Tag Archives: Doug Pederson

AAF: Eagles’ Offence

03 Saturday Feb 2018

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With the big game taking place tomorrow night, I have spent the last couple of days taking a look at the coaching tape from the Philadelphia Eagle’s big win over Minnesota Vikings in the NFC conference championship game.

This was an interesting to look at as for much of this game if felt like there was not as much between the Vikings defence and the Eagles offence as I felt when first watching the game. However, the Eagles were able to move the ball effectively for a lot of  the contest and it was a couple of bad plays in the secondary that really stretched the score line in the Eagles favour alongside the Vikings’ inability to move the ball with their offence.

The Eagles were able to run the ball effectively thanks to a combination of LeGarrette Blount and Jay Ajayi with Corey Clement also chipping in with some nice plays as a third running back. This genuine run threat allowed the Eagles to make effective use of play action and RPO. Now there has been a lot of talk read-pass-option in the NFL recently and so it is clearly an area I need to read up on in it a bit. The basic idea is that you have a play where the quarterback can either throw or handoff the ball depending on how the defence lines up. I certainly saw plays that would fit the bill and you do generally see more quick pass plays with the offensive line run blocking these days that would seem to fit the bill. I am a little hesitant to be too definitive as I don’t have the benefit of knowing the play calls or extensive discussions with coaches to help me pick them out on game tape (these posts are called amateur adventures in film for a reason) but I can see how it would be effective in the hands of the right quarterback.

RPOs are one way to attack a team, as is misdirection and that is definitely something Doug Pederson brought to his offence in this game. There was a lot of pre-snap motion from tight ends or receiver Nelson Agholor who ran as many fake runs as he did taking the ball from Nick Foles.

In fact this seems like a good time to talk about backup quarterback Nick Foles as he was really good in this game and not just from running quick pass plays. The impressive thing was how he was able to hold the ball on third down and find receivers. The pass towards the end of the second half that saw Alshon Jeffery score a fifty-three yard touchdown was nice but thirty-nine year old corner Terance Newman was beaten pretty easily for Jeffery to get behind the defence. However, there were other really nice throws where he had to show good pocket presence or roll out to throw the ball and I think my favourite play was the flea flicker that the Eagles ran in the third quarter to Torrey Smith who beat Trae Waynes on a stop go route, which combined with the hand off of the flea flicker was pretty devastating, and Foles was able to lead Smith into the end zone with the throw so that Harrison Smith playing deep safety on this play couldn’t get across to stop it.

The fourth quarter saw the Eagles run out a lot of clock effectively with a single back formation with an extra offensive lineman and two tight ends, but part of the effectiveness was the ability of Jay Ajayi to attack the edges of the defence although he is a powerful back can make yards go up the middle.

One of the things I’m most curious about for the Super Bowl is to see Pederson and his staff go up against Belichick and his coaches.  It should be a really well coached Super Bowl and the Eagles’ offence has a lot of tools that you can use to attack a defence that has given up a lot of yards this season. Much rests on how close to this performance Nick Foles can get, but I saw a lot to like as I will write about tomorrow when I preview the game.

Finally, this is a tough one for the Vikings who had a couple of injuries and a couple of bad plays, but they weren’t so far away from competing in this game but it was a bad timing for their performance level to drop for what has been one of the best defences in the league this year. This is one of the big reasons why they will be sat at home watching with the rest of us tomorrow.

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Fallen at the Final Hurdle

28 Sunday Jan 2018

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So between illness and life it feels like a while since I’ve had a chance to sit down and get things written for the blog or said on the podcast.

The conference championship games from last weekend produced one blow out and once close contest, and the two losers have very different problems to face in the offseason although both have questions surrounding their quarterbacks.

