The Eagles don’t want to run the ball as much as they did last year. Just don’t tell their running backs.
It's what their offense does best, but it's not the way they want to play. Their running backs say they mind, but ...
There are certain questions that no one asks anymore. The topics have become passé, and the answers are taken for granted so quickly that they are hardly worth discussing or debating.
Should you upgrade from your AOL email account? (Yes, you should.)
Should you pile slices of Swiss on your cheesesteak? (No, you should not, and John Kerry deserved to lose the 2004 presidential election for this decision alone.)
Is Top Gun: Maverick the best movie of the year? (Wait, there were other movies that came out this year?)
In the modern NFL, one such question is, What will the running backs think? In the modern NFL, as a general rule, no one cares what running backs think. All professional football players are disposable to one degree or another, but teams treat running backs like the thinnest rolls of paper towels on the shelf.
The average length of an NFL player’s career is less than five years, and the average length of an NFL running back’s career is about half that. There’s a reason the New York Giants erred so badly when they selected Penn State’s Saquon Barkley with the No. 2 pick in the 2018 draft, and that mistake had nothing to do with Barkley’s talent. Running backs absorb more physical punishment than most positions — when they are doing their job, they are the hittee, not the hitter — and nowadays, teams throw the football more frequently because throwing more frequently, in the main, leads to scoring touchdowns more frequently.
“It’s similar to life,” Eagles running back Boston Scott was saying Tuesday after practice. “You’ve just got to adapt to what life gives you. You’ve got to be able to adapt and adjust. Nowadays, teams want to air it out or whatever. You have to be able to be versatile. You have to be able to do different things. You have to be able to catch the ball. You have to be able to win one-on-ones in the passing game. Got to be able to adapt.”
Scott, his fellow backfield members — Miles Sanders and Kenneth Gainwell — and the Eagles are a good case study in how the league has changed over time when it comes to the value of running the football. There are two overarching truths about the team, one that emerged last season, one that will define them this season.
1) The Eagles can run the ball as well as or better than any team in the NFL. The sharp turn they made toward the running game just ahead of last season’s midpoint was the primary reason they finished 9-8 and qualified for the playoffs. Through the Eagles’ first seven games, Jalen Hurts and his arm were the obvious centerpieces of the offense, and things … shall we say … did not go as well as Jeffrey Lurie, Howie Roseman, and Nick Sirianni might have hoped. The Eagles were 2-5.
Then they shifted to a more run-reliant style — a move that made sense, given the quality of their offensive line and Hurts’ inexperience — and won seven of their last 10 games. More revealing was this: Through those first seven games, they averaged 23.4 rushing attempts and 116.7 rushing yards per game. Through those final 10 games, they averaged 38.6 rushing attempts and 189.8 yards.
“We were all in accord with it all,” Scott said of the change in philosophy. “We know the capability we have at the offensive-line position. Them guys, they want it on their back. That’s their type of confidence — not to the point of being selfish or arrogant or anything like that. But those guys truly believe that they can make some stuff happen, and I feel like the whole team fed off of that.”
2) The Eagles don’t want to run the ball that much. They don’t believe in it. They want to throw the ball. Look at their other offensive skill-position starters. A.J. Brown is a topflight receiver for whom the Eagles traded two draft picks, including a first-rounder. DeVonta Smith was a first-round pick. Tight end Dallas Goedert was a second-round pick the Eagles signed in November to a four-year contract extension reportedly worth as much as $57 million.
Now look at their running backs. Sanders was a second-round pick whose contract is up after this season … and whose contract the Eagles appear in no hurry to extend. Scott was a 2018 sixth-round pick by the New Orleans Saints; the Eagles later signed him off the Saints’ practice squad. And Gainwell was a fifth-round pick last year. The disparity in resources allocated to each of those groups speaks for itself.
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“It shifted the way it did, and as players, as running backs, we’ve just got to continue to do everything we do to get better,” Gainwell said. “Whether it’s running the ball, catching the ball, it’s still got to happen. I just cope with it, live with it.”
Scott said he’ll roll with it, too. It’s what he does. Just 5-foot-6, he was a walk-on at Louisiana Tech, and he got his start in football in seventh grade, when he played, of all things, defensive line.
“I couldn’t go through you, but I could go around you and between your legs,” he said. “I was overlooked. One thing I’ve learned about myself is that I’m hungry. When I put my mind to something, I want to do my best to try and achieve it by any means necessary. Whether somebody’s watching, somebody’s not watching, it don’t matter to me. It don’t matter what labels are put on me, what people have to say.”
You can guess what he’d have to say about running the ball more. But again, no one’s asking him.