Eagles 360: Episode 3

trouders coucked up. He take it counting and it is picked up by let's say, and maybe the Eagles. Great Burt the man on the ball, he's back, looks the fire. It's complete and at for the cutdown. He clus hey clones hey hand Tilly Turner Gunn who corrabbed him. He hires and a teller something. They tell her something carry a love films txt along he can come. I picked up my cocks and he so sit do it's touched out eagles. Hey, we talked about it all week, and

we heard about it all week? Did we not right? Buying the up? We said, we talked, We're just gonna handle our business and we were gonna eliminate it today. You did it. Great team efforts today. Then hey, is it perfect? No? But you know what you're wanting up. Winning is contagious. It is contagious. Now you feed on it, you learn from it, and we moved to the next one. Great job defense, we talk about takeaways. Great job into the game. We put a dagger in their heart and

I stopped her. It's a team effort, though, you absolutely right. It's a team effort, right, a lot of individuals, but great. Guess what team effort. So proud of you guys. Wait to battle. We put this one to bed and we get ready for the next one. It's a new order, man. Every week we gotta go to work. Started with family,

Gonna finish on a family family one. Well you heard it there from Merrill Reefs excitement Here with the Philadelphia Eagles after Sunday thirty to seventeen, way over the Washington Redskins to open the two thousand and seventeen season. Hello, everyone, up dates, Fedario, Eagles and Stider along with the Hall

of Famer Brian Westbrook back for another year. Here on Eagles three sixty and we're gonna break down the Eagles win over the watching Redskins, Brian, And as usual, it had a lot of twists, It had a lot of turns, it had a lot of craziness. The most important thing every single week is winning the game. And at the end of the at the end of the game, clocks hit zero. The Eagles had more points than the Redskins. That's the most important things. Certainly, a lot of things

that work on. Every season I played, there was never one opening game that the coast said, you played a perfect game. We have nothing to work on. The Eagles have a lot of things that work on, but the most important thing they did well was win. And they've got some injury concerns. Ronald Darby, the Eagles cornerback, out for a period of time here, perhaps with his ankle injury. Caleb Sturgis placed kicker with a hip flexer that slowed

him on Sunday. But those are issues for the team to deal with on Tuesday and beyond as they look ahead to the Kansas City Chiefs. What we want to do here is talk about the Redskins game, and there were several things that stood out, Brian. I mean, before we get into the offense, let's talk about some of the stars of the game in your mind. Well, you have to start off with the quarterback, and you want to talk about him. He did a great job. But when you look at this game, it was dominated by

the defense. The front four. They did a great job of getting after Kirk Cousins. They did not allow him to be feel comfortable all game long, and at the end of the game it helped him out tremendously. You have to look at the front four. Now we begin with the offense. Let's talk about the Oh brought to you by Golden Nugget where Philly gets engaged, and we will start with the quarterback. Carson Wentz. Brian made one of those plays early in the game that makes you go, WHOA,

what is this guy? Do we have Aaron Rodgers junior in Philadelphia? Your breakdown of that play, we'll talk about that in a bit here, but I mean just in general, the presence that Carson Wentz has the pocket breaking down around him. This kid has grown up in a hurry.

There's not a lot of quarterbacks in the NFL, young girl old that have the ability to see guys coming from behind them, that have the ability to make sure that he has his eyes downfield and then when it's time to throw the ball downfield to be an accurate throw. Carson Wentz showed some things this first game that he didn't show all season long last year. He's able to elude the rush, He's able to keep his eyes downfield

and complete the ball. That was impressive. Right. It was clear that the Eagles wanted to come out and throw the football. The running game really didn't get going, and we can talk about that here. Three hundred and fifty six yards eight of fourteen conversions on third down. Your thoughts on the strategy against Washington, Well, you know, as a running back, we always want to come out and set the tone with the run game. That's the most important thing. But I think Doug he's trying to play

to his strength. The strength of this offense is the quarterback. You go out there and you get all these wide receivers in the off season. You want to make sure that those guys get involved as well as have the ball in your quarterback's hands. And I think that's what he did. As the season goes on, the offensive line is gonna have to do a little bit better job in blocking the running backs are gonna have to be able to break some arm tackles and run a little

