This one might surprise you, but I’m going to focus on some more of the positives this week. I’ve been highly critical of this offense all season long, but weirdly, there were some positive signs to cling to this week. I can’t be bothered to write about the same rubbish stuff we have seen all season long. Let’s try to look at what has changed and what remains the same. At times, this one contained the worst version of Jalen Hurts we’ve seen in years, and it was a reminder that when this offense is bad,
it is catastrophically bad. But there was some stuff I liked about this performance.
Offense
The type of concept is exactly what we’ve been begging for, but no one is open. It’s excellent coverage by a very good defense. Hurts processes it correctly and throws a ball that should go for an explosive gain. Instead, AJ Brown drops it. This was a missed opportunity that immediately set the tone for the day. AJ Brown is usually very reliable, but he had some huge drops in this game.
The shotgun run game remains one of the most fundamentally broken parts of the offense. The Eagles’ interior simply can’t create any push strain out of the shotgun. What are Jordan Mailata and Dallas Goedert doing here? It’s the same story week after week. The coaches keep calling inside zone from shotgun as if something will magically change. It’s a reminder that the “bad” parts of this offense are catastrophically bad. Even though the run game had some more success, they still had far too many negative runs.
This is better. Under-center, downhill, with double-teams actually generating displacement. The difference here is night and day from the clip above. The blocking is cleaner, the angles look more natural, and Saquon Barkley looks like Barkley again because he has space to work! The Eagles look more comfortable running the ball this way. When the Eagles get under center and lead with double teams at the line of scrimmage, good things seem to happen.
Plays like this show there is a path forward, but only if the staff commits to the version of the run game that actually functions.
This is one of Hurts’ bad moments and one of the clearest examples of him overcorrecting into unnecessary aggression. The Chargers are in 2-man. Nothing is there. The design doesn’t give him a winning option, and the corner has leverage on AJ. The design provides him with nothing here. That doesn’t absolve him of blame. Hurts forces a ball that never had a chance. It’s almost like you can see the internal battle he’s fighting. I’m guessing the staff has been preaching conservatism and now wants the offense to take more risks. It felt like Hurts went too far in the other direction. The balance was off.
Everything about this play shows a staff finally trying to stress a defense horizontally and vertically at the same time. It’s lovely. There were some good designs in this game. Goedert’s route crosses into open space, and Hurts has an easy throw. It’s almost like the staff can scheme open receivers when they move beyond the static hitches and mirrored concepts that have bogged this offense down. Goedert’s YAC ability also finally mattered again, something missing for weeks. YAC is a coaching and QB stat; it’s not just on the receivers themselves. The frustration isn’t that they can’t do it, it’s that they don’t do it often enough.
This is another beauty. I love this. This is the kind of sequencing good offenses build around. Play-action that looks like earlier runs and concepts that put stress on defenders. This is where the optimism comes from this week. When the Eagles moved toward a more varied, layered passing game, the results were genuinely encouraging.
This was Hurts’ worst play of the season. He immediately eliminates the first side of the read and doesn’t work through the combination backside long enough to see Jahan Dotson popping open. Instead, he forces a ball into an area dominated by coverage defenders and a dropping defensive tackle sitting in the window. This is a bad one. He doesn’t make throws like this often, and he will be the first to admit this is not good enough.
This interception is more of a structural failure than a Hurts error. You cannot run heavy hitch-based concepts against a defense whose corners trigger downhill this violently. I said this in the preview! The Chargers’ DB jumps it easily because he’s seen this exact route from the Eagles all year. DeVonta Smith slipping only makes the result worse, but the real issue is that the Eagles keep calling predictable concepts that don’t threaten defenses. The Eagles’ passing game has to evolve beyond these staples. We saw signs of it in this one, and we need to keep evolving.
Another design I like! Another example that some of the new stuff is genuinely working. This is exactly what the offense should look more like. The challenge is whether the staff actually commits to this approach or whether it becomes another one-game blip before retreating back into stale structures because they are scared of the turnovers.
This run is one of the best-executed plays of the game. There are some fantastic blocks, as well as the obvious disguise. Mailata’s reach is excellent. Goedert seals the edge. Darius Cooper makes a great block, and might start taking WR3 snaps away from Dotson if he blocks like this. Barkley reads it decisively and bursts upfield for a long touchdown.
