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Eagles’ Sales Department Should Find a Sponsor for the Unblocked Pressure of the Week
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Joe Milton almost got killed on this second quarter turnover from Sunday afternoon:
Another unblocked pressure. They have at least one of these each week and it ruins a drive entirely. This happens so frequently that the Birds’ sales department should find a sponsor for it. It could be the Cure Auto Insurance Unblocked Pressure of the Week. Or maybe they bring back the Matt Blatt Splat of the Game. Remember that? Who didn’t love the Matt Blatt Splat of the Game? But it’s 2026, and not 2006, so this time around it’s the Eagles’ quarterback getting crushed, instead of Omar Gaither or Dhani Jones laying out some fool.
Here’s what Milton said about this play:
“I got hit. You’ve just got to go out to that guy, and then I got to tackle it. That’s pretty much it. Caused us turnover, so just got to fix it and slide it over there.”
When he says “slide it over there,” he’s not talking about a Whitesnake album from the 1980s. I think he means slide the protection to the right instead of the left. Though he never really looks to his right to begin with. Elijah Mitchell goes to his left to look for someone to block and ends up blocking nobody. The Eagles actually have 6 players in to block 6 players before DJ Reader drops off (#98 for NYG), so it wasn’t a lack of numbers. If you look at the offensive line, they’re all bodied-up on somebody here, it just wasn’t diagnosed properly pre-snap:
Of course, the Eagles would probably do a better job with QB1 and RB1 out there, but they had QB5 and RB7 on the field.
Anyway, here’s what Nick Sirianni had to say about this:
“Yeah, I’m not going to get into who’s at fault or anything like that, but anytime there’s a guy that’s free in that situation, we’ve got to look at ourselves as coaches first and say, ‘Did we do everything we could do to help them?’ And then it’s going to be an execution thing. So, it’s ‘both and.’ It’s never just one thing. Obviously in that case, we’ll make those corrections in person with everybody. Whether it’s on us as coaches or whether it’s an execution thing, it’s still on us as coaches. It starts with me and it’s always on me; every product that’s on that field is my responsibility. ‘Well, there was an execution error on this play or that play.’ Well, did I put him in every position I could possibly put him into to go out and execute that?“
This has been your Philadelphia Eagles Unblocked Snap of the Week (TM).
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com