keep playing even if you think it should be a flag. Hopefully, he learns from this.

Despite just defending him early, Hurts did not have a good game. I didn’t think he saw the field clearly at all and I don’t even think the Giants were doing too much complicated stuff on the back end either. He just did not process the field well at all which is pretty concerning. Here is a good example of this, this throw is never ever on against this coverage. He got stuck on his 1st read far too often in this one.

Again, I want to see him process things quicker and eliminate what is not there based on the coverage after the snap. This throw is never on so move on from Dallas Goedert rather than staring him down and trying to force it to him.

This is one of the worst throws I’ve seen from him because it highlights his two main weaknesses - arm talent and processing speed. He just sees single high and throws the vertical route without really doing anything else. He needs to move the safety here and them come back to Jalen Reagor who would have had a chance of being open against single high. However, the ball just dies in the air. There is no juice on this one and he steps into it which is pretty worrying. Not sure how much you can coach that.

Just for balance, as I mentioned earlier, not everything was bad! This is a tremendous throw and if Reagor catches it then some people are probably having very different conversations about the Eagles this week.

The final few plays are bad for Hurts as well. He was lucky this was not picked. He’s far too late to this throw and just stares it down once again. The Giants secondary probably couldn’t believe how easy it was at times.

The last play has been debated a ton so I’m not going to add too much. Personally, I think the ball should be thrown to DeVonta Smith. It is a tough throw though and I am not going to completely kill Hurts for not making it. He does recover well and makes an awesome play outside of structure to Reagor who clearly should be catching this.

Overall, I didn’t think this was dramatically different from most Hurts games. He is normally slow to process, and we know he doesn’t have great arm talent. He was electric in the run game still and came up clutch once or twice at the end. I haven’t changed my opinion since last week (when I said I still don’t think he will be a franchise quarterback) but I do believe you can win with him.. However, he cannot make the mistakes he made in this game moving forward. He isn’t talented enough to have those kinds of errors.

Onto the running game, my goodness did the Eagles run the ball well this game. Maliata, Dickerson and Johnson were absolute monsters in this one. I bet they cannot believe that we lost this one. Jordan Mailata and Landon Dickerson are so well-coached for young players, I am excited to watch how good they can become.

The Giants could not stop this counter run. The Eagles ran it on them all game and they never really had an answer. I don’t really have much to add on the run game as it was the same as what we have seen the past couple of weeks but the Eagles absolutely dominated the Giants upfront. This was an elite performance by the offensive line.

DEFENSE

Once again, I thought the Eagles played a solid game on defense. There was less creativity than there has been in recent weeks but there was a good blend of single high and 2 high as well as some man (with a small bit of press at times) and zone coverage.

I’ve been highlighting him in recent weeks, but I thought Fletcher Cox was good once again this game. He has played well the past month and certainly has not declined as much as I thought earlier on in the season. He’s not done yet!

No one player to mention here, I just thought all game the Eagles played pretty good coverage on the back-end. No real coverage busts at all. No plays where I wonder what someone is doing. I think that speaks to good coaching overall.

Speaking of good coaching, Milton Williams’ development is really impressive. This was a player that some saw as an EDGE (I didn’t!) as he was quite undersized to play in the middle. He does not look light or undersized right now! He made a couple of impressive plays this week and I think he has the chance to be really good if he can develop some pass rushing moves during the offseason.

In recent weeks I’ve spoken a lot about the Eagles being creative with their blitzes on 3rd down. Well, guess what? The other teams coaches get paid too! Sometimes these blitzes fail and I am fine with that. I’m still happy we are being aggressive more. Give me a defense failing like this rather than giving up 10 yards of cushion on each play.

Another sign of a well-coached team who are motivated is how quickly they swarm to the ball carrier. This doesn’t appear in the stats sheet, but I never get the feeling watching the Eagles that they are soft or passive anymore. This is a physical game and tough defenses are usually successful. The Eagles have some physical players, and the defense plays hard overall. I thought both Edwards and Singleton played really aggressive, good solid football this week.

Little minor scheme point, the Eagles have been matching base personnel with nickel (if you count Avery as an EDGE) with a 5 man front and they did a really good job shutting down the Giants rushing attack.

Avonte Maddox and Darius Slay have been exceptional the past month. Maddox gets beat at times but he is so physical for a smaller corner. Slay is just balling in coverage. In zone he never bites and keeps to the assignment and in man he is shutting down players frequently. These two have really impressed me.

That will do for this one... a very frustrating loss. I’m expecting an angry Eagles team to dominate the Jets upfront this week. Fingers crossed!