The Philadelphia Eagles are 8-1 with the NFC’s one-seed, but all anybody wants to talk about is the thing that is falling apart.
In this case, it’s about more than the standard Philly sports fatalism.
The Eagles’ run defense has become a disaster, every team facing the Eagles knows about it, and every team facing the Eagles is going to hit that particular wound with everything they have. The Washington Commanders certainly reinforced that last Monday night. In handing the Eagles their first loss of the 2022 season, Washington ran 49 times for 152 yards and two touchdowns. Those trying to extract positives from the game might say that, hey, Philadelphia’s defense allowed just 3.1 yards per carry, which really isn’t the point. When your opponent knows that it can go all 1978 Marv Levy Wing-T on you, and you’re really not prepared to deal with it, that’s a big problem.
“If a team is going to run the ball on first and second down, first and second down, first and second down, and try to get it to third-and-short, we have to do something to combat that,” defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon said Thursday. “That’s what we’re working on and that’s what we’ll do.”
Our own Laurie Fitzpatrick recently got into all the problems with that run defense, which currently ranks 28th in Football Outsiders’ DVOA metrics. Whether it’s penetrators who need to be gap-stoppers, a lack of discipline in gap maintenance, or the simple fact that first-round rookie Jordan Davis is out with ankle injury, things are not working.
So, the Eagles did what they do — they went out and tried with all aggression to solve the problem. This week, they signed two veteran defensive tackles in Linval Joseph and Ndamukong Suh. Neither player had a snap in the 2022 season, but both have proven to be stellar run defenders in recent years.
“He’s a really good player against the run,” Gannon said of Joseph. “His attitude is right. His character is great. He practices extremely hard. He is diligent. He kind of fits right into what we do and how he wants to play and what he wants to do, and I think it’ll help us.”
The Suh signing happened after Gannon’s presser, so we didn’t get his thoughts on that one. But overall, it’s clear that Gannon, head coach Nick Sirianni, and general manager Howie Roseman — not to mention everyone else in the building — hopes that these two veteran Band-Aid contracts will reinforce something that desperately needs reinforcement.
We have no 2022 tape on Joseph and Suh, but 2021 tape does reveal some positives.
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