In the first game the Jacksonville Jaguars fell to a seemingly inevitable Tom Brady comeback that put the New Patriots back into the Super Bowl again. I say again as this is the eighth time that Brady and Belichick have made the final game since 2001 but more on that next week. The Patriots had to stage another comeback because for a large chunk of this game the Jaguars were in the lead. In fact they took the lead at the start of the second quarter and didn’t relinquish it until 2:48 in the fourth quarter. The defence looked to control the Patriots whilst Blake Bortles looked good, throwing for nearly three hundred yards and a touchdown without turning the ball over. There has been much discussion of the decision to kneel with fifty second left in the second quarter and I agree that this was a contributing factor but the problem for me arose in the second half for the Jaguars’ offence. I’ve heard some say that the play calling was to conservative and others that the Patriots adjusted and that the Jaguars ran out of plays. It is hard for me to comment on how many passing plays the Jaguars had prepared, but the run on first down and lack of play action short throws did make it feel like the Jaguars were trying to protect their lead late in the game when I was watching this game for the first time. I’m going to go back and look at the Jaguars offence on coaching tape to see what happened this week so I might come back to this later.

The Jaguars themselves felt like they were the better roster after this game and couldn’t quite believe that they lost, but once again the Patriots proved themselves to be the masters of situational football and this is a team game. The good news is that the Jaguars have made plenty of progress and have a young foundation to build upon next year. As I watched the game I was thinking that Bortles had taken a step having come through two games of playoff pressure, but with an option that pays him nineteen million dollars next season, there still seems to be a lot of expectation that he might not be retained. I don’t really want to second guess this, but it will be the big turning point of the Jaguars’ offseason as they can either exercise the nineteen million option, sign him to a long term deal or cut him. There is nothing to say that he won’t sign a long term deal at a number that helps the Jaguars continue to build a team, after all that is what Brady has done, but I suspect regardless of what happens with the quarterback, this team will be making noise next year. The question is where the offence can live up to the standards the defence has set this season.

The second game started well for the Minnesota Vikings, with them taking a 7-0 lead and moving the ball well until Case Keenum had his throwing motion altered by the Eagle’s Chris Long on a play in the second Vikings’ drive that caused Keenum to throw an interception and then things fell spectacularly apart. The Vikings were not to score another point as the Philadelphia Eagles ran out easy 38-7 winners.

There must be a familiar sense of doom for Vikings fans given their history of tough playoff losses but following their miracle win the week before, the Vikings just couldn’t find a way to compete. On offence they simply were unable to cope with the depth of the Eagles’ defensive line and the pass rush stopped what had been a formidable offence as Stefon Diggs and Adam Thielen can’t do much if Case Keenum can’t get them the ball. The Vikings quarterback only took one sack but was not comfortable and the Vikings could keep their offence balanced as they fell further behind the Eagles.

Perhaps more surprising was how much the Vikings defence struggled against the Eagles’ offence. This was a unit that had been historically good on third down this season ranked second by DVOA with a far more even split between rush and pass defence than the Jaguars ranked above them. However, Doug Pederson found a way to maximise the abilities of his backup quarterback (albeit a highly qualified one) and demonstrated a big improvement from the previous week’s narrow win over the Falcons. This was a matchup I was really looking forward to as Zimmer is one of the best defensive minds in the game but he seemed to have no answer to the Eagles in this game. The loss of Andrew Sandejo in the game had a dentrimental effect and was something I noticed when he went out against the Saints the week before, and Xavier Rhodes was also struggling with a toe injury that saw him leave the for a stretch and although he battled, the defence clearly struggled. I’ll be taking a look at the Eagles offence next week as I prep for the Super Bowl so these injuries will be worth paying attention to then.

The tough thing for the Vikings as they head into the offseason is that not only do they currently have three quarterbacks going into free agency, but they have an established defence with many players already getting paid and a pair of linebacker starters expiring at the end of next season. This means they can’t really afford to wait around on developing a quarterback but with the multiple injuries of Sam Bradford meaning you can’t rely on him to play, the fact that Teddy Bridgewater has barely played in two years thanks to his horrific knee injury, and Case Keenum only having a year of quality starting who do you sign and at what size contract is a huge question. That’s if the Vikings even stick to the quarterbacks on their roster, but with offensive co-ordinator Pat Shurmur moving on to become the head coach of the New York Giants the Vikings will have a new offensive co-ordinator who they will be picking from those still available. The impressive thing Shurmur managed this year was to build a functioning offensive line and make the most out of a starting quarterback who had not achieved to this level before. An offseason of change on offence awaits and whilst it is certainly not impossible that the Vikings will be good on offence again next season given the quality of skill players theu have, Mike Zimmer and his staff face a big challenge going into next season. I have a lot of faith in Zimmer and I’m not saying they can’t do it, but you wouldn’t necessary count on it and with Aaron Rodgers coming back from the injury for the Green Bay Packers the NFC North could be a hard division for the Vikings to win again next season.

