You gotta know when to stay in your lane, and/or defer to people who know better, and that’s typically the case with pro football and defensive scheming. Let the film experts break it down and parse and provide the information.

Unfortunately for us, defensive scheme is THE TOPIC of the season for the Philadelphia Eagles, and after Sunday’s 27-24 loss, we want to know if Jonathan Gannon actually blitzed and pressured Justin Herbert, or if they sat back in that soft shit, two-deep safety look.

Some nuggets of information on that:

Let it be known that the Eagles registered zero sacks and one quarterback hit. So it appears as though they did get away from the vanilla scheme and tried to get to the QB, only they couldn’t get home. The front four and extra rusher(s) didn’t find a lot of individual success.

In the play Jeff mentions above, the Justin Herbert touchdown run, the extra rusher is Genard Avery, #58, who runs into the left tackle here and is calling for a hold. Watch him at the bottom of the line of scrimmage as he throws his hands up looking for a call:


That was a single-high safety look in the red zone. It’s compact because of where the ball is located, but Anthony Harris is down in the box and takes Austin Ekeler coming out of the backfield. Avery rushing leaves T.J. Edwards as the middle-field linebacker, and when Josh Sweat flushes Herbert from the pocket, Edwards can’t slide back over laterally to make a play.

I saw another single-high look with man coverage on the play where Darius Slay was called for pass interference. Kind of a funky call, if we’re being honest. That looked like hand fighting.

And on the final drive, LA’s game winning drive, I went through the replay footage we currently have and here’s my very simple interpretation of what happened:

  • 1st and 10: three linebackers on the field, Avery down on the line
  • 2nd and 7: two deep safeties, soft middle (nickel look)
  • 1st and 10: Avery comes back in to play on the line, two deep safeties
  • 1st and 10: back to nickel with two deep safeties, four man rush
  • 2nd and 6: single-high safety, four man rush
  • 3rd and 6: single-high safety, four man rush (the big T.J. Edwards stop)
  • 4th and 1: one safety, one corner in man coverage on the outside, Chargers get the first down up the gut
  • 1st and 15: single-high safety, nickel, four man rush
  • 2nd and 4: single-high safety against running look
  • 3rd and 2: single-high vs run
  • 4th and 1: single-high vs run
  • 1st and 10: loaded the box and brought Rodney McLeod up higher
  • 2nd and 11: single-high, Avery back in to play on the line (big Ekeler run that basically ended the game)

Obviously that’s a small sample size based on a specific game situation (tie game late), but Gannon showed a ton of single-high safety on that drive after opening with a couple of soft calls. They kept rotating Avery in and out, and made him the fifth guy on the line of scrimmage, while walking Anthony Harris up to help T.J. Edwards and Davion Taylor in the box.

It’s true though, that yes, they did not blitz Herbert on that drive, so in hindsight maybe it would have helped. The bulk of the pressuring took place earlier in the game.

We’ll learn more throughout the week as the film studies are completed, and the numbers shared, but right now it looks like they did show some different looks other than the two-deep safety thing of weeks past. The all-22 footage should be a worthy dive.