In Week 14, the Philadelphia Eagles defeated the Carolina Panthers 22-16.
Saquon Barkley hit his number to stay in contention for Erik Dickerson’s record, the defense made Carolina one-dimensional, and in the end, when the team needed it most, Philly’s playmakers stepped up and secured the victory, keeping the winning streak alive while still securing a playoff spot one way or another.
And yet, if you actually watch the game, you know that the stats don’t tell the whole story, as the Eagles underplayed their competition as they so often do and could have been embarrassed at home by one of the worst teams of the NFL with a Philadelphia-born starting quarterback, no less.
Are the Eagles about to collapse like they did in 2023, losing to the Pittsburgh Steelers in Week 15, en route to a brutal end to the season? No, while they might lose to the Steelers, they are much closer to their last Super Bowl team than their 2023 effort in terms of talent and efficiency. Still, that doesn’t mean the team doesn’t have areas of concern heading into the latter part of the season, much of which stems from their inability to do much through the air.
1. The passing offense is downright boring
Despite a win in Week 14, you’d think Jalen Hurts threw four pick-sixes on the way to a crushing loss in a trap game.
Some fans have called for Kenny Pickett, others have suggested that Philly should look for a new QB in 2025 regardless of the season’s outcome, and still others have noted that the team’s ceiling is as high as Hurts’ abilities as a passer, which by their evaluations is not exceptionally high.
Are these fans correct? No, the Eagles don’t have a hole at QB, and they should be able to make it to the Super Bowl and even be competitive there, as Hurts already did under head coach Nick Sirianni , nothing less.
…that being said, the Eagles TO DO has a major problem in the passing game, and it has more to do with the plays that are called, as opposed to how Hurts executes them.
Now, normally, the Eagles supplement their reliance on short passes, putbacks and releases with deep shots down the field to AJ Brown and DeVonta Smith, both of whom make it work even when relatively well covered, but over the course of Week 14 didn’t happen, with Hurts’ longest pass against the Panthers – finished or not – traveling barely 20 meters in the air. To make matters worse, the Eagles really didn’t spread the ball against a subpar defense, completing passes to just five receivers with seven targeted, which, frankly, is an improvement from Week 13, where only four receivers caught a pass. and six were targeted.
Now, when a team only throws the ball 19 times, most of those balls should go to Brown and Smith, with the former expressing his frustrations with how the passing game worked after the game. But to have such a large talent pool of varied players, with Johnny Wilson the greatest receiver in the NFL, Ainias Smith a gadget guy with YAC ability in the open field and Jahan Dotson wasting away on a one-catch-for-five-yard diet . Throughout the season, it’s really hard to look at the offense and now see something broken.
Damn, when was the last time the Eagles had two tight ends play a good game on the same day? Grant Calcaterra has proven he can be a player over the past few months, and yet when he and Goedert are both fully healthy, there is almost no creativity in the passing game from the group. 12 players.
Can the Eagles figure out their aerial attack on the fly? Potentially, because it seems like Kellen Moore has a number of motion-assisted plays and just isn’t working in the weekly plan with Sirianni for one reason or another – let’s hope he saves the good stuff for the playoffs. But if this is truly the Eagles’ passing ceiling, with their 32nd attempts per game resulting from poor planning instead of a concerted effort to win on the ground, then it’s hard to imagine Philadelphia’s ‘will account for it on the fly or succeed. adjustments in the middle of a nine-game winning streak that could backfire.
2. Jalen Hurts needs to be more decisive
While the Eagles’ passing attack is disappointing by league standards because they simply don’t win games the way many of their NFL peers do, some of that falls on the shoulders of of Hurts, even if it is not for reason. fans might initially assume.
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On the one hand, Hurts simply holds the ball too long. In Week 14, Hurts had a average time to throw the ball of 3.47 secondsaccording to NFL Next Gen stats, which are among the longest in the league. While that stat alone doesn’t say anything specific, as it could mean any number of things, considering he really wasn’t executing anything complex from a passing standpoint, with, again , his longest pass at 20 meters, this figure is alarming.
Yes, Hurts is a running quarterback, and his ability to scramble will inevitably make some runs take longer than they probably should, but when most plays called are based on timing, which many “must-haves” are from Sirianni”, being undecided on these calls will result in holes being closed in a split second. When this happens, Hurts must either throw the ball away, run for a potentially positive gain, or hope that someone like Brown is able to get open and serve as an outlet target, which is simply unrealistic as a usual option.
Fortunately, after the game, it seemed like Hurts realized there was frustration with the way the passing game was going before acknowledging he wanted to keep build a convincing passing game throughout the section.
“Just the lack of synchronization. You get there if everyone is on the same page, goes out there, executes and syncs up. We see our times where we play at a high level, and we see our times where we don’t play. I think we just have to do what we do, do well,” Hurts said via NBC Sports Philadelphia.
“It’s not about solving anything. Everyone has a reason to want more. It is a righteous desire to be in fullness where we can be because we have already done so. I just have to build, I have to progress. I have to find a way to bring us together, get us in sync as a unit and play complementary ball.
If anyone should be mad about how the passing game is going in 2024, it should probably be Hurts, as he throws the ball a dozen fewer times per game after the bye and is called a quarterback of the system, a game manager, a bum, or worse for averaging less than 200 passing yards per game in 2024. Is Hurts taking too long to throw the ball? Yes. Are there missing open receivers or botched timing plays? Yes, those are both valid criticisms, but the idea that Hurts doesn’t sacrifice his individual stats and public perception to help the Eagles win 11 of their games in 2024 is just plain silly; Injuries are just as important to the Eagles’ success as Saquon Barkley and putting Pickett in the same offense won’t magically improve it, it would just remove the rushing threat from the quarterback position.
