Watching the Eagles’ overall passing scheme this year, it’s pretty incredible how little separation they’re able to manufacture for everyone not named Brown, Smith, or Goedert (the ones who don’t necessarily need to be schemed open). There isn’t any staff in the NFL with a greater lack of understanding of the advantages of motion than theirs, and it starts with the head coach. When your only response to questions about it is, “we won’t do it just to do it,” that in itself is a display of lacking understanding. All motions can serve a very specific purpose and allow you to manufacture advantageous situations for your players to make the game easier. There’s too much of a reliance on talent trumping scheme, because no great offense is just about utilizing your talent adequately. It’s definitely a big part of it, but there needs to be a healthy medium between talent and scheme. When a defense doesn’t play the way the Eagles want (to honor their numbers & space advantages so they can exploit big boxes for explosives), they have very few answers to combat that schematically and it’s now showing brightly. The staff needs to figure out ways to start putting stress on the defense without relying on Hurts’ legs to be the great equalizer. There’s no doubt that players need to pull their weight, but I just fundamentally disagree with the approach to offensive structure and game planning…specifically with the pass game. I don’t believe they’re putting their players in the best possible positions to produce, and that stinks because there is so much potential with what they have to work with.
