Eagles Film Room: Concept of the Week – RPO Counter

A closer look at Philadelphia’s playbook.

In addition to writing the All-22 offense and defense reviews after each Eagles game this year, I will also write this one called ‘Concept of the Week.’ I will break down a specific concept or play on offense and defense and explain the play in more detail. Hopefully, this will allow you to look out for that play in future weeks. This week, we will look at the Eagles use of a Counter RPO.

Counter RPO

So, this week is going to be a little bit different. I want to discuss an Eagles concept that I’ve already discussed variations of twice this year (Counter and QB Counter Bash), but I want to discuss how the Eagles can build on this.

One of my complaints is that the Eagles’ passing game does not take advantage of their dominant rushing attack. As I said last week, the Eagles’ passing game doesn’t seem to build on the run game. So, I thought I’d go into some more detail about what I mean.

A reminder of what Counter is…

The Eagles almost always run ‘counter read,’ a variation of the classic counter play that they can run because they have a mobile quarterback. The ‘read’ element allows the quarterback to keep the ball if the end comes crashing down.

Counter involves two players pulling across the formation. The run play is named after who is pulling. For example, GH Counter (the guard and H-back pull) is essentially the same as GT Counter (the guard and tackle pull). When looking at a counter run, I always focus on the two pullers first. One of the pullers (usually the first) will try to move one of the defensive linemen toward the sideline to create a gap where the other puller can run through. The running back will then follow the second puller. The rest of the linemen will all be down blocking and therefore, the two pullers will be moving in the opposite direction to them, hence the term ‘counter’.

The running back usually has to take slow steps (sometimes called counter steps) because they cannot beat the second-pulling lineman to the hole, or the play won’t work. They also have to follow their blocks carefully and not bounce it outside. Counter is often a great play against teams that like to run a lot of 5-man fronts because there is less of a need for offensive linemen to get to the second level.

We’ve gone over this before. The Eagles wrecked the Panthers this past week with Counter. It was borderline ridiculous how much success they had when running counter.

So, why not build on that success and start running some Counter RPOs?! The Eagles didn’t run one until late in the game, and it worked! This is what I’m talking about. I want the Eagles to establish the run and marry those run concepts into the play-action/RPO scheme. There is so much more the Eagles could do. Here is the play from this past week.

However, the Eagles’ RPO game is still very basic. It’s usually just a backside slant. It doesn’t take a lot of research (shoutout to this Reddit post) to find a bunch of plays online that the Eagles could rep to take advantage of their dominant run game. I would like to see the Eagles start making these easy for Hurts and try to make their passing game complement the run game.

Here are some examples below…

A backside screen (you could run this with Johnny Wilson as the Z).

You could run a RB swing opposite of QB Counter Bash.

The Eagles have run this one a few times this season.

I’ll be watching the Eagles’ passing game this week to see if they start making things easier for Hurts and linking the passing game to the run game’s success. It should be an easy way of improving the efficiency of the passing game.

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