Conference Championship Games

21 Sunday Jan 2018

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Jacksonville Jaguars @ New England Patriots

This weekend’s games start with the boisterously confident Jaguars travelling to face a Patriots team who seem as buttoned down as ever despite the ESPN story that broke about tensions between the owner, his head coach and their half of fame quarterback.

The Patriots made short work of the Titans last week and have seemed destined for the AFC championship game for most of the season. The defence may have struggled early in the season and finished ranked thirty-first by DVOA but they also gave up the fifth fewest points in the regular season and look to be good enough when paired with the number one offence in the league. Lots of people are familiar with the Bill Belichick’s defensive approach of taking away what a team does best and you imagine that they will be focussing on stopping the run and making Blake Bortles beat them with his arm. We could even see them focussing on containing Bortles in the pocket as Belichick acknowledged his running ability, although you can’t exactly rely on what little information you get out of a Belichick press conference.

On the other side of the ball the numbers still seem to be there for Tom Brady who has had a couple of niggling injuries this season and had another scare this week when he jammed his hand in practise. There has been a lot of speculation regarding Brady’s hand but the reports are that he sustained a cut to his thumb in practice and that has had to be stitched, but Brady practised Friday and should start the game. The big mismatch for the Patriots’ offence will be Gronkowski as it usually is, but they will face a stern test from the best defence in the league by DVOA. If there is a formula for beating Brady in the playoffs it involves being able to get pressure with four and good coverage. The Jaguars have the players to do this but the Patriots are likely to use bigger personnel packages to challenge the defence and take advantage of a rush defence that finished the regular season ranked twenty-sixth by DVOA.

The Jaguars come into this game full of confidence having won their first two playoff games in a long time but their defence whilst ranking number one in pass defence by DVOA, only ranks twentieth against tight ends and fifteenth against running backs when looking at DVOA against specific types of receiver. The Jaguars already have a tendency to rush four and cover as mentioned above, but if they can’t stop Brady finding his tight ends and running backs then we know Brady has the patience and skill to keep picking up short gains and drive the length of the field to score.

The offence for the Jaguars looked much better last week and they used play action well to get Bortles throws he is comfortable with. A lot will rest on Leonard Fournette’s ankle and whether he can play as he did in the first quarter of last week’s game. That said, whilst TJ Yeldon is a very different running back that might lack the power of Fournette to take on stacked fronts, he proved effective catching the ball against the Steelers and had three times for fifty-seven yards giving him the most receiving yards in the game. If Bortles can continue to spread the ball around like he did last week then the Jaguars might be able to eke out the points they need, but you have to think that he will facing a Patriots defence that will be disciplined in their run defence, focussing on not allowing Bortles to scramble as well as the running backs, and try to make Bortles beat them by making accurate throws into tight windows.

I think that most people would still give the edge to the Patriots but the Jaguars faced that last week as well and they are probably the team the Patriots least wanted to face given their resemblance to other teams that have beaten them in the post-season in the past. It should be a fascinating game.

Minnesota Vikings @ Philadelphia Eagles

The NFC conference game pits the first seed Eagles against the second seed Vikings who finished the season with the same 13-3 record and who were the fourth and fifth ranked teams by DVOA at the end of the regular season.

The Eagles eked out a win last week against the Falcons on the back off a controlled offence performance and a defence that kept the Falcons from getting two hundred yards passing or one hundred yards rushing. The Eagles defence finished the season ranked fifth in the league by DVOA and were top ten against both the run and the pass. The strength of the defence is their line and in Fletcher Cox they have one of the best interior linemen in the league. They will try to pressure the Vikings and will need to as their secondary could struggle to contain the Vikings’ excellent receivers.

