Eagles film: Making sense of A.J. Brown’s targets, Jalen Hurts’ decision-making, and a disjointed passing game

As the season enters its final stretch, the Eagles passing game is going in the wrong direction.

Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts finished Sunday’s 22-16 win over the Carolina Panthers with a season-low 108 yards on 14-for-21 passing. His 3.47-second average time to throw was not only his longest of the season, but it was combined with a season-low 5.1 yards per attempt. Put more simply, Hurts took a long time — the longest of any quarterback in Week 14 — to throw it short.

Where does the Eagles passing game go from here? To find out, let’s look at the film:

» READ MORE: Eagles’ Nick Sirianni doesn’t think Jalen Hurts is trigger-shy and isn’t worried about locker room frustration

Whether you agree with receiver A.J. Brown’s postgame frustration or not, the all-22 footage helps contextualize the wide receiver’s dissatisfaction with the passing game in the aftermath of Sunday’s win.

Brown often created downfield separation against Carolina’s defensive backs, but he finished with just four targets, all of which he caught.

It would be reductive to lay Brown’s lack of targets solely at the feet of Hurts. There were times in the game that protection breakdowns kept the quarterback from finding Brown, but on other plays Hurts was too quick to move off of the star wideout or too apprehensive to take a shot to him.

Hurts’ tendency to avoid risk since the team’s early-season bye week has resulted in him curbing his turnover pace considerably. After throwing four interceptions in the Eagles’ first three games, Hurts has tossed just one in the nine games following the bye week.

Has the risk aversion led to an overly cautious Hurts? Eagles offensive coordinator Kellen Moore said Tuesday that Hurts has still taken shots downfield, although there weren’t many chunk plays against the Panthers.

“You still see aggressive throws, you still see him throwing downfield,” Moore said. “Obviously this game, from a production standpoint in the passing game, we didn’t hit the explosives and all those things.”

Still, there were a few examples of Hurts shying away from making downfield throws on Sunday. On the second play of the game, Hurts’ first drop back, the Eagles called a three-level flood concept with Brown running the vertical route. Reading that Panthers cornerback Jaycee Horn was splitting the difference between Brown and DeVonta Smith on the middle out-breaking route in the combination, Hurts opted to throw to Jahan Dotson on a shallow flat route just as Brown was breaking open downfield.

While it’s fair to acknowledge that Hurts moved on from Brown because of Horn’s positioning, it’s also important to note that the quarterback had a clean pocket and was a tick early in moving on from Brown as he worked upfield.

The Eagles quarterback’s next passing attempt came two plays later and featured separation from Brown once again, but a free rusher reached Hurts before he was able to set his feet and find Brown.

Hurts has a hand in setting protections, so perhaps the free rusher could have been sorted out by him better pre-snap, but it’s hard to blame him for this missed opportunity to hit Brown. Either way, the two plays serve as a microcosm of the Eagles passing game against Carolina. In general, it was a combination of Hurts turning down half-chances downfield and times when the 26-year-old was asked to do too much outside of the structure of the play.

It took 28 minutes, 34 seconds of actual game time for Brown to receive his first target. It was confounding in the moment, but the all-22 footage shows it wasn’t for a lack of trying.

Moore intimated as much on Wednesday.

“It was a combination of him obviously,” Moore said. “I’m focused more on finding different ways to increase the likelihood of the ball going to [Brown], but ultimately the quarterback has to play based off the reaction of the defense and trust that there’s progressions within a play. For us, we’re always going to evaluate how to get it to him sooner.”

On a few occasions in the second quarter, Hurts’ progression either started with Brown or led to him looking his way, but there were a few instances of Hurts double-clutching throws to Brown as the initial read for various reasons.

» READ MORE: Eagles-Panthers takeaways: Jake Elliott left twisting in the wind; analyzing the shaky passing game

Facing second-and-7 late in the second quarter, Hurts started his throwing motion before seeing Panthers linebacker Josey Jewell jumping to bat the ball down at the line of scrimmage. That’s not to say Hurts couldn’t have gotten the throw past the blitzing linebacker, though.

