The Eagles traded virtually nothing for Jordan Howard last night around 8:22 p.m., when the Sixers were in the middle of trashing the Nets and the Phillies were fresh off a 10-4 season opening win that featured a Rhys Hoskins grand slam.

It’s not often the Birds fly under the radar, but that was the case with the Howard trade, which took a back seat on a busy sports day.

Let’s dig deeper on the 24-year-old ball carrier.

We know he’s a no-nonsense 1st and 2nd down back, a downhill guy who has the third most rushing yards in the NFL since 2016 (behind Todd Gurley and Zeke Elliott). He’s not a pass catcher and he’s not a third down back, and while the Eagles love to throw the ball, they had a lot of success in 2017 when they committed to the run game and used both Jay Ajayi and LeGarrette Blount the way they were intended to be used.

Some more things to know about Howard:

  • He’s fumbled the ball just five times on 850 career touches. That’s one spill per 170 touches.
  • There’s nothing significant about his home vs. road splits. He actually has a better yards-per-rush on the road (4.52) than at home (4.17). It’s worth pointing out that Soldier Field has a grass surface and is generally considered to be one of the worst in the league. He’ll probably do better at the Linc.
  • Howard runs well at the tail-end of the season. Check out his monthly career splits:

4.43 yards per carry and 12 touchdowns in December at 77.6 yards per game. He certainly does not run out of steam as the season progresses. He’s run the ball more in December than any other month.

More after the jump:

  • 92% of his career rushing attempts have taken place on 1st and 2nd down. On rushing attempts where the Bears had 1-3 yards to go for a first down, he averaged 3.5 yards per carry. Additionally, he’s converted 33 of 61 3rd and 4th down rushing attempts for first downs, so that equates to a 54.1% success rate.
  • 416 of his 778 career carries have come on 1st and 10 with a 4.7 YPA. On average, the Bears were following up those carries with a 2nd and 5 or 2nd and 6, so Howard did a nice job of setting them for for manageable downs and distances.
  • Red Zone stats: 96 carries, 347 yards, 3.6 yards per attempt, 23 touchdowns and 43 first downs. He’s really gonna help the Eagles punch the ball in.
  • He’s on the last year of his rookie contract, which means he is 1, cheap, 2, looking to prove himself this season to earn a payday. Howard will hit the cap at $2 million.
  • He runs for 4.5 YPC in the 1st half and 3.9 yards in the 2nd half. That might be worth digging deeper into, why that number drops.
  • The Eagles like to run the ball out of the shotgun, though they did mix and match a bit better as the last two seasons progressed. Here are Howard’s formational splits:

That’s surprising to me, that 5.2 yards per attempt from the shotgun. You see he was featured much more from under center sets, but that’s a really nice shotgun YPA number and will work nicely in Doug’s offense.

  • His long last year was 42 yards, but he did have three runs of 50 or more yards in 2017. In his rookie season, he ripped off runs of 69 and 57. He does not have top-end speed and he’s not a pass-catching or screen game threat, but he will occasionally rip off big gains.
  • He only faced 8+ defenders in the box on 14% of his carries last season. That’s pretty low. Blount was actually #1 in the league at 39%. Howard was way down at 43rd.
  • Howard has been given 250 carries in all three of his NFL seasons. The Eagles have not given a running back 250 carries since Shady McCoy in 2014.

I think of Howard as more of a between-the-tackles and short yardage kind of runner, but when you look through his charts, there are some certainly some instances of off-tackle running where he was able to pick up yards outside of the hash marks. This was his week one carry chart via NFL Next Gen Stats:

There’s a lot to like, on paper and on film.

I was sitting here when the trade went down, thinking to myself, “hmm.. does Chicago know something that we don’t?” But they’ve got a second-year coach in Matt Nagy who probably just feels good with what that team has in Tarik Cohen and Mike Davis, which made Howard expendable.

The real issue is making sure Doug Pederson commits to the run game this year. I can imagine sports radio when Howard runs 10 times for 33 yards while Carson Wentz throws the ball 47 times in a loss. Woof. Doug has a million weapons to use in what is now a balanced offensive unit, so it’s on him and Mike Groh to get this thing rolling.

Happy Friday.