From the broadcast, this looked like Hurts throwing a bad hospital ball. But on film, it’s much more of a drop. Hurts puts the ball where it needs to be, Brown has a chance to secure it, and instead it falls incomplete. These are the plays that swing games, especially on a night where Hurts desperately needed someone to help stabilize the offense. The QB was already playing poorly, but some of the excellent throws he made weren’t rewarded. AJ Brown will be disappointed with his drops in this one.
Please, stop doing this. Asking Tyler Steen and Grant Calcaterra to pull in counter is a waste of a down. Can we just replace every run like this with under center duo? This is a coaching failure, not a player failure. Steen isn’t strong enough to create displacement at the line of scrimmage, and Calcaterra is just bad. The Chargers wreck the play instantly because it’s obvious the Eagles don’t have the bodies to make this structure work. Just, don’t do this stuff anymore. Please.
This is the drop that probably frustrated Hurts the most. It’s a perfect read against the blitz. It’s a perfect throw. It’s a moment to flip the narrative after a pretty terrible performance. However, AJ Brown lets it bounce off his hands. This isn’t about blaming one player; AJ Brown is as good as it gets at this stuff. He just had an off night. However, the offense cannot afford its best players failing to finish plays when the quarterback is having a bad day. This could have been a significant turning point. I will give Hurts credit for staying aggressive and continuing to try to make plays when things were going wrong.
The screens… oh boy. What can you say about this? They are abysmal. They are predictable, slow-developing, poorly spaced, and entirely unsupported by motion or misdirection. Defenses know they are coming because they always look the same, always come from the same formations, and never create any stress. What are they actually doing here? What is the plan? The Chargers blow this up instantly because it’s an awful design. These are wasted downs. The offense would instantly improve if you binned all these screen passes to receivers.
Then, out of nowhere, Hurts drops one of the best throws he’s made all season. After four interceptions. In overtime. On 3rd and long. Just pause this throw when he releases it. It’s a beauty. Hurts isn’t known for throwing with anticipation to the middle of the field, but we have seen progress the past couple of weeks, despite the overall poor play. Imagine if the Eagles’ coaches gave him a chance to make a throw like this on the 3rd and long you can see above?
And then the overtime interception. Ugh. This sucks. This is the classic RPO flat with DeVonta Smith faking to block and releasing that we saw last week. First of all, Hurts should hand this off to Barkley. I have no idea why he keeps it. The EDGE defender forces him backward, and he tries to force it into an impossibly small window as he falls. He can’t do this. The Chargers’ corner closes the window instantly. The Chargers’ secondary was awesome, and we have to give them some credit. But in a tied game. In overtime. On first down. Hurts can’t make this throw. It’s not the type of mistake that Hurts makes very often, but I think he was pushing in this game and playing a little bit too much ‘hero-ball’. Despite all this, the Eagles must strike a balance between their former conservative play and this newly reckless overcorrection. Hurts must learn when to push and not to. This was not the moment to get aggressive.
Final Thoughts
In the end, this was a maddening offensive performance because it somehow contained both the most evident signs of progress we’ve seen in weeks, and the most self-destructive football of Jalen Hurts’ career. 2 of the turnovers were inexcusable. But the under-center game was effective, and some of the route concepts were finally layered and purposeful.
The problem is that the bad remains catastrophically bad. The shotgun run game is a dead end. The operation still fails in high-leverage situations. And Hurts, who usually covers up structural cracks, is now contributing to them. You can feel the offense searching for a new balance, and they haven’t found it yet. They went from ultra-conservatism to over-aggressiveness. I really hope the coaching staff doesn’t resort to ultra-conservatism because that would be the wrong thing to do, in my opinion. You have to give the Chargers’ defense a lot of credit. Their pass defense is exceptional. I called it in the preview!
But despite the loss, despite the turnovers, this wasn’t a hopeless performance. If the Eagles commit to the things that actually worked, the under-center identity, the layered concepts, the defined reads, and strip away the stale, predictable, broken parts of the playbook, this offense still has the talent to get back to being dangerous. It isn’t fixed. It isn’t even close to being fixed. It probably won’t get fixed. But I’m choosing to focus on some of the positives…
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