The Philadelphia Eagles are crossing the pond to take on the Jacksonville Jaguars in London this weekend. The flight to the United Kingdom won’t be the only turbulence the Birds are experiencing with Lane Johnson retiring and Cam Jurgens getting traded.
In order to preview this Week 5 matchup, I reached out to our enemies over at Big Cat Country. The gracious Gus Logue kindly took the time to answer my questions about this upcoming battle. Let’s take a look at the answers.
[For my answers to Gus’s
questions about the Eagles, check out BCC.]
1 – The Jags are 16-5 in the Liam Coen era. What’s he done to turn this team around since Super Bowl LII champion Doug Pederson was fired?
When Coen was hired, the thought in Jacksonville was, “He seems to have the goods as a playcaller. But can he also be a culture-setter?”
18 months later, the answer is a resounding yes.
Look no further than Jacksonville’s latest victory: a gritty five-point win in Cincinnati. The Bengals may not be juggernauts, but the last time the Jaguars played at their stadium (Week 2 last season), Jake Browning led a stunning second-half comeback to steal the dub. “Winning ain’t easy in this league,” Coen told the locker room after getting redemption this past week. “Do we have to clean sh*t up? Absolutely. But guess what? Our culture prevailed. Our f*cking toughness prevailed … The last time we were in this locker room, in a similar type situation, it wasn’t a great feeling, right? Talk about growth. Talk about us as a unit, us as an organization, what the f*ck we’re building. That’s what I’m proud of.”
Through the first half of last season, the Coen experience was mostly encouraging, but still had its ups and downs. Then the Jaguars allowed another backup AFC quarterback to complete a second-half comeback, this time Davis Mills in Houston in Week 10. Coen had talked a whole bunch about responding to adversity, so after Jacksonville crumbled against a division opponent, everyone in town wondered how the Jaguars would respond.
They rattled off 8 straight wins to clinch the division and host a playoff game. They came up just short against Josh Allen’s Bills in the Wild Card Round, but that loss must’ve left an awful taste in their mouth, because they’ve been the NFL’s second-best team (behind only the 49ers) in terms of point differential, DVOA, and ESPN’s FPI this season. We’re not wondering anymore.
The relationship between Coen and Trevor Lawrence is as strong as we could’ve hoped for. They look like one of the very best playcaller/quarterback duos in the league; one that could carry a team to the playoffs. And Coen has done an outstanding job building his staff; expect defensive coordinator Anthony Campanile to become a head coach in the next year or two. But the connection between Coen and his entire football team has been better than we in Duval County ever imagined. The greatest leaders in franchise history are him and Tom Coughlin, full stop. I suppose that’s a bit of a self-own regarding Jacksonville’s poor coaching history, but you get my point. Coen isn’t just another playcalling wiz who used to work for Sean McVay. He’s one of the best all-around coaches in the NFL right now.
2 – Anthony Campanile’s defense has allowed the second-fewest points in the NFL this season. What makes that unit so good?
Run defense!
Everyone loooooves to talk about offenses getting in heavier personnel and under-center formations and bunched alignments and pulling guards and other schematic tweaks, all to boost efficiency against defenses with 2-high safety structures that have been molded by Sean McVay and Kyle Shanahan to stop outside zone and explosive passes out of 3-WR sets.
So I’m excited to talk about Jacksonville’s run defense, which Campanile has renovated into an impenetrable fortress. The Jaguars have been great against the run for years, largely thanks to their Big 4. Josh Hines-Allen and Travon Walker have a case as the best run-stuffing EDGE duo in the league; they contain the perimeter and funnel runs inside to nose tackle DaVon Hamilton and linebacker Foye Oluokun, who are poster children of “players who would get more love in a bigger market.” Those four players are pillars of the run defense, and other front seven defenders like Arik Armstead, Matt Dickerson, Danny Striggow, Dennis Gardeck, and Ventrell Miller have been balling out more recently as well.
A few years ago, Jacksonville’s defensive motto was, “Stop the run, then we can all have fun.” If they stop the run on early downs, they can have fun on late downs by pinning their ears back and rushing the opposing quarterback. The Jaguars did have a great run defense that forced opponents into 3rd-and-long situations, but they didn’t quite have the horses to consistently get the offense off the field.
Under Campanile, their defensive philosophy is “Stop the run, limit explosives, and create takeaways.” The stable is now stocked. With the collection of defenders listed above, plus an overhauled secondary that suddenly features a coverage-tilting cornerback in Travis Hunter, the Jaguars have the horses. Their defense has not allowed a single rusher to reach 75 yards on the ground in 22 games (the fourth-best streak of any team in the Super Bowl era). They rank first in interceptions (28) and tied for first in takeaways (39) since the start of last season, with a takeaway in 10 straight games. They could do a better job limiting explosive passes, but DANG, are they checking the other two boxes emphatically.
