In today’s NFL, when you’re dealing with quick game concepts, 3×1 receiver sets that test the horizontal and vertical limits of your defense, and devious offensive coordinators who use pre-snap motion to set your defense up in ways you’d rather they didn’t, it may be more important than it ever has been to excel at getting pressure with just four pass-rushers.
Last season, per Sports Info Solutions, no team had more solo sacks (49) and combined sacks (56) with four pass-rushers than the Philadelphia Eagles. The defending NFC champs also ranked sixth in four-man quarterback hurries with 129, third in quarterback hits with 124, and third in total four-man pressures with 238, behind only the Dallas Cowboys and the Kansas City Chiefs.
So, whether the Eagles were taking the quarterback down, or just affecting his performance, they were doing it more and more effectively than just about any other team.
What makes that especially interesting is that in 2022, the Eagles were a base five-man rush team a lot of the time, especially on passing downs. Philly, under former defensive coordinator and new Arizona Cardinals head coach Jonathan Gannon, loaded their fronts with a nose tackle, two ends, and two edge-rushers. This forced single-team blocks inside, because when you put your nose tackle head over or to the side of the center, and you put your ends on the outside shoulders of the guards, and you’re occupying the tackles with your edge-rushers, anyone trying to double anybody at the line is in for a nasty surprise — someone’s going to come through cleanly.
Whether in four- or five-man fronts, the Eagles were also very creative with the use of stunts to further affect opposing offensive lines. A particular favorite was a long stunt in which Haason Reddick, who led the NFL with 21 sacks last season, would loop around two defenders, getting a free release to the quarterback from an unexpected gap.
One play typified this approach — Reddick’s sack of Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Kenny Pickett in Week 8 of the 2022 season. With 13:51 left in the first quarter, Reddick looped around nose tackle Javon Hargrave and end Brandon Graham, and instead of doing so from his usual edge position, he did so from a stand-up 3-tech end role.
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In this week’s edition of “The Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar,” Greg (of NFL Films and ESPN’s NFL Matchup) and Doug (of Touchdown Wire) got into how the Eagles did (and will continue to do this.
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“The Eagles are a five-man front team,” Greg said. “Now, the Eagles were not a big stunt team, by the way — they were at the lower end of the NFL in terms of stunts. So when they did it, it wasn’t something where offenses went into their game pan expecting that approach.
“On the play you mentioned, Reddick — who’s normally on the left side of the defense as an edge rusher — was on the right side of the defense as a standup 3-technique. And they did what is called a ‘long stunt,’ which means that he was going to loop around two defensive linemen, not one. So, those two defensive linemen, they crashed hard inside, bringing the offensive line down inside with them, so that Reddick could loop around.
“Now, the key part of that with a five-man defensive line is that the running back in the backfield [Jaylen Warren], he is not looking at the defensive line. There are five defensive linemen and five offensive linemen, so it’s man-to-man. He’s looking for blitzers.”
Just one more reason to use stunts, or any other device you can manage, to get pressure on the quarterback without blitzing.
You can watch this week’s entire “Xs and Os” video, continuing our look at schemes that are taking over the modern NFL, right here:
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You can listen and subscribe to the “Xs and Os” podcast on Spotify…
…and on Apple Podcasts.