Eagles-cowboys Film Review: Some Positives On Offense, For Once

I thought the Eagles’ offense was far more competent against the Cowboys. After the past few weeks, I was happy to see that. However, they still only scored 21 points against a terrible Cowboys defense. It will take a lot more than this to convince me that this offense is suddenly well-designed and well-coached.

The numbers reflect an uneven performance. As always, the advanced data here comes courtesy of Fantasy Points Data Suite. The Eagles finished with 321 yards, a passing EPA of −0.11 per play, and +0.05 on the ground. They put together touchdown drives of 75, 76, and 84 yards, but did not score again after taking a 21–20 lead in the third quarter. There was some good football, followed by a familiar lack of answers when they needed to drop back and throw.

For once, though, the offense gave me more to feel positive about than the defense. What a weird thing to write this season.

Offense

I have spent weeks asking the Eagles to stop forcing the under-center play-action game, so naturally they opened with it and completed a pass against pressure. Fair enough! I sort of respect Sean Mannion’s willingness to stick with it on the very first snap. I respect it, because if this went wrong, he would have looked incredibly dumb. He clearly believes in this approach, and getting something positive from it immediately was better than another opening disaster.

However, look at how the completion happens. The Eagles still blow the protection and allow a free rusher at Tanner McKee. The downfield route combination does not work, but the Cowboys leave Barkley completely uncovered in the flat. McKee finds the available answer, which is good, but this is hardly evidence that all the issues with this part of the offense have disappeared. I’ll take the completion, but I’ll keep a pretty big question mark next to the process.

Barkley is a superstar. Even looking something like 80% healthy, he was the best offensive player on the field. His vision and ability to make defenders miss change what this offense can produce. I think a fully healthy Barkley scores on this run, which tells you both how good he is and how obvious it was that he wasn’t quite right.

Dickerson makes a difference here, too. He does not look like the player who could simply move people wherever he wanted, but he understands how to create space. Barkley appears to anticipate what Dickerson will do before bouncing the run outside. Then look at Darius Cooper and Lemon blocking downfield. In my view, those are the Eagles’ two best blocking receivers, and having them involved more helped turn some of these runs into much better plays.

I’m proud of Barkley for the effort, and I respect him enormously for wanting to be out there. I still have no clue why the Eagles played him. Considering where this team is at, watching him clearly short of full fitness felt somewhat mental to me. He finished with 62 yards on seven carries, and even that limited workload showed how much better the offense is with him. Like the rest of you, I am in full rebuild mode now. But I would struggle to trade Barkley unless a really good offer came in. I just want to watch him on my football team for as long as possible. I can’t help it!

One thing I repeatedly called for in the preview was attacking the edge of this Cowboys defense, particularly Rashan Gary. It’s always nice when something you wrote about shows up immediately! Barkley gets to the edge here despite clearly lacking his usual burst. This run shows his intelligence as well as athletic ability. Barkley sees where the space is and knows how to get there. The physical talent gets most of the attention, understandably, but his feel for a run is outstanding.

Another excellent rep from Barkley, supported by a very good double team from Markel Bell and Dallas Goedert. Grant Calcaterra does a decent job, too, although the Cowboys’ edge defender offers very little resistance.

I thought this was their best game of the season for run blocking from the tight ends and receivers. Goedert really showed up there, and Cooper and Lemon gave them something on the perimeter. Early on, I liked the simpler approach with inside zone and duo rather than immediately making everything about outside zone. There were concepts here that suited the players doing the blocking, and the offense benefited.

Did the Eagles actually run a successful screen? They moved away from the bubble screen here and tried a tunnel screen, bringing Cooper back inside toward the blocking. I liked seeing a different answer, even if the execution out front wasn’t particularly good. Cooper does a lot of the work himself by forcing defenders to miss.

This is also where the quality of the Cowboys’ defense has to stay part of the discussion. On a third-down play like this, how much credit belongs to the offense for improving, and how much belongs to a defense that cannot finish the play? There is room to like the change while acknowledging that this is a pretty horrible defensive rep by the Cowboys. It worked, but I wouldn’t want to rely on that every week. It’s hard to judge this game on the offense, because you can’t ignore how poor the Cowboys have been.

Dameon Pierce looked better than he had in previous weeks, so of course he ended up going off injured. There was more purpose to some of his running, and the blocking gave him a chance. Jordan Mailata creates a huge lane on the edge here, and the Cowboys again struggle badly to defend the perimeter. This has been their biggest issue all season long.

Even Marquise Brown gets involved with a block! The offense showed some fight in this game, and the receivers contributed to that. I’ve criticized the way the Eagles have asked certain players to block this season, but I liked the collective effort here. When the line creates room and the receivers sustain their blocks, a back has a much better chance of getting something worthwhile out of the play.

This looks very similar to the earlier Barkley run. Pierce seems to understand how Dickerson will position himself and takes advantage of the B-gap crease next to Mailata. Dickerson’s size still matters, but what impressed me most was his ability to stay attached and put himself in a position that the back could use.

I don’t think Dickerson dominated this game. He looked better than earlier in the season, but I do wonder whether the injuries have cost him some of the power he used to have. His craftiness helped Mannion a ton, though. Some of these designs produced good yardage because Dickerson made the block work and the backs understood what to anticipate. It was good to see him contributing like this again.

Unfortunately, there was still too much outside zone. I am really fed up with watching the Eagles return to these calls when the same problems keep showing up. The true strong-side outside zone runs were poor again, and this is a good example. I don’t know what Drew Kendall is realistically supposed to do with this reach block. It is an extremely difficult assignment, and Dickerson does not give him much help.

