Nick Sirianni needs to trust the Eagles’ run game | KC Joyner
The gap between what Sirianni wants to do and what the team does well is considerable.
Bill Parcells bucked a lot of coaching adages in his career. One of these was the idea that an offense needs to be balanced.
Parcells didn’t subscribe to this theory, as he often leaned heavily on a power rushing offense and yet also coached Drew Bledsoe in 1994, a year in which Bledsoe set the all-time marks for most passes in a single game (70) and season (691), the former of which still stands.
Parcells used a baseball analogy to explain why he was willing to go to play-calling extremes: If your fastball is getting the other team’s batters out, keep throwing it until you retire all 27 hitters.
Nick Sirianni might do well to take this piece of Parcells’ wisdom to heart, since he stopped throwing the Eagles’ proverbial fastball against the Giants last Sunday.
The Eagles’ ground game was working like a champ headed into that contest: They were only the 19th team since the 2000 season to rush for 175 or more yards in four straight games (per Stathead). The Eagles made it five straight against the Giants and in doing so set the historical bar even higher, as they are now only the third team since 2000 to run off five games in a row with 175-plus rushing yards.
It isn’t just the rushing volume that stood out in this game; the Eagles also were dominating the line of scrimmage. They posted a 52.9% mark in my good blocking rate (GBR) metric that measures how often an offense gives its ballcarriers quality run-blocking.
The league average in this metric is usually in the high 30s to low 40s percentage wise, and posting a 50-plus% mark in a single game is a sign of excellence. This is just the latest instance of a 50-plus% total in GBR. The Eagles have achieved that mark multiple times this year and did so in each of the 175-plus yard games.
In addition to the consistent blocking, the Eagles tallied an 8.4-yard mark in my good blocking yards per attempt (GBYPA) metric that gauges productivity on plays with favorable run-blocking. The league median in this statistic is usually around the 8-yard level, so the Eagles were above average here as well.
Add to all of this that the Eagles gained 2.7 yards per carry on plays with bad run-blocking and it shows that this offense was moving the ball effectively in just about every circumstance.
Despite this success, Sirianni had Jalen Hurts throw the ball 29 times in this game despite Hurts’ averaging only 4.2 yards per pass attempt. Hurts also had terrible deep numbers -- he was 2-for-7 for 40 yards and an interception on deep passes (per the NFL gamebook for this contest). Things were even worse on first down, where Hurts went 4-for-10 for 21 yards and an interception on those aerials.
It just doesn’t make sense to put the ball in the air this frequently when there is such a massive disparity between a team’s rushing production and passing production. To be fair, some of the overall pass volume was skewed by the two fourth quarter drives where the Eagles had no choice but to go pass-heavy, but take out Hurts’ being 5-for-9 for 56 yards on those drives and the Eagles’ decision to throw the ball 20 times before that makes even less sense.
Parcells admitted that it took him until his second year as an NFL head coach to start using the aggressive coaching style that eventually earned him a place in the Hall of Fame. To Sirianni’s credit, he has begun to find his way earlier than that, but the Giants game shows that Sirianni will stop throwing his fastball even when the other team isn’t hitting it. That’s something Sirianni will need to correct if he is to turn losses like this one into wins.
Gambling pack
Here is this week’s gambling pack, a section that reviews some of the top gambling, fantasy, and DFS plays for NFL games in Week 13 (gambling odds per BetMGM).
The Saints have a lot of question marks as they head into their Thursday night matchup against the Cowboys. New Orleans has changed quarterbacks, as they are going with Taysom Hill over Trevor Siemian. They also may not have Alvin Kamara, as he has been slowed with a knee injury that kept him out of the lineup last week. Add to that the Saints potentially being without both of their starting tackles and definitely missing two starters in their defensive front seven and the Cowboys look to be a good play at -4.5 points.
The point spread notwithstanding, Hill is a very good stream start upside play in fantasy in that Thursday night matchup. The Saints will want to run the ball as often as possible and may have to lean on Hill for a double-digit carry volume, either via planned rush attempts or scrambles. Rushing yards add up quickly for fantasy quarterbacks, so Hill has a very good shot of posting 17+ points and thus should be in many lineups this week.
The Colts have been on a scoring tear of late, as they tallied 30-plus points in six of their last seven games. The same cannot be said of the Texans; Houston scored only 36 points in the two weeks since Tyrod Taylor’s return. Indianapolis also has one of the most opportunistic defenses in the league, as it ranks third in turnover drive percentage and has racked up at least one takeaway in every game this year. Those trends are enough to take the Colts -8.5 points in this matchup.
Fantasy managers needing quality streaming start D/ST candidates should look into acquiring Miami, the Giants, the Eagles, or San Francisco this week.
The tight end position in fantasy started to gain some depth at one point this year, but injuries and attrition have thinned it out again. Fantasy managers in a tight spot here (pun intended) can consider the Chargers’ Jared Cook as a solid free-agent addition. The Chargers have the second-most-favorable matchup points total among tight ends in Week 13 per my rankings system, and that could vault Cook to his third game with 10-plus points in a full PPR setup over the last five weeks.
It’s easy to understand why the over/under in the New England at Buffalo Monday night game is sitting at 43.5, as these teams do have stellar defenses, but the Patriots have scored 24-plus points in eight straight games and the Bills have scored 26-plus points on eight occasions this year. That means there are plenty of paths to a fairly high scoring game, so take the over in this one.
The Giants’ wide receivers have been fantasy duds for the last month and that isn’t likely to get better since Daniel Jones is out for the matchup at Miami. Mike Glennon is enough of a downgrade to add further risk to the Giants’ wideouts fantasy prospects, so consider sitting them outside of very deep leagues.
The move to Glennon would also make the Dolphins a very good play at minus-4 points given how well their defense has been playing of late. Miami has allowed 17 or fewer points in four straight games and racked up 10 takeaways in that span.
The Steelers have been abysmal against the run, allowing 553 rushing yards and six rushing touchdowns to opponents’ running backs since Week 9. That makes Devonta Freeman and/or Latavius Murray good upside plays in DFS at their respective DraftKings salaries (Freeman $5,500, Murray $5,100).
There is a good percentage play in the futures market in Tom Brady at +120 to lead the league in passing touchdowns. Brady leads the league in that category with 30 TD passes, which is three more than Matthew Stafford and five more than Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen have tallied. The Buccaneers still have matchups against Atlanta and the Jets, defenses that rank in the bottom third of the league in touchdown passes allowed per game. Combine that with two matchups against Carolina, a club that has given up 17 scoring passes this year, and a potential shootout against Buffalo, and Brady should be able to hold off his competition in this category.