bit harder, and that takes time. It takes time in some continuity for the offensive line to play better and the running backs to feel their way through some of those holes. And while the wide receivers did get involved, we also have to really point to tight end Zach Hurtwo came out of the shoot with eight catches, really a key contributor in the offense. And then Nelson Agile or what a start for Agilor the twenty fifteen first round draft pick, at touchdown catch six receptions, Brian, it

looks like he has turned the corner. Well, it's good to see Nelson just developed some confidence. It's good to see him adjust to the ball, catch him with his hands and then score. That's want to develop confidence in a young man, and that's what you need out of him when you move him into the slot. Now he's able to use his route running ability to get open. You saw him a countless times running very Chris route getting open, finding the hole in the zone. That's what

you want to see from the young guy. Carson did a great job of finding him as well. A couple of key stats in this game that I'm looking forward to monitoring all season. Red zone efficiency of Eagles one of one when they were in the red zone. That's good thing for a team that was twenty fourth in the league last year. And then big plays twenty plus yard plays, four of them for the Eagles after last

year's really kind of dinking attack. Well, they took some shots down field and there was a couple of plays, even though including in the first play of the game that they miss, there's some shots down field where you see Tory Smith running right past Josh Norman, their best cornerback, if you see Alshan running past some of their defenders. Now, if you could connect on some of those plays, this game isn't the same game. It changes the complexion of

the game. Nelson, all those guys, all the receivers and the quarterback have to get together to take advantage of some of those big shots down the field, because this team could be effective in the short game. But if you if you hit some of those bombs, it would be much more effective and it opens things up as well. Right, those are some of the good things that happen. There are some things that did not happen as well. I

mean it was a stuttering offense at times. What do the Eagles need to get better as they look to Kansas City? Hostile environment, attacking defense, Well, you're going to see a defense that's going to be coming after you. So first of all, I'm looking at the offensive line. Can you dominate upfront? If you want to win, Andy Todd us, if you want to win in the football game, you have to win in the trenches. The offensive line

has to play a little bit better. They need to be able to combo block up to the linebackers to get this running game going. Our running backs need to do a much better job of blitz recognition. They need to know who their man is and get after their guy and pick up the blitz. If they do some of those things, the game will be a little bit more smoother. I think getting the ball out of Carson's hands quicker will also help the offense. Two touchdown drives, some field goals, a big drive at the end of

the first half to take back the lead. A lot of good things to work with, a lot of things that need to be improved as we look to the Kansas City Chiefs. We've got more to get to here on Eagles three sixty. When we return, we'll take a look at some of the big plays and Sunday's win over Washington, and we'll break down the defense and don't forget the special teams instrumental in the Week one win. We'll be right back. This portion of Eagles three sixty

was presented by Rothman Atte Jefferson. Eagles High School Football Showdown, presented by the Rothman Institute at Jefferson, celebrates local high school football teams and coaches. Visittiladagles dot com Slash Showdown to vote for this week's game of the week. Come

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all about peaceful relaxation. At the Carterhouse, the dream Whistlers are still trying to find their sound, and by choosing the NRG Free Weekend's plan, the electric the city supply for all that beautiful noise is free all weekend. A long lucky that n RG. We welcome you back at Eagles three sixty days Fidarry O'Brian Westbrook here talking about the Eagles win on Sunday over the hated, dreaded NFC East rival Washington Redskins. Where did they rank on your

list of teams? I don't like. Um, they're probably because it's my hometown, so they're they're right at the top foot me. I do not like the Redskins at all, and I love going down there in Washington and finding a way to get a win. It had been a while Eagles and lost five straight to the Redskins prior to Sunday. And one of the reasons they won the big play back for the Eagles on the offensive side

and the defensive side. And with that in mind, let's take our all twenty two review into our film room. Fran Duffy and Great co Sell. All right, Greg, well, let's get things started here the way the Eagles got things started. And when you have the opening drive on offense. The only thing you could ask for is to open up with a touchdown, and they did just that. Carson Wentz and Nelson aglare fifty eight yards. Let's take a