That is particularly frustrating because I thought Kendall played well overall. The more I watch him, the more I wonder whether the Eagles have their future center. Asking him to make a block like this does not help him. The Eagles did show more variety, and outside zone did not seem to dominate the approach to the same extent as earlier in the season. There was still too much of it, though. I haven’t included every unsuccessful example, but some of the early-down calls were terrible again. One better game does not change my view that this offensive line is a poor fit for what Mannion keeps asking it to do on those runs. They were much better on inside runs in this game.

The passing game had its own mix of improvement and really annoying decisions. Of all the players on this Cowboys defense, Joey Porter Jr. is the one I would be least interested in targeting. So why are we asking Brown to win an isolated back-shoulder fade against him on third down? Is that really the best matchup available?

We have criticized Jalen Hurts for taking questionable matchups this season, and it is fair to question McKee here as well. But seeing similar choices with a different quarterback also makes me question how much this staff emphasizes finding the right matchup. The Cowboys have enough weaknesses without making a crucial down about beating one of their better players with a throw like this. This is a waste of a 3rd-down play.

These consecutive misses before halftime were rough. On the first, Cooper is wide open, and the ball comes out of McKee’s hand terribly. That should be a completion. On the next play, Cooper is open again on the crossing route, but McKee tries to fit the ball into Lemon and throws behind him. Lemon takes another big hit for his trouble.

I liked both passing designs, particularly the creative use of motion to create a switch release on the second play. Changing which receiver releases into which route can make it harder for the defense to sort out the coverage, and the Eagles created an opportunity here. The quarterback did not take advantage. For stretches of this game, the passing design was better than the quarterback play.

McKee generally operated the offense and knew where to go with the ball, which was a positive. His accuracy and the zip on his throws concerned me more than his overall decision-making. I mentioned last week that he did not seem to be throwing it particularly well, and these plays did nothing to change that impression. Lemon deserves credit, too. He took some big shots in this game and kept competing. I was impressed by his toughness.

This is another design I liked, helped considerably by some terrible Cowboys defense. Brown is left uncovered underneath, and McKee has an easy completion. I do like how McKee shifts to his right slightly, to make sure the pass isn’t batted down, and he throws it perfectly to maximize the YAC. The Eagles have had success with Mesh Rail this season, and it feels like a classic Josh Grizzard concept from his time with the Buccaneers. The crossing routes give the quarterback an underneath answer, with the back releasing up the sideline adding another problem for the defense. I called for underneath routes in the preview too, as the Cowboys have struggled to sort out these routes all season long.

Look at the protection as well. I thought the Eagles were very good in pass protection overall. McKee had all day for much of the game. The Cowboys didn’t test them with many blitzes, which helped, but the line still deserves credit for what it handled. This was a much better performance than the protection disasters we have watched recently. Again, I still wonder if a more blitz-heavy team would have caused them more issues.

I really liked this fourth-and-1 call. The Eagles finally connected something that had worked in the running game to an easy answer through the air. Cooper and Lemon had already contributed as blockers, so bringing them into condensed positions and having them initially look like they are blocking gives the fake credibility. The defense has a reason to react to what it sees.

This is the kind of run-and-pass relationship I have been asking for. The offense should make a defense pay for reacting to something it has already shown. Bell also handles Kenny Clark in protection, and the communication inside looks much better. There are several things to like about this play, from the call to the way the offensive line executes it.

I was really happy for Lemon here. He deserved a touchdown after all the hits he took, and he kept working over the middle of the field. He finished with seven catches on eight targets for 67 yards and a score. That was a much better performance, and I’m happy for him. I’m happy for us, too! This offense needs him to contribute.

Goedert also played well as a receiver, finishing with five catches for 48 yards alongside his work in the run game. The Eagles would obviously get worse if he left, but if I were a contending team that needed a tight end, he would interest me. He still has plenty to offer, and this was a good example of the different ways he can help an offense.

This is a hell of a play by DeMarvion Overshown, but it is also a poor decision from McKee. I can understand why he likes the matchup before the snap, particularly with the linebacker aligned with inside leverage. Once the route develops, though, it is never open. He needs to move on rather than throw it anyway.

By this stage, the lack of downfield aggression was becoming a problem. The Eagles had only two attempts beyond 20 yards, both incomplete. The Cowboys could start sitting on shorter routes because the Eagles weren’t doing enough to make them worry about anything else. I liked parts of the passing game, but the offense became too passive as the game went on.

Dickerson was clearly upset about this play after the game (if you haven’t seen him speak, he was on the verge of tears and blamed himself for the Eagles losing), and I’m glad he holds himself to a high standard. He gets beaten here. However, he didn’t cost the Eagles this game, and one bad rep shouldn’t erase the good work he did earlier. The offense was better for having him back.

McKee does not have much of a chance on this play anyway. The spacing in the middle of the field is poor, and no one is open. As the game went on, the Eagles looked increasingly short of answers when they had to drop back and throw. I would have liked them to challenge DaRon Bland outside more often instead of playing so cautiously.

The third-and-long passing game was really bad overall. The fourth-quarter third-and-15 checkdown to Goedert was another example of an offense seemingly accepting it wouldn’t convert. The throw had no realistic chance of producing a first down. The Eagles finished 5-for-12 on third down, but that number doesn’t capture how unconvincing they looked when they needed a big gain.

Final Thoughts

There was a lot more to like here than in recent weeks. I thought Mannion gave McKee more workable passing designs, even if the quarterback did not consistently take advantage. Those improvements deserve credit.

But this was a terrible Cowboys defense, and the Eagles still only scored 21 points. They stopped scoring after their opening possession of the second half, still had too many poor outside zone calls, and struggled badly when they needed to drop back and throw. I need to see these improvements hold up for more than one week before I believe this offense has turned anything around. Baby steps, I guess. At least they were better than the defense for once.

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