The Eagles had more than their share of offensive line breakdowns in their 24-22 season-opening victory over Washington last Sunday. Now, the Eagles will be facing a true game-wrecker in Tennessee Titans’ All-Pro defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons. With Pro Bowl left guard Landon Dickerson placed on the injured reserve on Monday due to a bruised right knee, Simmons and Eagles’ quarterback Jalen Hurts may become quite familiar each other Sunday afternoon at 1 p.m. in Tennessee.
Simmons has already stirred
the drama pot when he blurted out about Hurts this week: “We just need to make Jalen Hurts be a QB. Stop his runs, make sure Hurts doesn’t get out of the pocket and make plays.”
Simmons and the Titans’ defense are about the only shot Tennessee has in beating the Eagles.
Eagles’ offensive coordinator Sean Mannion addressed the Eagles’ leaky offensive front this week: “Some of it is just execution, some of it’s fundamentals, but I think you kind of hit it. The biggest takeaway for me from the game was just being able to stay on schedule. We got behind the sticks a little bit. If there’s a guy unaccounted for — we had a free safety pressure early. We’ve just got to communicate a little bit better upfront. In large part, we always want to have a hat for a hat. We try to avoid those situations. Some of it is execution, some of it’s fundamentals, but the better we’re able to stay on schedule, the better we’re going to be as an offense. That was the main takeaway from the game. That was some of it. Just a couple instances where it kind of got behind the sticks. The examples you’re speaking to led to at least a couple of them.”
In the season-opening win over Washington, Hurts was amazing. He went into “Jordan mode” and saved the day, completing 14 of 25 passes for 203 yards and three touchdowns. He also ran for 46 yards, which included what was the play of the game when he scrambled 22 yards for a critical first down on third-and-18 play in the fourth quarter.
It looks as if Drew Kendall, in his second pro season, will start in place of Dickerson at left guard. Kendall is coming off a strong training camp and preseason. Titans’ head coach Robert Saleh has a good history against the Eagles, beating them while he was the head coach of the Jets and again as the defensive coordinator of the San Francisco 49ers in the Wild Card Round of the NFC playoffs. In both cases, the Eagles were favored to win. Saleh changed those percentages by figuring out Hurts.
What Saleh will probably do is attack with four and drop seven in a zone, but will come at Hurts from different angles. It has worked with Saleh teams before facing Hurts. With a game-wrecker like Simmons, who will probably have to be double-teamed, expect more of the same from Saleh.
“We feel really confident with all of our guys,” Mannion said. “It’s unfortunate with Landon, the guy’s a warrior, and we’ve got to get him healthy. In the meantime, we need guys to step up, but Drew’s had a really nice camp. [C/G] Willie [Lampkin]’s had a nice camp. Really, we have a lot of guys on our offensive line with a lot of position flexibility, versatility. We feel good about all of them. Obviously, Landon will be missed in the meantime, but we feel confident that guys are going to be able to step up and fill the void.”
