The Philadelphia Eagles are back at Lincoln Financial Field this week for a huge Thursday Night Football game against the Washington Commanders. It’s been quite some time since a matchup between these division rivals was so important for both teams.
In order to preview this Week 11 NFC East battle, I reached out to our enemies over at Hogs Haven. The astounding Andrew York kindly kindly took the time to answer my questions about this upcoming tilt. Let’s take a look at the answers. [For my answers about the Eagles, stay tuned to HH.]
1 – Jayden Daniels has been great. What are his strengths and weaknesses?
As far as strengths, he’s a cerebral QB with pinpoint accuracy on most throws, excellent throwing mechanics, and an advanced ability to recognize the defensive alignment, call protections, and process quickly what is happening around him on the field. In addition to that, he has an excellent sense for pressure and the athleticism to scramble to evade pressure and buy more time to throw or simply make a big gain himself with his legs. I think the biggest thing that makes him stand out from other rookie QBs is his maturity though. In many ways, he acts like an NFL veteran. He’s one of the first players to the facility every day, studies film and practices constantly, stays calm under pressure in games, and quietly commands the locker room.
It’s actually a lot tougher to name his weaknesses. He is thin, so in theory he should be a bit more fragile and he is playing through a rib injury now, but he seems to be like Gumbi and didn’t have an injury history in college, so it remains to be seen if he’s any more prone to injury than other QBs. However, this ties into another issue which is that he needs to be better at protecting himself when he scrambles. Although he has a really good sense of where defenders are and how to evade them, he sometimes reaches forward for an extra yard and takes a hit instead of just sliding or going out of bounds. He’s visibly improved at this over the course of the season and is much better about avoiding unnecessary hits than he was week 1, but that nature is still there. Outside of that, I can’t think of any real flaws. It’s shocking how much he plays more like a veteran than a rookie.
2 – To what extent does Kliff Kingsbury deserve for the Commanders’ offensive success?
Kliff deserves a ton of credit. He clearly developed a plan for bringing Jayden along over the course of the season, a plan that started with a very simple RPO-based scheme in week 1, but evolved in complexity as Jayden showed he could handle it. I think he actually brought the plan along quicker than expected because of how quickly Jayden was progressing. He’s also listened to feedback from his players and adapted his plan accordingly. For example, people criticized Kliff lining up WRs on the same side of the field all the time, so Kliff listened to the criticism and started moving his WRs around more to exploit matchups. There have been a few plays where Jayden Daniels or Terry McLaurin saw a weakness and told Kliff to call a play to exploit it, and he obliged. Kliff also deserves some credit for the unexpectedly good performance of the offensive line. He’s been helping out our OTs a lot with WR/RB/TE chips on the edge and these chips are executed very well, which speaks to good coaching. I mean, we have a lot of players on the offense (Noah Brown, Olamide Zaccheaus, Jeremy McNichols) who are NFL journeymen and are performing at a higher level than previously in their career, which generally speaks to good coaching. Kliff is also doing a good job as a playcaller of winning the chess match and calling plays that exploit weaknesses in the opposing defense, which has enabled Jayden to get the ball out quickly and have such a high completion rate.
3 – Dan Quinn and Adam Peters have seemingly helped turn the culture around in Washington. What’s been key to doing that and do you believe there’s real lasting power here?
It starts with Adam Peters turning over the roster. The Commanders had the highest rate of roster turnover this offseason, with our week 1 roster being composed of 57% new players compared to last year. Peters did two important things when selecting players: choosing guys who provided leadership and good culture (Bobby Wagner, Frankie Luvu, Tyler Biadasz, Zach Ertz), and choosing guys who were an especially good scheme fit for what they would be asked to do in this offense (WRs and TEs who can block, DL with the versatility to move around the line, etc). However, a lot of credit for getting these guys to perform better than they have before goes to the coaches, starting with Dan Quinn. Quite a few of our free agent signings said they were coming here specifically because they wanted to play for Dan Quinn and it’s been clear from interviews that he has a great reputation among players around the NFL. As mentioned before, many of our players are NFL journeymen who are performing at a higher level here than they have in the past, which indicates they are being coached at a high level and in a way that maximizes their abilities. The players are also showing tremendous effort on the field, like this play where Austin Ekeler is breaking a big run and Olamide Zaccheaus runs behind him across half the field just in case he’s needed, and as a result is in position to recover Ekeler’s fumble. Plays like that from Zaccheaus show a lot of effort and we see that effort every game. Yes, I think it’s sustainable, it seems to be a natural consequence of the way Peters and Quinn operate.
4 – How should the Eagles go about gameplanning this matchup on both sides of the ball?
On offense, focus on runs to the edge and passes to the sideline. Our edge defenders are better at pass rushing than defending the run, so runs to the edge have had more success than runs up the gut. Our biggest weakness is in our boundary CBs, particularly Benjamin St Juste who can get burned by speedy WRs. This is why we traded for Marshon Lattimore, though it looks doubtful he’ll be ready to play on a short week as he recovers from a hamstring injury. [Update: Lattimore was officially ruled out.]
On defense, if RT Andrew Wylie isn’t playing due to his shoulder injury (still 50/50), I would attack his backup Trent Scott, who is a major downgrade. Other than that, I wouldn’t say our offense has an Achilles Heel per se, though teams have been blitzing us like crazy since Jayden sustained his rib injury, as it has reduced his mobility.
5 – Who wins this game and why? With the Eagles currently listed as 3.5-point home favorites, what’s your score prediction? And then what’re you expecting from the rest of this Commanders season?
This is a tough game to pick and I really wish we weren’t playing on a short week. The Commanders went to war against the Steelers last week and probably still feel a bit beat up from it, whereas the Eagles had a relatively leisurely game against the Cowboys and got to rest their starters partway through. At the same time, I think the Commanders are pissed off at losing that game and are going to be extra motivated this week. Trying to be objective about it, the Eagles probably have an advantage and if I had to bet money I’d bet the Eagles win something close, maybe 27-24. However, I think it’s really anyone’s game and this is not a game I would bet money on, because it absolutely could go either way.
In terms of the rest of the season: playoffs are the expectation, whether through winning the division or as a wildcard. I’d expect our defense to play at a much higher level once Lattimore is healthy. Not only will Lattimore turn boundary CB from a weakness into a strength, but he’ll allow the defense to play with more freedom, in particular playing more man coverage to allow for more blitzing and different alignments. Assuming general health of the rest of the team, we should be much better as the season goes on. However, the flipside of that is that we are only in the first year of Adam Peters re-making the roster and are incredibly thin at certain position groups. If certain key players like Bobby Wagner or Terry McLaurin were to get injured, it would be a big step back for their position groups as there’s only so much “coaching up” you can do without a few high-level players to consistently win their matchups. So I expect us to make the playoffs and win a playoff game or two assuming health, but are very vulnerable to that getting derailed by injuries. Either way, I expect the Lions will win the NFC Championship.
