Expert Analysis
12/31/23
7 min read
The Philadelphia Eagles Have a Defense Problem
The season is slipping away from the Philadelphia Eagles.
Sunday's gut-wrenching loss to the three-win Arizona Cardinals moved the Eagles to 11-5 after starting the season 10-1. They have dropped four of their last five. A win over the lowly New York Giants last week is the only thing staving off talk of a complete and total collapse.
Both sides of the ball are to blame for different stretches.
The offense scored fewer than 20 points three weeks in a row to start the skid. Jalen Hurts didn't look confident, the passing game overall was defunct, and offensive coordinator Brian Johnson insisted on turning away from the run game for drives at a time for no discernable reason. They weren't a cohesive offense.
Things have turned around the past two weeks with a couple of relatively easy matchups with the Giants and Cardinals. Still, nobody is confusing this Eagles offense for the dominant unit it was a year ago.
The real culprit is Eagles' Defense
The defense has been worse. Much, much worse. There's been no return to the light for it like there has been for the offense. Three weeks ago, the Eagles tried shaking things up at play caller by turning to Matt Patricia to replace Sean Desai, but that's proven to be nothing more than a different presentation of the same poor results.
This is an Eagles defense that could not recreate the magic from last season to begin with, and it has atrophied as this season has gone along. The cost of min-max roster building and the misfortune of a nasty injury bug turned this unit into an almost unrecognizable entity from the force we saw a year ago.
Sadly for the Eagles, this isn't a situation with a clear diagnosis. There's no one issue or position group plaguing them. All three layers of the defense have varying issues, ranging from a practice squad-caliber linebacker group to a defensive line that is producing well below its talent level on paper.
Regression Starts Up Front
Let's start with the underwhelming defensive line. By and large, it's the same unit as last season as far as the main characters go. First-round draft pick Jalen Carter replaced veteran defensive tackle Javon Hargrave, who signed with the 49ers in free agency, but it's the same dudes otherwise. The rest of the starting lineup and most of the key role players are unchanged.
And yet, that same group cannot get to the quarterback the way it could a year ago. The 2022 Eagles recorded 70 sacks, the third-most in NFL history. They have 41 through 16 games this season, right in lockstep with the NFL average. There would always be some regression after a near-historic season in 2022, but falling back down to average hurts.
A lot of the issue is their ability to get it done on clear passing downs. Last year, the Eagles dominated on third down. They produced a 23.4 percent sack rate, by far the best in the league.
So much of that was their creativity in how they attacked the quarterback. Then-defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon loved to place five rushers on the line of scrimmage and threaten all five linemen. He also constantly changed up who was coming from where, using twists and stunts with great success.
That aspect of the defense died in 2023. Desai's, and now Patricia's, defenses don't do as impressive a job mixing up their rush paths and disrupting them. They attack with five rushers less often, and their four-man rush approach features a lot more of a "line up and play" mentality.
The stale approach has turned the Eagles from the fiercest third-down pass rush in the league to the worst, only getting home on 7.5 percent of third downs this season.
The issue up front is less about the talent and more about how the talent is being used.
Back seven suffers from talent Deficiency
For the second and third levels of the defense, that's not the case. The Eagles have a talent deficiency at each level that has limited them schematically in a big way.
Linebacker is a clear pain point for the Eagles. It was always going to be given how they handled the offseason. The linebacker corps was the weakest part of the Eagles' defense last year, but T.J. Edwards at least gave them stable play in the run game and Kyzir White's athleticism made him a useful player in coverage and on the perimeter. Far from a perfect duo, but a functional one.
Edwards and White walked in free agency. Philly's plan to replace them was 2022 third-round pick Nakobe Dean, who came into the league with shoulder injuries and a small frame, and journeymen Nicholas Morrow and Zach Cunningham.
Dean has not been healthy for most of the year. Morrow and Cunningham have missed time, forcing the Eagles to turn to undrafted rookie Ben VanSumeren, Christian Ellis and a depleted version of Shaq Leonard, whom the Colts cut midseason, at different points. It's been bad.
Safety Turns Into a Black Hole
The poor linebacker play is only exacerbated by issues at safety. Last year, Chauncey Gardner-Johnson and Marcus Epps led the charge. Gardner-Johnson was a safety/nickel hybrid who could play legit man-to-man coverage and Epps brought a ton of speed and energy, even if sometimes misguided.
Philly's new safeties have not been up to the same standard. Reed Blankenship has been a replacement-level player. Terrell Edmunds was shaky before being traded to the Tennessee Titans in exchange for Kevin Byard, who has been better but not in such a way that has altered the defense's fate.
As Desai and Patricia have discovered, there's only so much you can do as a playcaller when linebackers can't cover whatsoever, and the safeties have no discernible skills that unlock schematic answers.
None of the Eagles' current linebackers can run in man coverage, and they aren't as sound in zone coverage as Edwards and White were at times. Byard and Blankenship are fine players at safety, but neither can go toe-to-toe with a tight end or slot receiver in man coverage the way Gardner-Johnson could.
Finding answers on defense starts with having players who can solve problems. There just aren't players like that up the spine of the Eagles defense. That's not to excuse Desai or Patricia entirely, but at a certain point, there's only so much you can do unless you want to fully lean into the psycho realm Brian Flores has entered with the Minnesota Vikings, which is not a turn the defense can make one week before the postseason.
Is There a Solution?
Therein lies the bitter truth for the Eagles: it's hard to find the fix. The middle of the defense doesn't have the bodies, and we're far too late in the season to adopt a new identity entirely.
Perhaps the same could have been said about the Buffalo Bills a month ago, but even that was a different circumstance. The Bills, though also gutted by injury, at least had the fallback of schematic continuity. Coach Sean McDermott has been there for years. His system and his language has been in place for a long time. That makes it easier to insert backups into the lineup and cover up the pain points in the defense.
The Eagles don't have that. Not only did they begin the year with a new defensive coordinator, but they installed another one with a month left in the season. Continuity is a foreign concept for this Eagles defense.
It's more than likely this is just what the Eagles defense is for the remainder of the season. And if that's the case, it won't be good enough to compete with the best in the NFC.