look at see what happened. Is played, It ended up exactly the way they designed it, exactly exactly, exactly right. So what we have here is one of their staple looks out of three wide receivers. It's a three by

one set, but right up there that's zach Ertz. They use him a lot, as you know, Fran as the single receiver to basically the short side of the field, and then they've got three wide receivers down below, and inside is Aglar, who's gonna end up catching the touchdown, of course, but in this play he's not really part

of the progression at all. He's a clear player. Now as we start this, the focus should be really on wins and earths because that's who he's looking to get the ball to, and if you freeze it right here, that's where he wants to go. But that's Josh Norman. So really, Carson Wentz should have come off of this much quicker than he did, because that's not the matchup you were looking for in the three by one set, you were hoping maybe a safety or a linebacker might

be out on him, but that's Josh Norman. Yeah. And so then when you have on the other side of the field, and what we assume the second part of his progression was, is you have Alshon Jeffrey coming here on a shallow cross, Tory Smith running a little dig. You assume he's gonna work from right to left because, as we said, Aglar, he's just clearing. He's running vertically too clear, he's not part of this progression at all

at this point in time. So of course what happens is the pressure now starts to work and WinCE again he stayed too long, but now he starts moving around, and now it becomes kind of a random improvisizational play. So if you freeze it here perfect Now what's happening is he's clearly working WinCE that is to his left. So now Aglar does absolutely the right thing, and we talked about this when the play happened. He starts working

with WinCE. So what do you do. You work to the same side of the field, and if there's no one in front of you, you work deeper and that's exactly what Nelson Aguilar does right here. And keep in mind, this is a big time throw. I mean he did not have a chance really to totally turn and set his feet to make this throw. So this was a big time throw. Not the design of the play at all, but WinCE In Agilard did an excellent job once the

play broke down. Yeah, one of those things that it seems like it's a random play, but they practice those scrambled drills all the time. Each player has assignments on what they're supposed to do when the quarterback breaks the pocket. So Nelson uncovering exactly the way he showed up. It was a good way to start for the Eagles offense. All right, thanks so much, guys. Let's talk about this

play from several different aspects. The mobility of a quarterback who sticks five to forty it looks like Aaron Rodgers, the way he's able to set his feet so quickly, turn his shoulders and get the ball down the field. That's the good from the quarterback position. And of course Nelson Aguilar's work. Coming back to football, well, when you have a quarterback that's able to evade the rush, now you open up so many other things for your office.

Now you can get into be a scrambled drill. But when you have the quarterback that says, listen, I just needs you to block one guy. He just give me a chance, like you have in Carson went that makes the orcus a little bit more for best. And Carson Wentz is the type of guy that can make a guy miss, make two guys miss, and then still look down the field and throw the ball accurately. That's important for you winning football team. Big picture here though, Brian,

you don't want your quarterback getting hit. Carson took some hits. Washington blitzed the Eagles running backs here. Your evaluation of the pass protection and the running backs in pass pro well something that needs work. I mean a part of the problem is you don't get a lot of time in the preseason as far as game time to work on these types of things. That's something that they're going to have to work on this week coming into Kansas City.

They're going to pressure the quarterback. They're gonna make sure that these running backs understand the blitz responsibility. Do Staley and this offensive line They're going to need to get get together and make sure that they know which linebacker is responsible, the running back is responsible before. They have to do that right now, because on some of these plays that we saw against Washington, our running backs are just missing the linebackers. They're not watching them all the

way on some of the delayed blitzes. And if they don't do that against Kansas City, we're gonna get our quarterback hit way too many times on the d defensive side of the ball, a lot of pressure. Let's go back to France and to Greg and talking about one of the big plays early in the game, the big man up front getting it done all right, next up Greg.

