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This Philadelphia Eagles win over the Buffalo Bills somehow felt like two completely different offenses playing in the same game. I was so optimistic after the first half, and so angry after the second. I’ve tried to be positive the past month and look at the progression this coaching staff has made, but this week was rough. I’m a little mad this week. Sorry! The inclement weather clearly mattered, but the bigger issue is that the Eagles once again chose to make life more complicated than it needed to be.
Offense
After the first couple of drives, the Eagles finally got to some under-center play-action designs that I really enjoyed. The concept itself is well-designed, and the “tendency-breaker” element (AJ Brown faking the corner route) was exactly what this offense has been missing. AJ Brown was a monster in awful conditions, winning through contact and catching tough balls like it was normal.
The Eagles used motion quite a lot in this game because it drew the nickel into the run fit, but there’s something annoying about how they run their motions. The receivers run it like it’s a chore. They don’t threaten the defense horizontally at all. Even with the uptick in motion rate in this game, it didn’t translate to efficiency. I looked at the success rate, and the Eagles’ offense was better without motion in this one. Motion doesn’t immediately mean something is good.
What a great call. No receivers on the field. 6 offensive linemen and 3 tight ends. Heavy personnel combined with play-action is tough to stop. Lining up with a fullback screams run on 2nd-and-1, so when you actually throw it, it can result in easy yards. I thought this touchdown drive was one of the best drives of the season by the offense. I thought the aggression and sequencing were very strong. What is even more frustrating about this team is that I know they are capable of more, because I see them do it every week. It just isn’t consistent.
And then… the run game. Again. The most maddening part isn’t just that the results are ugly. Sometimes, a defensive player makes a great player, and a team fits the run well. It’s how many runs have an obvious error baked into them. You can’t be a “run-first, play-action” team if your running game sucks. It’s a real problem. This one features two linemen blocking the same guy, and nobody accounting for the off-ball linebacker. I see runs like this every week, and it drives me insane.
Hurts, to his credit, was genuinely awesome at points in the first half. The pocket movement was sharper, the extension ability was on show, and the connection with A.J. Brown was carrying the offense. I thought his ball placement, in particular, was exceptional. Even when the 3rd down designs are still a little bit too basic, the combination of Hurts and AJ Brown was good enough to do it anyway. This relationship seems to be back, and the two of them were the main reason why the offense was able to do anything.
The interior line had some brutal individual reps, and the designs weren’t exactly making those guys’ lives easier. When you’re asking for difficult reach blocks from a player who can’t consistently hit them, or you’re getting confused about who is responsible for a key defender, the whole run game collapses. I don’t understand why it’s so tough to work on this in practice and just be ‘average,’ but we are heading into the final week of the season, and the running game is still unpredictable. It was tough to watch at times.
What a throw. This was absolutely pass interference. Hurts’ ability to roll left, reset, and still drive the ball is awesome. The Eagles flood one side of the field, which is something we have seen more of in recent weeks. Plays like this just vanished in the second half. The only thing I can think of is conservatism. I have no other reason that can explain why this stuff just vanishes when the Eagles are winning by 2 scores.
I feel bad for Saquon Barkley. When the run game is blocked properly, and he’s not running straight into a loaded box, he still looks like Saquon Barkley. If you can spread the defense out with 11 personnel, let his vision work; suddenly, he’s finding cutbacks and creating yards like he did last year. Too often, he’s been asked to run into condensed sets and stacked boxes, and it’s just not worked well all season long.
The conservative approach in the second half was incredibly frustrating. It started early on in the game with a 3rd, and an 8-yard run by Will Shipley. These are the kind of decisions that tell your players you’re more afraid of a mistake than you are committed to winning and scoring points. With a timeout in hand at the end of the half, those are the spots where a serious offense tries to create an advantage, not where it calls something so they can kick a field goal. If the Eagles play like this against some of the top offenses in the playoffs, I’m just not sure how they can live with them.
The second half was appalling from a design perspective and somehow even worse from an identity perspective. They did call under-center play-action once, but it wasn’t the version from the first half with layered crossers that actually stress zones; it was a stripped-down call where Barkley is covered immediately, and Hurts is basically forced to choose between two bad options. If people want to blame the QB for the second half, please go and watch every play and tell me why they are on him. I watched all 8 dropbacks, and I think you can realistically say he was at fault for 1 of them. That’s it. He didn’t have a chance on the majority of the reps.
The inability to run the ball in the second half wrecked everything. They kept banging their heads into heavy fronts on early downs, and the predictability worsened because they leaned on 13 personnel into stacked boxes. The defense sold out against the run, and the Eagles did nothing to adjust. It was predictable and conservative. You can’t be this predictable.
Even when Barkley made someone miss, there was no runway because the box is loaded, and the defense was ready for the run.
I have no idea what happened here. But we decided to play Dallas Goedert as a fullback on two separate occasions. The “Goedert at fullback” experiment drifted from hilariously bad to annoying after seeing it more than once. It’s not that Goedert can’t block; it’s that asking him to act like a true fullback against defensive tackles is a misuse of your best tight end and a sign the staff is searching for answers without looking in the right places. Landon Dickerson looks like he can’t move properly, which is also a problem. If they do rest starters next week (I’m not sure they should, personally), I hope it is because they need to get players like Dickerson fit. Because he’s playing badly.
The passing game in the second half was the final kick in the teeth that really frustrated me. It wasn’t just “poor execution,” it was the offense retreating into its worst habits that I thought we had gotten past. Hurts had eight second-half dropbacks; on one, he missed Barkley open in the flat, and on the rest, it was impossible to blame him because the Eagles kept dialing up the same quick hitches on 3rd-and-long and essentially telling him to make a play. That’s not an offense. That’s just the coaches asking great players to make plays and giving them no support.
The first half was encouraging, and the second half just sucked all the excitement out of me. I was like a balloon deflating, watching it back. The Eagles were just trying not to lose and escape with the win, rather than trying to score points. Ugh. The most depressing part is that the staff even doubled down on the same bad ideas. They ran Goedert at fullback again and asked Fred Johnson to do something unrealistic on the backside. The staff asks these offensive linemen to make impossible reach blocks every single week. The Bills were selling out against the run on early downs ,and the Eagles just kept doing the thing the Bills wanted them to do. That’s not toughness or playing your own game. It’s stubbornness and conservatism. Plain and simple.
Hurts finally gets a chance to deliver on time and delivers a great ball. He spots the safety rotation, puts a good ball out there, and DeVonta Smith just can’t bring it in. Still, it’s another example of the coaching staff just relying on great players to make great plays to bail them out.
Final Thoughts
This win was massive, and it should feel like a statement, because beating Buffalo in those conditions means something. But the offense is still acting like it has two personalities. If the defense is going to drag them through January, fine, I understand the conservatism to a certain extent. But I don’t buy it. I found this game depressing after being more optimistic of late. There were still positive signs, but I was really disappointed with how this game played out. I should have been buzzing after the last play. But I felt a little deflated. If the offense wants anyone to believe it can win another Super Bowl, it has to stop spending entire halves playing scared, and that comes down to the coaches.
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