Chip Kelly likes to get creative with his personnel packages. This year we've seen 01, 02, 10, 11, 12, 13 and 21 personnel on the field. Perhaps more. Chip and Pat have shown over the last couple of seasons that they like to mix up these personnel packages and use every player on their roster on offense on a gameday. The other thing Chip has done a great job of this year is mixing up formations that can set up favorable one-on-one matchups against both man and zone schemes. In this post we are going to re-visit a formation/concept that's really working well for the Eagles this year. The 3 x 1 Formation.
Note how Matthews stops his motion and is shaded slightly behind Zach Ertz:
After the snap, note how Matthews runs his route behind Zach Ertz. This helps create a natural "rub" concept where Matthews can then run a circle route back to the middle of the field. Because Ertz is in front of him, check out the separation Matthews gets from his defender in the middle of the field:
Matthews breaks wide open and gains lots of YAC on one of his most explosive plays of the year:
As we've seen before these rub concepts work very well against man coverage situations.
Later in the game in the red zone the Eagles go back to the 3 x 1 formation. This time the Panthers are in zone. Maclin motions towards the line to create a bunch trips formation.
Here are the routes the 3 receivers will run which creates all sorts of confusion in the Panthers defensive backfield:
The key route is Maclin's who is going to run a fly route straight to the end zone and split between the middle of the safety and cornerback. Watch as both the CB and the safety take Maclin in the deep part of the field.
This really puts those Panthers defenders in a bind. You can see if the outside corner steps up to take away Matthews' route in the flat, Maclin will have the corner to the end zone wide open. The safety needs to protect the middle of the field:
As a result, Jordan Matthews gets matched up against a LB, an obvious mismatch and look at the wide open space he has in front of him:
Maclin draws both defenders to the end zone and they aren't even on the screen to tackle Matthews before the end zone:
The other thing you will notice on this play is that Riley Cooper also had single coverage with no safety help over the top on the bottom of the screen. Just another reason the Eagles like this 3 x 1 formation.
As I showed in a previous post, the Eagles have taken advantage of this matchup. Here's an example against the Rams where the Eagles get that one-on-one matchup and Coopers beats out Janoris Jenkins:
They also like to take advantage of the tight end matchup on the weak side of that formation:
Ertz gets a lot of room on the side of the field one-on-one against a safety for the TD:
This is the price opposing defenses pay when they want to load an extra defender in the box against the run or send an extra blitzer after the QB. And the Eagles receivers are starting to win those one-on-one matchups more consistently that Chip is scheming up for them.
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