All summer long, we saw more blitzes from Jim Schwartz in this Eagles defense, and we were wondering, like everybody else, would we see more of it here in Week one with the start of the regular season, and we got to see it with the first big defensive play of the day. Yeah, and I think you will see more and more Blitzay. Hey, we even saw cover zero and I believe it was the third down. But here they

come with what we call a mic star blitz. And to give you an example of that, what we're talking about is you really have the mic linebacker, and here it's Bradham, I believe, and then you have Robinson outside Patrick Robins, who's the slot corner, that's the star. So it's a mic star blitz. And what happens here They're gonna come, They're coming from the field, and the boundary defensive end is Brandon Graham. He's going to drop out, so it's really a five man rush. But they're overloading

one side of the offense. So what you get is you get the blitz as we run this and we can see Actlee all of that. Now, what happens here because Graham leaves is you get a one on one matchup right here. You get Fletcher Cox now on the right tackle, and he surprises him a little bit because the right tackle, Moses is expecting to block Graham. So look what happened there is Cox got beyond him pretty quickly and he's able to sack Cousins, forced the fumble,

and the Eagles recover the ball. One of the best things about doing any kind of overload blitz, like what you just saw with that Mike Starr, is you're gonna get the offensive line sliding away. Yes, and in that situation, you've got the offensive line sliding away from Fletcher Cox for the blitz. That's what you want. Now you've got Fletcher Cox in the one on one right and as we saw, he was able to get his shoulder past

the right tackle. And you know the great thing about Cox, he can play some defensive in and rest the quarterback. And that's really what that ended up being. Yeah, we've seen that going back to his college days. Fletcher Cox getting a sack fumble on one of the first big plays for the defense in the first half. Thanks very much, guys. We will talk about the defense at length in the

next block here, Brian. That play right there demonstrates some of the versatility that we see upfront, with Brandon Graham dropping out of the play, Fletcher Cox looping on the outside. You have guys that can play inside or outside. For offense is confusing because you don't know is zachly where these guys are coming from. Jim Schwartz has done a great job of allowing his guys to play inside, outside and be multiple because now offense they can't predict who's

coming who's not coming. You have to be on your p's and que and a lot of time, offensive alignment, get caught off guard? Exactly what happened with that? This place, that's it. Big plays, small plays, They all added up to an Eagles win on Sunday at Washington. We've got one more segment to go here on Eagles three sixty, and when we return, we'll talk about the defense and oh yeah, the special team's outstanding once again. This portion

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Her final segment here on Eagles three sixty Davis Fidaro, Brian Westbrook, Eagles defense dominating the Washington Redskins and the game plan. Brian from Jim Schwartz blitzed a little bit. We hadn't seen much of that, Brandon Graham inside and the nickel dropping out in some zoom coverage, I mean it was, and losing Ronald Darby in the process. What a brilliant job. Jim Sworth did a great job of never allowing Kirk Cousins to be comfortable in the pocket.

You saw so many times in the game where he thought the ghosts were coming from one side. The blitz came from the other side at some point. If you're a defensive coordinator, you want him to see ghosts. You saw him that last interception to Jaylen Mills. He caught the football because and through the football to our team because he thought the blitz was coming from somewhere else and he still had time. Jim Sworth did a great job of keeping him him off balance. He was never

comfortable in the pocket the entire game. Great job from the defensive coordinator. In twenty sixteen and two wins over the Eagles, Washington average one hundred and sixty eight and a half yards rushing per game. On Sunday the sixty four yards. What was the difference The dominant play of their defensive line. The linebackers are coming up, hitting people in the mouth. Malcolm Jenkins contributing, coming up hitting people in the mouth. That's what a defense is all about.

Eleven guys to the football, making gang tackling possible. And now you have an offense, you make it. You limit the offense. You say you're not going to be able to run the football, you have to throw it. Now you're playing right into the defensive hands, you're able to rush your front four. You bring some blitzers, and this is perfect situation for the defense. Brian, How concerning is the loss of Darby. We don't know exactly how long he'll be out, and we hope that he gets back

before the end of the season. Here in your mind, how to the Eagles compensate? Well, you have to figure this thing out. That's why Jim Schwartz gets paid the big money. But you allow these young players to play a little bit more, get their legs underneath them, and make sure that they understand the scheme. All I need you to do is play the schemes. Don't try to play outside of yourself, don't try to pick off someone's someone else's man. Just play the scheme properly and this