While Campanile has had more talent at his disposal than previous Jaguars defensive coordinators, he deserves credit for taking the run defense from “very good” to “historically good” and especially for proving that turnovers aren’t completely dependent on luck. They actually can be manufactured with good coaching and diabolical playcalling. When opposing offenses get into 3rd-and-long situations, Campanile leans on his coaching roots by deploying Fangio-like coverage structures with Flores-like pressure packages. He has out-game-planned the vast majority of offensive coordinators he’s faced. Like Coen, he’s been as good of a playcaller AND culture-builder as we could have hoped. Remember the name.
3 – The Eagles and Jags don’t play very often. Who are some of the under-the-radar players that we should keep an eye out for?
I’ll offer one name on each side of the ball.
On offense, keep an eye out for rookie receiver Josh Cameron. He had an eye-popping offseason, from rookie minicamp to training camp to the preseason, and now — despite the Jaguars seemingly having a strong starting trio of wideouts — his blocking prowess and strong hands have earned him a part-time role in the regular season. The Baylor product has played 19, 10, 23, and 22 snaps through the first month. Brian Thomas Jr. is losing snaps to him. Brian Thomas Jr.! The guy we believed to be Diet Randy! But Cameron has made the most of his playing time, as he’s deliveredtough blocks in the run gameandcrazy catches in the redzone. The guy can play some football.
On defense, keep an eye out for second-year safety Rayuan Lane III. The Navy man will be thrust into action after Eric Murray (concussion) and Caleb Ransaw (knee) got banged up last week. Ransaw played 33, 7, and 19 defensive snaps through the first three weeks as Jacksonville’s No. 3 safety, so with him now on injured reserve, Lane will at least step into a role in dime personnel packages. But with Murray in jeopardy of missing Week 5 after missing practice Wednesday, Lane is probably in line to start against Philadelphia. He fell to the 200th pick last year because he isn’t a high-caliber athlete (by NFL standards), but as he showed last week when he made the game-clinching tackle on 4th down… the guy can play some football.
4 – What’s the biggest matchup in the Jags’ favor and the biggest matchup against their favor?
The biggest matchup in the Jaguars’ favor is their passing game against the Eagles’ middle-of-the-field defenders. I definitely would not have said that a month ago, but now that Cooper DeJean is on #washed watch and Zack Baun and Jihaad Campbell are injured, I expect Lawrence to continue finding success between the hashes. According to Sports Info Solutions, he leads the NFL in passer rating (138.6) and adjusted net yards per attempt (11.1) on such throws. The Jaguars are at their best when Parker Washington and Jakobi Meyers and Brenton Strange are feasting on in-breaking routes. Expect to see plenty of that on Sunday morning against a suddenly vulnerable Eagles defense.
The biggest matchup in the Eagles’ favor is defensive tackles Jalen Carter and Jordan Davis against interior linemen Emmanuel Pregnon, Robert Hainsey, and Ezra Cleveland. Between the Patriots and the Bengals, the Jaguars have held up against some elite defensive tackles in the past two games, but really, their entire offensive line is the first potential Achilles’ heel that comes to mind in terms of how far of a postseason run the Jaguars could make. Coaching, playcalling, and Lawrence’s pocket management have maximized a group of names that was listed in the bottom five of most preseason OL rankings. This unit is in the 2025 Seahawks mold of “Can they just be good enough?” Maybe Carter and Davis will show that it is not.
5 – Who wins this game and why? With the Eagles currently listed as 6.5-point underdogs on a neutral field, what’s your score prediction?
Most will say that the Jaguars will win because the Eagles are banged up. But I already predicted a Jaguars win back when the schedule was released in May. Losing Jeff Stoutland and A.J. Brown and Jaelan Phillips in one offseason seemed like a pretty big deal, and I certainly didn’t expect Jalen Hurts to start attacking the middle of the field out of nowhere. I believed that Jacksonville’s run defense is as equipped as any to limit Saquon Barkley, and the advantage provided by Trevor Lawrence/Liam Coen somewhat offsets Philadelphia’s advantage in overall roster talent. So I don’t even need to change my original score prediction to reflect all the Eagles’ absences. Jaguars 34, Eagles 21.
[BLG Note: The Eagles are now 7.5-point underdogs but were listed at 6.5 at the time of me posing this question.]
