This Eagles season has been a slog of a fact-finding mission, and we’re trying to stay positive. Trying to highlight good things or interesting things to talk about as we suffer growing pains during Nick Sirianni’s debut year.

One of those wrinkles was the Sunday inclusion of Tyree Jackson, the former college quarterback who converted to tight end and was one of the surprises of training camp, before he was injured. He came back and played a little more than a dozen snaps, and Sirianni said this Wednesday about his usage:

We did some things out of 13-personnel that game. And so, that gave us an opportunity to play all three of the tight ends with Jack (Stoll), and Dallas (Goedert), and Tyree.

Jack’s coming along nice. We still want to continue to get him reps. But with Tyree, again, that’s something that we have that a lot of teams don’t know what Tyree is or what he can do. So, we’ll keep that close to our vest.

It’s true they have something to work with in Jackson, and there was a drive before halftime on Sunday where the Eagles showed 13 personnel almost exclusively. They moved Jackson around the formation, bunched the tight ends together, and even used some pre-snap motion.

A few of those looks:

There was another sequence later on where LA looked a little confused and had to burn a timeout. That was one of the plays where Jackson was lined up as a receiver, and Sirianni explained it this way:


I think what they thought when we put in the two tight ends, I think they thought we might have been in 12-personnel (two tight ends with a running back).

I just know it from being on headsets for a long time. You throw two tight ends out there, you don’t see the (running back) come off (the field), you think that probably thought, hey, they got 12-personnel in, and it was — we really were in 0-2 personnel. And so, that was probably the confusion right there.

02 personnel is a set where you have two tight ends and three receivers on the field. No running back at all. So in mixing and matching there, the Eagles were able to create some confusion and get the opponent to burn a timeout.

For what it’s worth, only Goedert was targeted by Jalen Hurts on Sunday. He caught three passes for 43 yards while the other targets went to receivers DeVonta Smith, Jalen Reagor, and Quez Watkins. Stoll and Jackson were not targeted.

But it’s something new from the Eagles, who had Jackson available for the first time this season. Another wrinkle and something to keep an eye on as Nick Sirianni evolves as a play caller and game planner.