The Chip Wagon

Haven't I Seen You Before? Winning the "Mesh-ups"

Another week, another win. It was sloppy and a little ugly at times, but that's what games are often like in December. I liked to see the Eagles win a tough one against some adversity at times. Does the 4th quarter struggles bother me? Certainly, but so far, despite some bad mistakes, questionable play calls and decisions, we are coming out of these games with wins. I know one of these is likely to bite us in the butt at some point but the flip side is that the Eagles defenses confidence continues to grow by them closing out these games. A big part of winning in the 4th quarter is about mentality. I think the Eagles are a mentally tough defense. Far cry from the last few years. 

Anyway, onto some film review. I'll kick off this week with a little deja vu moment. Earlier in the season, the Eagles really struggled against man coverage. The book on Kelly's system was to load the box and plan man coverage on the Eagles. Haven't heard about that book the last several weeks. Here's one of concepts Chip has been repeatedly beating man coverage on. 

Foles Under Pressure

For a young QB with only a few starts under his belt, one of the biggest tests come when the opposing defense applies pressure. I saw 3 particularly impressive plays on Sunday which were very encouraging to see for Foles that displayed good poise, accuracy, and great chemistry with his  receivers whom he doesn't necessarrily get to practice with every week. 

Here's the first one. Eagles are in 12 personnel with Demaris Johnson lined up in the slot with a LB over him. This LB is going to blitz and come free after Foles:

Foles immediately recognizes blitz and identifies Demaris:

Demaris sits in the opening and Foles quickly gets rid of the football for a nice gain on 2nd and 10:

Here's another similar play. This time 11 personnel. Looks like a sweep read to the right. Foles recognizes the free blitzer and Riley is going to end into the space vacated by the blitz:

Foles quickly gets the ball out and hits Cooper over the middle. This is a play where Cooper got tons of YAC after:

This last play, the Bucs don't blitz but it's an interesting play call and design but shows great poise and recognition from Foles. It looks initially like a pass to the flats for Bryce Brown. Foles fakes in that direction. 

We are actually setting up a TE screen for Celek. However, Brent gets caught up in his block complicating matters. This is where you expect a rookie QB to bail, or throw the ball away. 

But Nick hangs in there to allow the play to develop. He recognizes the open area around the 40 yard line and anticipates that that is where Celek needs to be. Celek now turns back to Foles. Foles is about to get smashed:

Nick is going to loft the ball into the open space and Brent is going to run right under it. You can see Nick pays the price for hanging in there:

Now check out the blocking Celek has out front:

3 underrated plays that you might not expect  a guy to make in his first start in a new offense (or only 7th career start). Everyone will talk about the TD passes, but these ones really stood out to me. 

 

Well we should at least be able to recognize these?

From the day the buzz was created of Jeffrey Lurie's interest in Chip Kelly as the next head coach of the Eagles, I have read a ton of great articles about Chip, his philosophy, and football in general. Two of the better pieces I read over the summer came from the fantastic Chris Brown and Bill Barnwell from Grantland. 

Within those articles the authors go on to describe "packaged" plays as the newest form of option football and break down all kinds of tape to explain the concepts. I personally have coined this kind of option football, which often incorporates elements of the read option, as "play-action on steroids"

You see, a lot of people following last season started to call the read-option a fad, much like the wildcat that was going to disappear as quickly as it emerged in pro football. The NFL defenses are too big, fast, and smart to allow such a "gimmick" to work in the NFL. 

Instead of comparing the read-option to the wildcat (which is absolutely absurd if you ask me)...why not compare it to one of the concepts that has truly revolutionized the game of football. Play-action. However, when you read through th Grantland articles and start seeing the concept of packaged plays in action...you really can't help but convince yourself that this is better than play-action. Play-action is a pre-snap, pre-conceived call either in the huddle or at the line. It is a form of football deception, but the moment the QB takes the snap he, and the rest of the players on the offensive side of the ball, know whether he is going to keep the ball, or hand it off. Of course as deceptive and dangerous as play-action is, the fact that 11 guys on the offensive side know what the play is going to be (run or pass) means that the defense has 11 different guys to look for tells, clues, etc. that may give them an edge. And of course some QBs execute fakes better than others, for example Peyton Manning vs. Donovan McNabb. 

So anyway, we saw especially with the Foles offense a number of packaged plays in the preseason in Chip Kelly's offense. We saw it on full display in week 1 against the Redskins where Sheil showed how we ran the same play 5 times against the Redskins but with different options.