thing will work out. But it's very, very important. We talked about the next the next man up. We need the next man up to play good, but we need this front board. You take a little bit more responsibility. Now. You have to play a little bit better because we may call on you guys just to get the pressure by yourself because we can't blitz as much. And the chiefs await after totaling nearly six hundred yards on Thursday Night in that win over the New England Patriots. And

as we know, it is a three phase game. Eagles special teams, we would be remissed to not mention the outstanding play from Dave Phipp's crew three Caleb Sturgis field goals. Donnie Jones had a punt that was fumbled. He dropped a ball down at the one yard line of Jalen Watkins hustled to cover. I mean the coverage teams were outstanding. The first punt of the game, trust Way kicks it thirty yards out of bounds. Eagles get a great field position.

The Eagles always believe Brian that you win games on special special teams, special plays, and they are doing it again again again. Well, there's times and gangs where your offense is not clicking. There's times and gags where your defense is not clicking. Your special teams has to be on target one point, every single opportunity that they get. Dave Phipps has done a great job of making sure that those guys participate. They understand the schemes, they understand

the rush lanes and their blocking lanes as well. They've done a great job of making this offense get better field positions, making this defense play with the offensive back to the goal line. That's important. They won the special teams game. That's how you win games in football. Let's tie it all in here. Corey Kleman goes down on the very first kickoff, makes a big play. Rookie running

back being asked to make plays on special teams. Do coaches then notice that and say, screeb to give this kid a couple of reps here, I'm trying to get the running game going here. Do you see that kind of progressing in that direction? But what happens is you start making plays on special teams. The coach starts, they see your number pays Number thirty's doing a little bit better. He's doing better. He's a guy that wants to go out there and help us on special teams. And now

let's give him a couple of runs on offense. The longer that you can stay around, the more opportunities you get. You'll stay around much longer if you're making plays on specials. Can you get up to the speed of the game on special team so that it translates into a positional play? No question. If you're here and you're participating in making plays on special teams. Now, Deuce Stanley is gonna say, you know what I saw how fast he ran on that special teams on that kickoff. How about we give

them give him an opportunity on this one play. And if you make a play on these couple of plays that they give you on offense, now that leads to more and more plays. That's how things work here in the NFL. Well, it was a good start for the Eagles. Concerns for the Eagles. Work to do for the Eagles, we all know that, but one and all, that's where you want to be. Anytime you can start by winning the game, it least things in the right direction. Good

start for the Birds. Right now, we are gonna look ahead here to what's happening on Philadelphia Eagles dot com and on Eagles three sixty. On Tuesday, Glenn macdown, my host, will have his takeaways from Sunday's win over Washington Head coach Doug Peterson in studio with me with half an eye on the Redskins and most of his attention focused on Kansas City. And then the coordinators Frank Reich and Jim Schwartz will meet the media talking. I'm sure about

Kansas City a lot. How tough is this is probably the loudest stadium that I ever played again played in. You have a defense that's gonna be coming at you. It's gonna be hard to hear for your offensive line, so you're kind of at a disadvantage, and those guys on the defense will get some good get offs. You have to make sure everyone's on the same pace offensive line, quarterback as well as running back. Eagles were one and seven on the road last season. They didn't win in

the fourth quarter. Last season on Sunday, they win the fourth quarter eleven nothing and they went on the road. I just think it's a different feel to the opener than it was last season. Anytime that you can win a game opener in the middle of the season, it's the great way to do things. It's a great start. Now you you stick, you start to get that pay, you start to get the moment on. I'm such a player. You're going game by game and that's all one of sixteen.

That's all I can take it. My only mission is next week. That's all focus. Next week we will be here with Brian West people see you then. Thanks for joining us here today on Eagles three sixty. Thank you for joining us on Eagles three sixty. We've got a lot more to get to this week. Make sure you're within us every step of the way as we line it up for the Eagles at the Kansas City Chaps on Sunday. Thanks so much, everyone, have yourselves a great Eagles Day.