However, if the Eagles are to win this game then their offence has to do a job with their backup quarterback. The game plan last week was to run the ball to control the game and give Nick Foles the kind of throws he can make to win the game. They may have only scored fifteen points with one touchdown and run the ball eighty-six yards but it was enough for them to the win. In Nick Foles they have a backup with a lot more experience than most and whilst no one expects him to replicate the amazing form he had for one year under Chip Kelly, the Eagles have proved they can be competitive with him. However, they are facing a fearsome defence that is co-ordinated by one of the best defensive minds in the game.

The Vikings defence finished the season ranked second in the league by DVOA and excellent players at all three levels of the defence. They may show blitz a lot with Mike Zimmer’s trademark double A gap look where two linebackers line up on the defensive line from where they can then blitz or drop into coverage. Unlike the Jaguars’ number one unit, the Vikings are pretty evenly balanced against the run and the pass so this scheme matchup of Zimmer against Doug Pederson and his offensive staff should be an intriguing schematic battle.

The Vikings offence has played remarkably well when you consider that they have lost both a starting quarterback and running back. Still, Case Keenum has been playing since week two of the regular season and has had a really productive break out season culminating in a last second win last week. He is ably helped by one of the best pairings of receivers in the league and the Eagles will have their work cut out to cover both Stefon Diggs and Adam Thielen. The Vikings may not run the ball brilliantly, in fact they only ranked seventeenth by DVOA, but they do it often and well enough for it to enable their play fakes to be effective and so they will try to keep the Eagles defence guessing.

The Vikings will be without their home field advantage but were competitive on the road and I think have a slight edge in this game with the Eagles not having Carson Wentz. However, if the Eagles stay in this game the Philadelphia crowd will make life very difficult and this could be a very close game.

AAF: Carson Wentz

25 Sunday Sep 2016

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So I thought I would take a closer look at Carson Wentz this week given that he has led the Eagles to a 2-0 stretch.

I’ve heard several people I respect break down what has been working for Wentz, but I will try to base this only on what I was able to see on tape for myself, but I suspect it will sound similar.

In a 29-14 road victory over the Chicago Bears, Wentz’s number did not look spectacular as he threw for a mere one hundred and ninety yards on twenty-one completion from thirty-four attempts with one touchdown and no interceptions, but there was much more going on than these numbers might suggest.

For starters, at the beginning of the game, in his first regular season road game, Wentz started his opening drive with a series of empty backfield passing plays. He completed the majority of them with quick throws that allowed him to quickly select a receiver and make the pass. However, it has to be said that he was clearly in complete control of the offence, certainly appearing to make adjustments and looking like a quarterback who has been playing in the NFL for years.

It has to be said that it did not look like he was not being asked to go through complex progressions, seemingly work with fairly straight forward reads and a fair amount of play action passes, but this looked to be a feature of good coaching. It is in fact to head coach Doug Pederson and offensive coordinator Frank Reich’s credit that they have schemed so well for their young quarterback. He was not being asked to do much more than three or five step drop passes, or work from shotgun, but he was in clear command of what he was being asked to do.

I can’t say that his arm amazed you with the throws he made, but to be honest all the talk of cannons for arms seems to be overdone when evaluating quarterbacks and despite one hopping a couple of passes under pressure, there were no problems for Wentz in delivery catchable balls. In fact there were at least two drops I noted, one of which really should have been a touchdown to Jordan Mathews as the pass was dropped in nicely as he ran into the end zone. My only real concerns were that Wentz took a couple of unnecessary hits on scrambles, which I’m sure his coaches will want him to protect himself from, and that the offence was not terribly efficient in the red zone, only getting three field goals in the first half.

All in all though, Carson Wentz looks like he could turn himself into a very good NFL quarterback, and it really is very impressive to see him in such control of the offence so early in his career. The big tests are yet to come, starting this evening against the Pittsburgh Steelers, but he certainly has done pretty much as well as you could have asked of a rookie quarterback thrown into the starting line-up straight away.