So considering that these concepts are a core part of our offense, hopefully the defense has had lots of practice to defend them. Because here comes Peyton Manning and I couldn't help but notice a few things from the Colts-Eagles game back in 2010.

Chris Brown described in one of his articles how Peyton Manning has made packaged plays famous by calling audibles at the line depending on what a key defensive player does. 

"I see you Ernie!"

After recognizing Ernie Sims pre-snap, Peyton verifies he's blitzing and his TE knows to cut off his route and sit in the area vacated by the Sims:

So that was textbook, pre-snap Peyton Manning. But Manning doesn't save all his reads for pre-snap. This is the one that should look familiar to Eagles fans. 

Eagles in the base nickel. As the playclock winds down, Fokou is going to creep up to the line. 

Post-snap is the read option where Manning is reading Fokou to decide whether to hand off to Brown or keep the ball. Of course, Peyton Manning is not going to run with the ball on the read-option, so if you take a look at the bottom of the screen you'll see the makings of a nicely developing bubble screen:

And here's another. Very similar to the pop pass packaged plays we saw with Celek in week 1 and Desean in week 2. Peyton is going to run it with Austin Collie in the slot

Read option. The DE collapses down to play the run, but Peyton is reading the LB highlighted with the yellow arrow. He attacks the run inside, and Collie sits and takes the screen. He stays on Collie, and Peyton hands off to Brown. It's also important to note the positioning of the safety. Since he's playing almost 10 yards off the ball, Collie going to sit instead of going out on a route:

One would think the Eagles defense has had lots of practice against looks like these, so hopefully they are prepared!

***

And one more play, for you Chip Kelly afficianados:

Peyton gets 7 in the box. 3 on the outside with a deeper safety.

WWCKD? (What Would Chip Kelly Do?)

Yup

Methinks Peyton Manning would pass the Chip Kelly sniff test. 

Involving the Tight Ends

Both Tim McManus and Tommy Lawlor made a point yesterday to discuss the absence of the multiple tight end looks we all expected since the preseason. Instead, we've seen Chip throw out the 11 personnel predominantly (1 RB, 1 TE, and 3 WRs). Celek has gotten the bulk of the action, and Ertz has gotten a fair amount of action considering he's a rookie. James Casey has been the odd man out. 

I am going to point out the obvious and say that the NFL season is long. 16 games long at least. I don't expect Chip to roll out everything in the first 3 weeks. It also should be pointed out that while I think Chip is trying to win each and every week...we've spent the last 2 weeks playing the AFC West. Is there a chance he's holding some stuff back, especially for our NFC East opponents? I would think almost surely. However, with 10 days rest and and a 1-2 record where we are going to be a massive underdog on the road against Denver, I think he's going to have to pull a few new things out of his bag of tricks. Whether that will be more 2 and 3 TE sets remains to be seen. 

Speaking of TEs, I couldn't help but notice one particular possession where we weren't able to get the ball in the end zone and had to settle for a FG. It was midway through the 3rd quarter and we were trailing by 10. Chip seemed hell bent to try and take advantage of one particular matchup. Brent Celek vs. Eric Berry. I don't particularly see that as a mismatch, but we went after that match-up 3 times once we got deep into KC territory. 

The first play was on 3rd and 9 on the KC 18. We had 11 personnel and lined up with 3 WRs to the right and Celek on the line on the left side. We run McCoy to the flat and Celek gets a one-on-one matchup on Berry where Berry does a good job in coverage and the play is incomplete. Unfortunately this was a wasted play because Riley Cooper got called for a false start:

Interestingly enough, on the very next play we show the EXACT same formation and run the EXACT same play and Vick tries to get the ball to Celek.  He overthrows him big time into the end zone and the result is an easy INT. Not sure what Vick and Celek were doing on that play but fortunately Celek gets manhandled by Berry and Eric is called for illegal contact and an automatic 1st down. I find it very interesting that we would come back after showing our hand fully on a false start to the very same formation and very same play. Weird:

A couple plays later we go with 12 personnel (1 RB, 2 TE, 2 WR). We design a drag play to Celek who is, you guessed it, matched up against Eric Berry. Berry makes a great play on the ball for an incomplete pass. Clearly, Chip and Pat saw something on film that convinced them that they liked that matchup. Didn't work out on the field (Should point out that perhaps the initial read was to get Jackson on a post depending on the reaction of the deep safety. You can see Vick is reading down the safety early in the play. He doesn't bite on any of the action in the middle of field, forcing Vick to look underneath):