No one had a fly on the wall during the Eagles’ bye week. However, we were privy to one point of emphasis during the team’s downtime.
Philadelphia and its vaunted offense has started slowly in all four games during a non-descript 2-2 start even with the context of missing All-Pro receiver A.J. Brown for three of those games and adding his running mate, DeVonta Smith, and star right tackle Lane Johnson to the inactive list for the ugly 33-16 loss at Tampa Bay.
The Eagles were the only team in the NFL to not score in the first quarter through four games and that needs to stop in Week 6 against Cleveland.
“We haven’t scored on any of our opening drives, so we got to start faster on offense,” head coach Nick Sirianni admitted after the loss in Tampa. “We’ll look into that. Sometimes we’ve had different variations of how drives have started but, that will be one of the first things we’ll look at. … We got to do a better job of starting fast. I’ll look at everything.”
Philadelphia’s so-called scripted drives have been especially poor considering the extra attention given to them. To this point, the Eagles have picked up only one first down on their four opening drives this season.
The main culprit has been negative plays that have put the offense behind the sticks, essentially the opposite of the “clean operation” offensive coordinator has stressed since Day 1 of being introduced to the local media.
In the season-opening win over Green Bay, the Eagles were backed up at their 10-yard line when things got off to a poor start with Saquon Barkley slipping on the terrible turf in Brazil, losing five yards on the first offensive play of the season. Already off-script, quarterback Jalen Hurts tried to first erase that on an incompletion to Brown before his late and ill-fated throw down the middle of the field to Smith that Packers’ playmaker Xavier McKinney intercepted.
In the Week 2 loss to Atlanta, things started positively with a Hurts pass to Grant Calcaterra for 15 yards. That was followed by a 7-yard gain on a Hurts connection to Britain Covey that was wiped out by center Cam Jurgens leaking downfield too early. Behind the sticks at first-and-15, the next three plays were a 1-yard run by Hurts, a 4-yard WR screen to Covey, and a 4-yard run by Hurts before punter Braden Mann was called upon.
Week 3 in New Orleans started with a Hurts run for minus-3 that put the Eagles behind the 8-ball, followed by a 2-yard pass to Dallas Goedert and a 8-yard sack for a three-and-out.
The Tampa incompetence was the off-schedule miss from Hurts to a late uncovering Barkley, a run that gained nothing from Barkley, and a 7-yard hookup to Goedert. The Eagles then lost another 5 yards on a Tristin McCollum false start with Mann on to punt.
“We haven’t started games the way we’ve wanted to,” Moore understated last week. “… We’ve got to start faster, so that’s a big focus for us just to continue to evaluate that and find our way.”
The always optimistic OC, took the glass-half-full approach by explaining the early-season struggles are no death sentence.
“The first drive really is a great growth opportunity for us coming out of this bye week,” Moore said last week. “We haven’t been successful in four weeks. Doesn’t mean we have to follow that trend moving forward. We can find our solutions and our better way to handle this.”
A challenge that can even be a fun one according to Moore.
“This is a really fun task for us to navigate and just find a way to get going sooner, get going quicker, because there are moments coming out of second halves, we’ve had successful drives, just coming out of it,” Moore said. “But we’ve obviously got to start faster. And so that’s a big focus for us, just to continue to evaluate that and find our way.”
For Sirianni it’s just about getting it right as the outside noise gets louder.
“I’ll look at what we’re calling, how we’re playing, anything we can do in practice to simulate it I mean that’s what you look at if something is not going the way you want it to go,” the coach said.
This article first appeared on Philadelphia Eagles on SI and was syndicated with permission.
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