Eagles-commanders Film Review: The Idea That Jalen Hurts Was Holding This Offense Back Should Be Finished By Now

I’m struggling to get particularly angry about this offense anymore. There were times when watching the Eagles lose 27-10 to the Commanders bored me. We keep seeing players asked to do things that don’t suit them. Every week, I sit down hoping to see something different, and every week, it feels like I’m writing about the same problems. The Eagles scored their final points with 4:27 remaining in the first quarter. There was an awful lot of football left to sit through after that.

The idea that Jalen Hurts was holding this offense back, and that everything would look dramatically different with a quarterback who preferred playing under center and throwing over the middle, should be finished by now. Tanner McKee hasn’t transformed anything. It’s the same offense, with the same limitations, and very little downfield passing game. That doesn’t mean Hurts was playing perfectly or that McKee has played well. He hasn’t. It means changing the quarterback was never going to solve all of this.

The Eagles finished with 268 yards at 3.9 yards per play, and 69 of those yards came on the final possession with the game already gone. Their only touchdown followed a takeaway that gave them the ball at the Commanders’ 26-yard line. Injuries matter, obviously, but Sean Mannion and Nick Sirianni still have to put a functioning offense on the field. Right now, I don’t see the staff finding enough answers or showing much willingness to move away from what keeps failing.

With that in mind, I’m going to spend more time looking closely at the younger players over the rest of the season. Their development is becoming a really important part of this year. There are still individual reps worth watching, even when the offense as a whole makes it difficult to stay interested. Let’s get into it.

Offense

Before this gets too miserable, let’s start with a good McKee throw! This is the sort of middle-of-the-field completion we heard about all offseason, and he deserves credit. He can make these throws. I don’t think McKee is a good player right now. His play has been pretty dull, and there is almost no vertical passing game to make watching this offense worthwhile.

However, I’ve maintained all season that no quarterback would look good consistently in this situation, and I stand by that. I would absolutely expect McKee to look better in a proper scheme with protection that could handle pressure. The Eagles produced +0.30 EPA per pass play from a clean pocket in this game and -0.95 under pressure. You still have to evaluate the quarterback, but you can’t ignore the conditions around him.

Right, normal service has resumed. It’s been a while since I had to write at length about Grant Calcaterra being used incorrectly, so apparently the Eagles decided to give me some fresh material. I simply do not understand what on earth the coaching staff sees on film when they watch him. It’s not even fair to him! This isn’t how he should be used. Here he is lined up as a fullback, failing to block anyone.

Calcaterra came out of college as a receiving tight end. Across this season and last season, he has nine catches for 76 yards. The Eagles kept him, cut Cameron Latu and EJ Jenkins, who are better blockers, and have ended up using Calcaterra like this. Latu wasn’t a great player, but he could at least be used in this role. If you are going to keep a receiving tight end who offers very little as a blocker, you need a plan to use him as a receiver. Instead, we’re back to watching him struggle with blocking assignments. Again. This is not a serious way to use your personnel.

The protection plan still doesn’t give the quarterback enough help against these looks. The Commanders show seven potential rushers, and the Eagles have six players to protect. That doesn’t automatically make the play impossible, but the offense needs an answer for the defender it cannot block. The condensed formation makes a quick throw underneath more awkward because linebackers can drop out of the pressure look and sit in those throwing lanes.

The Eagles run their standard crash concept, but McKee has an unblocked rusher in his face and releases the ball before the concept is ready. At least they’re blocking the interior rushers and leaving the edge free this week! Progress, I suppose. The Eagles have allowed pressure on 57.7% of blitzes, the highest rate in the NFL. They cannot figure this out.

There were a couple of calls I really liked, so we may as well look at them! This little spinner play-fake in the backfield causes the linebacker to hesitate, and Saquon Barkley releases on the wheel route. The backfield action gives the defender something else to process before he can commit to covering Barkley, creating the opportunity to get the ball to an excellent player in space.

Barkley’s release through the B-gap is a nice little detail. It makes him harder for the linebacker to pick up than if he simply released straight outside. This is a good example of the design helping the player win his matchup, and it produces a 24-yard gain. More detail like this would be nice! The Eagles can manufacture opportunities with scheme by doing things like this. It would be great if the Eagles used this successful play to build something else off of it. Maybe run the same look but actually give it to the WR next time. They don’t build on the success they have (which isn’t much, so it’s even more important!).

Another good play! I would love to see more of Willie Lampkin as an extra blocker. He is exactly the sort of player a creative offensive coordinator should enjoy finding uses for, especially when the alternative is repeatedly asking tight ends to make blocks they can’t make.

The direct snap to Barkley is clever, and he does the rest by beating the defense to the edge for the touchdown. I still have no idea why he’s playing when he clearly doesn’t look 100%. I respect him enormously for doing it, and the ability is still obvious on individual plays like this, but it remains a strange situation to watch.

