‘Too sloppy’: The Eagles offense regroups after a frustrating day in the win at New England
After his debut as the Eagles' play-caller, offensive coordinator Brian Johnson knows that there's corrections to be made and lessons to be learned after an ugly 25-20 win against the Patriots.
Rewatching the Eagles’ season opener, Brian Johnson’s frustration set in right around the time it did for everyone else.
The Eagles’ new offensive coordinator and play-caller said the offense’s performance in the 25-20 win over the New England Patriots at Gillette Stadium on Sunday was “sloppy,” pointing to the stagnant stretch in which the group went three-and-out on four consecutive series.
Johnson, who took over play-calling duties after replacing Shane Steichen over the offseason, said the offense’s failure to stretch a 16-point lead was the thing that stood out most when reviewing the tape.
“It was too sloppy,” Johnson said. “For me, the thing that was really most frustrating is we had an opportunity up, 16-0, with the ball in the minus territory, three possessions in a row, and we couldn’t get much going. Obviously, we’ve just got to continue to clean up those corrections, make those corrections, and put ourselves in a position to go out there and have some success.”
The Eagles got out to the early lead mostly thanks to opportunistic plays on defense. Following a pick-six from Darius Slay, a forced fumble from Jordan Davis gave them a short field for their only touchdown drive of the day.
From there, the offense managed just 21 yards on 13 plays the rest of the first half, including a few notably conservative run calls on third-and-longs and to run the clock out with 25 seconds left in the half from the Patriots’ 25-yard line.
The team managed just one explosive play as a result of the Patriots’ deep secondary structure. The heavy rain during the start of the game may have also contributed to the lack of shots, and the offensive line struggled to protect Jalen Hurts, who was pressured 16 times.
“I think one of the things that they did a great job of,” Johnson said, “was eliminating us from being able to make explosive plays down the field and really staying back in their coverage and making it sort of a dink-and-dunk type of operation where you’re just trying to keep the ball in play and keep it moving forward, and there wasn’t much opportunity to really get behind the defense just with the depth that they were playing.”
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The Eagles faced third down with 8 or more yards to gain on seven of their 14 conversion attempts and Johnson dialed up running plays on three occasions. The first one was successful, the second was not, and the third one from 20 yards to gain eked into field-goal range while coming up well short of the marker.
When asked about the potentially conservative approach of running the ball instead of giving Hurts and the team’s trio of elite receiving targets a chance to convert, Johnson said those types of draws have worked for the team in past seasons and pointed to Hurts’ 22-yard touchdown scamper on third-and-8 against the Chicago Bears last year.
“You can catch guys sometimes in some unique fronts and be able to pop a run,” Johnson said. “Dealing with some of the weather that we were dealing with, as well, certainly played a factor.”
Eagles coach Nick Sirianni also pushed back on the notion that a third-and-long run was a “conservative” approach after the game.
“That’s not necessarily true,” he said. “A run call could be aggressive. It doesn’t have to be a pass to be aggressive and so I actually think calling a run play in a third-and-8 situation is aggressive. ... It’s unique but I thought we were aggressive with that style of play that we ran in that scenario. So I respectfully disagree with not being aggressive. We just thought it was the right call for that scenario.”
The Eagles did eventually string together some positive plays in the second half. Johnson said he and Hurts went through some possible adjustments throughout the game and eventually found success hitting A.J. Brown on deep in-breaking routes against the Patriots, who used a lot of man-to-man on the outside with zone concepts in the middle of the field.
While Brown and DeVonta Smith got 10 targets apiece, Dallas Goedert was hardly featured in the passing offense. The tight end got just one target, an overthrow near the sideline. The Eagles also featured Kenneth Gainwell — he suffered a rib injury in the game — quite heavily out of the backfield at the expense of D’Andre Swift and Boston Scott.
» READ MORE: Kenneth Gainwell emerges as Eagles go with three halfbacks in the opener
Johnson said finding a better balance between the receiving and running options is among the things the group wants to “clean up,” but there’s a premium on time with the home opener against the Minnesota Vikings fast approaching on Thursday night. Setting the frustration from Sunday aside, Johnson said the end result of Sunday’s game makes cramming the corrections a little easier.
“There are so many lessons that you can take from a game like we had,” Johnson said. “Obviously, those lessons are much easier to learn after a win. We’ll definitely take that and keep moving forward and continue to get better.”