Somebody sent me this tweet earlier today and it piqued my interest. It commanded my attention.

Here’s former Eagles QB and current golf guru Ron Jaworski dropping a curious statistic:

I used to keep notes logging how many times the Eagles used shotgun vs. going under center, but stopped doing it a few weeks ago for some reason. The knowledge didn’t seem to be worth the effort, and it’s easy enough to log via other websites.

But it’s intriguing from Jaws because the Eagles have primarily been a shotgun team under Doug Pederson. They really do not do a lot of under center stuff and they replace traditional play-action with RPO-style looks instead.

Obviously we know the Eagles ran the ball a lot on Sunday, and while the big Miles Sanders touchdown came in a 21-personnel shotgun set, I went back and looked at those 36 under center snaps and discovered the following:

  • they actually went under center five straight times on the opening drive, which featured two consecutive no-huddle plays
  • there was one play-action bootleg pass that Carson Wentz instead ran for eight yards
  • the touchdown pass to Dallas Goedert was thrown from under center
  • the two-point conversion was a quick pitch, also from under center
  • the Jordan Howard screen started from under center, with a play-action element
  • Boston Scott’s touchdown was an under center play
  • the second attempt to hit Howard on a screen was blown up, but also started under center
  • the Howard TD came from under center
  • once the game was out of reach at 31-13, the Eagles went with UC runs eight times in a row before Carson Wentz took a knee, so that certainly skews the number, since the Eagles were just running out the clock
  • I counted nine under center passes and 27 under center runs, with four play-action calls and one Wentz sneak
  • Howard ran the ball more out of UC, Sanders more out of shotgun
  • total yardage from under center runs was 110, which was about half of what the Birds did on the ground (if I have the math right it was 4.07 yards per UC run)
  • the biggest UC running gains were Nelson Agholor (16) and Jordan Howard (20)

Intriguing to me is that the Miles Sanders TD run was the only score that did not come from an under center set. That was out of the shotgun. The Goedert catch, Howard score, Boston Scott score, and 2-point conversion all started under center.

And one thing about under center vs. shotgun is that it makes Wentz a little more mobile. Three-step or five-step drops can sometimes help QBs find a rhythm that they wouldn’t typically find if they’re just standing back there and receiving a snap. You can play-action, bootleg, move him outside of the pocket, stuff like that, right? I went back and tallied it and Wentz was 5-7 for 37 yards throwing from under center, with one scramble and one illegal formation making up for the other two attempts. One of the incompletions was a blown up screen.

But yes, it’s interesting. Could mean something, or maybe going under center was just necessitated by the windy conditions, but keep an eye on this next week against Da Bears.