[ad_1]
Remember when screen passes were an effective part of the Philadelphia Eagles offense? It’s been a while, but they may be back.
In their Week 1 win over the Atlanta Falcons, in my opinion, the Eagles played out seven scenarios. Jalen Hurts was 7-for-7 for 85 yards on those screens, which included a 23-yard “nail in the coffin” TD to Jalen Reagor. They also had a 15-yard penalty on one of their screens for a late out-of-bounds hit on Quez Watkins.
The Eagles’ screen play a season ago was absolutely appalling, for a variety of reasons, ranging from an offensive line that had little continuity, a quarterback that didn’t sell them effectively, predictable play calls and running backs who had bouncing passes out of their hands for incompleteness.
Official NFL screen pass stats aren’t available, but in a story for the Philadelphia Inquirer on November 26 last year, Jeff McLane looked at every pass this season and determined the Eagles had attempted. 24 screens at this point in the season, which would have been 10 games deep. McLane said the Eagles had completed just 15 of those 24 screens for a total of 55 yards, averaging 2.3 yards per screen attempt. Raw.
The NFL “Game Pass” offer does not yet include the Coaches’ Movie, so there isn’t much we can do with the following video, but just for the sake of being able to watch the screen passes, in fact, you know, working … here’s a cut of all seven of those Sunday screens.
The strong points:
• The Eagles passed a screen in the first game of the game. It worked, and they had the same look on the other side of the field, so they did it again. Both have succeeded.
• The receivers blocked well on the Eagles screens, notably JJ Arcega-Whiteside and DeVonta Smith.
• A season ago, Doug Pederson was passing screens to players who shouldn’t have received those touches, like Greg Ward, for example. These screens were infuriating, given Ward’s inability to create after capture. Nick Sirianni did a much better job putting the ball in the hands of players capable of making YAC games, like Watkins, Reagor, Dallas Goedert and Miles Sanders.
• And sure enough, as you’ve probably seen, Jordan Mailata almost murdered a guy on the Reagor TD.
Follow Jimmy & PhillyVoice on Twitter: @JimmyKempski | the voice of philly
Like us on Facebook: PhillyVoice Sports
Add Jimmy’s RSS feed to your feed reader
[ad_2]
Source link