Did you watch the Nick Sirianni press conference on Monday afternoon? Poor guy looks like he’s aged five years already since taking the job. He looks like second term Obama with the gray hair.

Eagles scribes hit the important topics in the day-after press conference, and Sirianni said this when asked why the run defense absolutely stinks (my emphasis in bold):

First of all we got to put our guys in position to make plays. We’re always going to talk that way. We’re always going to be critical of ourselves first as coaches. Just because it’s defense, doesn’t mean – that’s my responsibility, too, right? Because I’m the head coach of this football team and any product you see on the field has my name on it and I’m responsible for it.

We just got to do a better job of putting them in position to succeed. Then there’s just the execution part of it as well. When you’re playing a little bit more middle field open coverages like we’re playing, we got to be able to do some more things with the front, be able to change some things on the front and create a couple of issues for the offense so they can’t just run it when you’re in those middle field opens.

Because, I think you guys see, when you’re in some of the middle field open coverages that we’re in, the big pass play gets limited, right? The big pass play gets limited. But, if you’re not doing some of the right things in the front with what you’re doing in the front, then the run game can be susceptible, right? You give a little, you get a little.

Anytime a team runs for 200 yards on you, you know you got to look at the coaching first, and look at it there. Obviously, we were very critical and hard on ourselves this morning. It was some tough conversations in the defensive room this morning, but all in attempts to get better and to improve from this. We feel like we’re taking the right steps to do so.

But there’s no secret. We need to do so, and we need to make sure we stop the run on first and second down.

The Eagles are sitting in a lot of Cover 2 under Jonathan Gannon. Cover 2 is a zone defense with two deep safeties and then five players covering the “under.” That can be three linebackers and two corners in a base 4-3 defense, or two linebackers and three corners in a nickel package. The Eagles generally work out of their sub packages, which was also the case under Jim Schwartz.

Here’s what it looks like in nickel, with Avonte Maddox on the field as the slot corner:

The scheme has resulted in the Eagles not giving up a lot over the top. Very few explosive pass plays. They are the 7th-best passing defense in the NFL, if you can believe it. But the problem, as Sirianni points out, is that it’s resulting in them getting gashed up front, because they’re sacrificing some beef around the box in order to prevent themselves from being smoked through the air. Nobody should be surprised, then, that they have the second-worst run defense in the NFL.

All of this results in the defense being unbalanced. You have to have good linebackers to play Cover 2 and remain respectable against the run, and the Eagles don’t. They have glorified special teamers starting at linebacker, because the front office does not value the position. And it doesn’t help that Brandon Graham is out. He was a great run stopper at defensive end. It also doesn’t help that Fletcher Cox has regressed and isn’t the monstrosity he once was.

It’ll have to be on Jonathan Gannon to try to straighten this thing out. Maybe you ask more of your corners and go to some single-high safety and play man on the outside. Darius Slay SHOULD be able to handle that. Disguise some coverages. Bring some more pressure. Try to mix and match and make offenses work, instead of just eating these 12 and 13 play drives because they’re taking what’s given to them.

Couple of other notes for context here:

  • The Eagles have given up the second-most rushing yards in the NFL, 601, but are middle of the pack with a 4.4 YPC number. That means other teams are just throwing volume at them, based on the scheme.
  • They are on pace to give up only 25-26 passing plays of 20+ yards. That would make them second best in the NFL at mitigating chunk plays through the air.
  • They’re an average sack team. Eight is right around the NFL median.
  • Two takeaways isn’t good enough, and they really need more in this department.
  • Third down rate is poor. 48% is sixth-worst in the league.
  • 28 penalties is 5th worst.

Clearly, the scheme needs to have more flexibility, but they’re not helping themselves in other areas, which is exacerbating the problem.

There’s plenty to fix.