An Eli Stowers sighting! I’m not going to post all the clips of catches he made with the game already over in garbage time, but I will happily show a rep where a young player gives good effort as a blocker. Yes, it’s against a cornerback. Still, Stowers competes here and finishes the block, and that matters when we’re evaluating what he might offer moving forward. I don’t see Stowers becoming a good blocker, but he has shown willingness in the limited opportunities he’s had.

I have watched this rep several times, and I still can’t work out what the Eagles are trying to do. Landon Dickerson slides right with a defensive tackle directly in front of him, and I can’t see a pre-snap picture that explains why he needs to do that. It looks absolutely embarrassing, but I am not going to confidently blame Dickerson when I don’t know the protection call. Something has gone badly wrong. I just can’t tell you whose instruction or decision caused it.

There were individual failures as well as these confusing protection reps. Tyler Steen had a really bad one-on-one loss on the first-and-10 sack in the third quarter. The Eagles need a much better protection plan, but the offensive linemen also have to win blocks. This week, both sides failed too often.

Sadly, this was a poor Markel Bell game. What concerned me was how he lost, because some of the technical flaws that showed up before the draft were visible again. Here, Bell presents his outside hand early and gives the edge rusher a clear target. When that initial contact is cleared, he reaches and gets his weight forward, leaving himself in a poor position to recover. The first strike doesn’t work, and he can’t replace his hands quickly enough to regain control.

Bell needs more patience with that strike, with his feet staying underneath him so he can recover if the first punch fails. Resetting your hands while maintaining your balance is difficult, but it’s an essential skill for a starting NFL tackle. He allowed five pressures in this game, including two sacks. I feel for Bell because he probably needed more development time off the field. Now that he’s playing, the important question is whether these difficult reps help him improve. I’ll be watching his response closely next week. This was the first week he badly struggled.

I might have to stop posting outside zone clips for my own sanity. Against this five-man front, the Eagles are once again asking their interior offensive linemen to make difficult reach blocks (when they have proven they can’t). We have watched them fail to execute these blocks repeatedly this season. At some point, you have to ask why the staff keeps expecting a different result.

Johnny Mundt gets driven into the backfield here, making an already difficult run even worse. The numbers reflect what keeps showing up on film: nine outside zone carries gained 23 yards, with -0.27 EPA per run. This is another wasted down.

Makai Lemon is another young player I’ll be watching closely, and I’m gutted he didn’t finish this play. I’ve wanted the Eagles to give him more opportunities vertically, and this route shows why. He is explosive at the top of the stem, but his hand usage is the best part. He fights through the cornerback’s contact and gets on top of him quickly, creating a legitimate chance downfield. That hand fighting is so important.

It is a tough catch, but it’s one I want him to make as he develops. I also think he looks back for the ball too early, giving the cornerback time to turn and locate the throw. That is a detail he can learn from. Lemon finished with six catches for 57 yards, but this is the play I want to see him make moving forward.

This is another difficult Bell rep, with a different technical problem. He gives up his chest early and then folds at the waist as he tries to absorb power. His technique means that he can’t anchor at all. He needs to lower his hips while keeping his feet underneath him, then get his hands back inside to stop the rusher rather than keep giving ground.

That is harder for someone as tall as Bell. Lowering his hips without losing his balance takes work, and his height makes maintaining leverage through contact a challenge. It doesn’t excuse the rep, but it helps explain why this always required development. The Eagles are asking him to learn those lessons against NFL rushers while the rest of the protection is unreliable as well. I want to see whether his hand placement and balance improve over the next few weeks, because those details will tell us if he is improving from his mistakes.

By this point, I had very little left to say. Sorry! The second-half offense was incredibly boring to watch. I have no idea why the Eagles continue leaving edge rushers unblocked when those defenders just crash down on the run. It wasn’t consistently working with Hurts. With McKee, the threat of the quarterback keeping the ball is hardly making that defender hesitate. You have to account for how the defense actually plays it. It’s absurd.

The Eagles ran counter effectively earlier with Jordan Mailata and Dickerson pulling, but they didn’t return to that version. Here, they use Steen and Bell as the pullers instead, even though those two are nowhere near as effective in that role. That doesn’t mean they can’t pull, but why move away from the combination that worked? These are the decisions that leave me struggling to understand how this staff evaluates its own personnel. There are individual plays I like. There is very little sense of those plays being developed into something the offense can rely on.

Final Thoughts

As I said earlier, the idea that replacing Hurts would suddenly reveal a completely different offense has proven wrong. The Eagles still look awful on offense. Having a quarterback who is supposedly more comfortable under center hasn’t changed anything. I’m not just talking about the success here either; I’m talking about the design. It looks the same.

This year is now about the younger players. I want to see Bell bounce back. I want Lemon to get more vertical opportunities, and Stowers to earn useful snaps. As for the offense as a whole, I am tired of waiting for the same approach to produce a different result. The staff has to change something. Right now, watching another week of this feels more like an obligation than something to look forward to. Which sucks for all of us as fans.

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