This was a big win. I enjoyed the win a lot. But this was not a great offensive performance, especially by the Eagles’ coaching staff.

Those of you who have read this piece for a while or followed me on Twitter will know I do not like criticizing coaches for certain things. I never really talk about specific decisions on here as it doesn’t interest me. But some of the decisions in this game from an offensive performance were really difficult for me to rationally understand. Not going for it on 4^th and goal but then going for it on 4^th and 10 later confused me. I don’t understand why the Eagles didn’t call timeouts at the end of the first half. The timeout at the 2-minute warning at the end of the game made no sense to me either. Overall, I think the Eagles’ offense coached like they were scared in this game and that scares me because we see around the league that good offenses are normally aggressive and always believe they are going to score.

Offense

The EPA numbers show a relatively poor offensive problem which does not surprise me. The success rates are better because a few big plays (such as the AJ Brown fumble) really impacted EPA. The entire Eagles offense never really got in a groove and it was plagued by mistakes throughout the game. Penalties also caused a big issue this week and that resulted in the failure of a few drives.

Passing Game

I thought this was actually a pretty good Jalen Hurts performance despite the poor offense. I think he is consistently throwing the ball really well. This was a beauty at the start of the game. I love the design and the touch on the throw to get it over the linebacker is perfect.

Some of the good throws Hurts made in this game were exceptional. This is a proper pocket quarterback throw. The progress Hurts has made in these timing throws from the pocket is huge from his rookie year now. He continues to work on his weaknesses and seems to always get better. He’s having an excellent year.

This was another huge play which is where you need a quarterback who can make plays out of structure. There is nothing he can do here as a passer. Everyone is perfectly covered by the Colts’ defense. This is just a playmaker making a massive play.

This was my favorite throw of the game. I love the design with cross country dagger to the right (deep dig from outside WR, deep over from the slot) and it’s a fantastic route from Quez Watkins who I thought played really well in this game. Putting Quez in the slot is perfect for this route as his speed allows him to run away from man coverage and it’s a beauty of a throw from Hurts.

Hurts wasn’t perfect as a passer and did miss a few, this was the one I thought he really missed and could have had a touchdown if he throws it with anticipation.

This was also one I thought was a poor play. Hurts still has the tendency to drop his eyes and try to make a play (which is understandable because he’s an elite athlete) but sometimes you want him to stand in the pocket and make the throw, even if it’s short of the sticks.

This was another ‘bad’ play by Hurts but I hate the design. Hurts should step up here and give Sanders more time, but even if he steps up, I absolutely hate the idea of having Sanders block an edge defender. It’s a fantastic route by Quez Watkins and it does come open but this is a slow-developing play and you can’t have Sanders block an edge defender for that long. I would blame Hurts but mainly the coaching staff for this one.

From a scheme point of view, we saw the Eagles run a lot of plays from empty and they loved using the ‘4 strong’ concept in this game (4 routes to the same side). We haven’t seen that much of that this year. We also saw a lot of motion in the passing game. This is obviously something the Eagles thought would work based on game planning. The benefit of ‘4 strong’ when you have a WR2 like DeVonta Smith is you can basically guarantee he will get one-on-one coverage and he normally wins in the short game!

This is a weird play. Hurts arm doesn’t have enough to get the ball in front of Sanders but I was actually glad to see him stay in the pocket and make a throw rather than try and escape.

Running Game

I wrote this last week about Hurts’ lack of running the past few weeks…

‘The Eagles didn’t run Hurts that much but I can’t help but feel they are trying to conserve him and when we get to the crunch time in the season, we are going to see more Hurts runs’. This week felt like crunch time to me and the Eagles used Hurts’ legs a lot.

I think this week showed that in clutch moments, they trust Hurts to convert with his legs. Sometimes, the Colts’ defense played the ball perfectly, and Hurts still won. He is a real elite athlete and his legs are a difference-maker every single week.

Hurts even ended up keeping a few runs when the Colts’ edge defenders were creeping to close to the handoff. This edge defender is supposed to have Hurts on this play but Hurts keeps it and still picks up some good yardage.

And of course, the most important play of the game came from Hurts running. I love this play. The Eagles make it look like Kelce is pulling which confuses the Colts’ linebacker and then Isaac Seuamlo just absolutely dominates his man inside and creates a huge rushing lane.

The Eagles had some good runs down the stretch too, especially when they went under-center. I’ll get to some of the issues next.

Now, with the exception of Hurts, the running game was not good this week. So what went wrong? I thought it was a combination of scheme, bad plays, and bad decisions. The Eagles had some success early on running on the edge of the Colts’ defense and I’m surprised they went away from this.

The other issue was that the Eagles’ offensive line got absolutely no push down the middle. Time after time the Colts’ defenders blocked their inside gaps with ease. I do find it really funny the narrative that the offense has been ‘found out’. You can do lots of things against RPO plays and force Hurts to hand it off… but you still have to win inside! There’s no magic trick to stopping RPOs except to consistently win inside on the defensive line and that’s what the Colts did. Fair play. In other games, the Eagles’ offensive line will win inside and Sanders will find holes. You can do lots of things to stop the running game but at the end of the day, if the Eagles block really well for Sanders, they will be able to run the ball. I do think this idea the Eagles scheme has been ‘found out’ is massively overblown. They just didn’t block well against a really good Colts run defense.

Sometimes, Hurts made bad decisions (which he hasn’t done much this year) which cost the Eagles in the run game too.

Overall, this wasn’t a great performance but it was against a tough defense and I left feeling pretty good about Hurts. I thought this was a game where the Eagles coaches made some questionable decisions and the Eagles had too many self-inflicted errors. I still think this should be a very good offense moving forward.