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:
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.