Facing third-and-7 on the next play, Brown got single coverage on a vertical route. It’s the type of opportunity the Eagles have feasted on consistently, but Hurts instead worked through his progression on the opposite side of the field while Brown gained minor separation from Horn without safety help over the top. It might not look like a great deal of space for Brown, but Hurts has at times targeted the star wideout in single coverage with less of a window.

Returning to the sideline after this play, Brown slammed his helmet into its stand on the bench. After the game, Brown said his frustration was with the offense going “three-and-out.”

Likely aware of Brown’s limited role in the offense in the first half, the Eagles called a play for him to open the third quarter. He gained some separation on a deep out route, but Hurts once again didn’t pull the trigger.

Not all of Hurts’ turndowns to Brown were misguided.

One of his best plays came after passing up Brown on a tightly covered comeback route. Instead, Hurts worked across the field and found Smith near the sideline for a pivotal third-down conversion made possible by his ability to extend the play while keeping his eyes downfield.

» READ MORE: Opinion: Jalen Hurts wasn’t great against the Panthers. The Eagles QB will need to be better in the playoffs.

It speaks volumes how many of Hurts’ best plays came out of structure against the Panthers. It helps explain his lengthy time to throw in tandem with the short yards per attempt.

There are very few plays in which he hits the top of his drop back, finds an open man downfield, and targets him in rhythm. Brown’s first target and catch is one of the rare examples, with Hurts getting a clear line of sight to Brown’s slant route for a 10-yard completion late in the second quarter.

Another example came at the end of the first half, when Hurts found Smith on an out-breaking route in the end zone for a touchdown. Make note of Brown, who also broke open on a slant route and got shellacked by a Panthers defensive back flying in from his blind side. Not to say Brown’s frustrations about his targets should extend to the result of this play, but the hit likely didn’t help.

For every example of Hurts delivering the ball to an open receiver with rhythm and timing, there’s one in which the offensive structure does him no favors. Be it protection breakdowns or instances when the Panthers were sitting on a route concept they’d seen a few times before, Hurts was asked to do too much on a few occasions.

Facing second-and-2 early in the third quarter, the Eagles called a shot play that sent all three receivers on vertical routes. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, Brown got some separation downfield, but the Eagles weren’t able to sort out the Panthers’ five-man rush and Hurts was sacked as a result.

The next play, the Panthers’ five-man rush generated pressure again, but Hurts managed one of his best plays of the afternoon by reeling off a 35-yard scramble to keep the game-winning touchdown drive alive.

While it was an example of the type of individual creation Hurts can offer an offense, the frequency with which he was asked to do so helps explain the stagnation from the passing game for long periods Sunday.

So where does the passing game go from here?

The answer is far more complicated than just one thing, but in general, the offense may need to evolve beyond the handful of route concepts the group has utilized heavily this season.

» READ MORE: Eagles stats: Birds’ downfield passing game was practically nonexistent vs. Panthers

Even the run-pass option slant routes to Brown, a staple of the Eagles offense the last few seasons, became predictable late in the second half. The Eagles ran it twice in quick succession at the midway point of the second half, the first of which ended in an 11-yard completion to Brown. The second one resulted in Hurts taking a dubious sack to avoid an illegal man downfield penalty, which would have been the lesser of two evils.

Diversifying the menu for Hurts and the Eagles receiving corps would likely go a long way toward fixing what ails the passing game this late into the season, but that will require Hurts to trust the concepts in the fleeting moments when things open up.

Moore said the offense’s menu of passing concepts has stayed “pretty steady” throughout the season, but conceded that the group has relied on a handful of “core concepts.”

“Each and every week, you’re going to have some sort of flavor,” he said. “That’s the fun challenge of the NFL, you’re going to have core principles that you believe in and have repped a lot of times while still being creative enough to stress the defense with different presentations.”

Whether Hurts can manage the injection of creativity the passing game requires, especially as the stakes heighten and the competition gets tougher, may define the Eagles’ ceiling.