The Chip Wagon

All-22: Bradford and the Deep Ball and the Sproles Match-up

After the Monday night debut there has been some discussion about the Eagles gameplan and how they chose to attack the Falcons defense. Heading into the game we knew this was going to be a Cover 3 defense and we talked about a variety of ways the Eagles would attack that Cover 3 defense. Certainly we were expecting a heavy dose of the running game with our 60 million dollar backfield and some deeps shots against that Cover 3. Turns out, we didn't see much of either. So what did we see?

Know Your Enemy: Beating the Falcons Cover 3 with the 4 Verticals Switch Concept

Looking ahead to the season opener, Greg Cosell did a great job on PE.com breaking down Dan Quinn's Cover 3 defense. He showed ways in which offenses approach Cover 3 and how to beat it. Specifically he focused on 4 verticals. I wanted to go back to when the Eagles played Dan Quinn's Seattle Seahawks defense last year and show another 4 verticals concept that I expect we'll see more of tonight. 

 

Preseason Week #3- More of the Same

Note, this is not a repeat of the last post. However, the Eagles 1st unit completely dismantled the Packers defense on Saturday with the usual familiar concepts. 

 

Odds and Ends from Preseason Weeks 1 & 2

Sorry I haven't been posting much through the first few weeks of preseason. I am in the middle of changing jobs and things have been pretty hectic. I'd been working on this post bit by bit over the last few weeks but didn't get around to posting it so it's basically a hodgepodge of thoughts through 2 games. Many of these plays have already been covered elsewhere (if you somehow haven't seen Fran Duffy's piece on PE.com yet, check it out here).

The Philosophy and Evolution of Eagles Run Game Part 9- Counters and Crackbacks

In Part 8 we focused on the number of ways the Eagles mix up their formations as to not give away the playside direction of the run. One of the examples was lining the QB under center with the running back directly behind him, thus not dictating the direction of the run play. In addition to this wrinkle, the Eagles liked to run counter from this formation. They absolutely destroyed the New York Giants in the first game with this concept.

There are several main elements with the counter play off inside zone. The OL blocking assignments are essentially the same as inside zone. The image below shows that the Eagles will block inside zone to the right. Standard zone blocking: