Despite the Eagles’ best efforts, their fans came into a Week 13 game against the lowly Dolphins with the hope that this uneven season could still turn into something special. So maybe this team wouldn’t be making a run at the Super Bowl, which was the expectation going in, but stealing the division from an underachieving Cowboys team would not be a bad consolation prize. And with the talent the Eagles have on paper, a surprising run through the postseason was still a possibility. We’ve seen this team do it before.
What a difference 60 minutes makes. A division title is still in reach, I guess, but after a disheartening 37-31 loss to a Dolphins team that was justifiably accused of tanking over the first half of the season, the outlook for 2019 is not the only thing in question; the philosophical approach is now under scrutiny. At least it should be.
The most frustrating aspect of this season from Philly’s perspective — well, besides the injuries, which continue to mount up year after year — has to be the fact the offense and defense never seem to be playing well at the same time. Over the first part of the season, it was the defense dragging the team down. After two months, the Eagles ranked 20th in defensive DVOA and the team was sitting at 3-4. The offense had laid two eggs in a row against the Vikings and Cowboys but was still averaging nearly 25 points at the time.
Defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz eventually figured things out, and going into the Dolphins game, the Eagles ranked 7th in defensive DVOA. But the team went just 2-2 during that defensive resurgence. Now it was the offense dragging the team down. In those games, the offense averaged 18 points a game. The passing game was particularly bad, with Carson Wentz averaging just 5.75 yards-per-attempt. After that rough stretch, the Eagles ranked 17th in passing DVOA.
The passing game was better against the Dolphins; but, overall, it has been one of the biggest disappointments of the 2019 NFL season. The receiving corps has received a lot of the blame, and justifiably so. DeSean Jackson has been hurt. Alshon Jeffrey is slow and forgot how to catch. Nelson Agholor has never known how to catch. The light hasn’t turned on for second-round rookie J.J. Arcega-Whiteside. And Mack Hollins plays like a dude named Mack Hollins.
Wentz hasn’t met expectations, either. His pocket movement is somehow getting worse. He’s still air-mailing passes due to poor mechanics in the pocket. And he fumbled five times in the time it took you to read this sentence. He has to be better.
Despite everything I just said, though, the real reason this passing game is struggling might be because what should have been a strength has become a weakness: The two tight-end sets featuring Zach Ertz and Dallas Goedert. Here’s what I thought heading into the year: With two athletic tight ends, the Eagles would be able to confound defenses with their versatility. If a defense matched those 12 personnel (1 RB, 2 TE) sets with base defense (4 DBs), Philly would have an advantage in the passing game because either Ertz or Goedert would be matched up with a linebacker. If the defense matched with sub personnel (5+ DBs), the Eagles would have a blocking advantage in the run game with a cornerback forced to join the run fit.
It all sounded good on paper. Here’s the problem: The Eagles haven’t been very good out of 12 personnel. OK, that’s not 100% accurate. Per Sports Info Solutions, the Eagles have actually been the WORST team in the league out of 12 personnel in terms of expected points added. The passing game has been especially bad out of 12 personnel, ranking dead last in total EPA. On a per-play basis, the Eagles have been slightly better, ranking 31st. Only the Dolphins have been worse.
That would be less of a concern if the Eagles weren’t using 12 personnel at a league-high rate. Coming into Week 13, Philly had used 12 personnel on 45% of its snaps; no other team was above 34%.
It’s hard to build an offense that bases out of 12 personnel for the simple fact that good tight ends are hard to find. Great ones — those that can block and get open in the passing game — are even harder to find. I think Washington State coach Mike Leach put it best in 2017:
“Tight ends are a blast if you have them,” Leach said. “If you have a true tight end – and I mean a true tight end – then life is good. God didn’t make very many true tight ends. Just go to the mall and the big long-armed guys you see at the mall – you’ll see a couple, but most of them can’t run fast and those that can probably can’t catch. So there’s not very many of them.”
No there are not.
And the Eagles are finding that out this season. As good as Zach Ertz is as a receiver, he’s been a terrible blocker for most of his career and that has not changed in 2019. Dallas Goedert, on the other hand, has developed into one of the league’s best run-blocking tight ends. He actually has the highest blocking grade of any tight end in NFL, per Pro Football Focus. Unfortunately, he can’t get open consistently (especially against man coverage) which has been a problem going back to college where he was overly reliant on making contested catches. And this was at the FCS level where he was playing against future office managers. It’s even harder to get open against professional football players.
The Eagles’ 12-personnel sets are really just (slower) 11-personnel sets. Ertz is basically receiver and Goedert is a meh tight end who can throw a block. So that passing advantage against base defenses? Yeah, it’s non-existent. Philly ranks dead last in EPA on those plays and 24th in success rate. The Eagles have been able to run against nickel sets, but not at an overly impressive clip. They rank 11th in EPA per attempt and 10th in success rate. Those would be far more impressive numbers if the running game actually mattered.
I’m not saying that Ertz and Goedert are the biggest problems for this offense. They’re far from it. But they were supposed to be a foundational strength and that obviously hasn’t been the case. And their inability to be that foundational strength has only highlighted the bigger problems on the offense. The biggest of those problems might be the simplicity of the offense, which has become a public concern after Seahawks LB K.J. Wright claimed his teammates were calling out the Eagles’ plays before the snap, which gave everyone in Philly Chip Kelly flashbacks.
Via The Philadelphia Inquirer:
“We was just out there communicating, calling the plays out — it was fun … Was it easy? I’ll tell you when I was watching film, I was a little surprised how basic their offense was. They’re running stretch plays, zone flicks. The Eagles did simple stuff we see all of the time.”
After watching a few games of this offense, I’d say that’s a fair assessment. It’s not hard to figure out when an RPO is coming (when the back is lined up away from the tight end side in gun formations on early downs) or when the Eagles are about to run their trusted Mesh play (when the receiver to the tight end side and the slot receiver are in tight splits).
Doug Pederson is not opposed to running the same play out of the same formation with the same pre-snap motion in the same game — even against a team as perceptive as the Patriots.
Yeah, the Patriots saw that one coming again, and you can even see Kyle Van Noy point it out before the snap and his teammates adjust accordingly.
One of the biggest benefits of 12 personnel sets is that their versatility — you can be in a spread formation one play and a run-heavy look the next — allows for more simplicity, as FOX analyst Ronde Barber pointed out during Sunday’s broadcast:
“These guys are in 12 personnel — so two tight ends, one running back — so often,” said Barber of the Eagles. “Because they have these two guys — Goedert and, of course, Zach Ertz — it allows you to be so simple yet varied on offense and it give fits to defenses trying to deal with both of these athletic pass-catching tight ends.”
Well, Eagles opponents haven’t had any problem stopping those athletic tight ends … or figuring out the simplistic offense. So what does Philly do? I wish I had an answer, but there isn’t an obvious one. The Eagles did curtail the use of 12 personnel against Miami, deploying it only 31% of the time. Ertz being banged up may have played into that but he played more snaps than Goedert, so maybe not. Anyway, taking a tight end off the field means more snaps for Hollins and Arcega-Whiteside, and that’s not exactly a recipe for success. And it’s not like Pederson can overhaul the entire offense at this point in the season.
So, yeah … there are no easy fixes.
The Eagles offense is fundamentally flawed, from the construction of the roster to the scheme itself. That’s not going to change over the next month. Philadelphia still has a decent shot at making the playoffs, but it’s probably in the team’s best interest to just pack it in and start looking ahead to 2020.
[opinary poll=”which-team-will-win-the-nfc-east_forthew” customer=”forthewin”]
