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Eagles

Nick Sirianni and Shane Steichen Using Orbit Motion in Clever Ways

Kevin Kinkead

By Kevin Kinkead

Published:

In recent Eagles games, you may have noticed more pre-snap motion with a player running behind the quarterback.

That’s called “orbit motion,” and it’s something for the defense to think about. Is that player a target for a swing pass? Is he a decoy? Who is going with him and who is staying home? It adds another wrinkle to the Birds’ RPO and zone read set of plays.

Off the top of my head, there were at least three of these looks in the Washington game, and while the first one didn’t go so well, they stuck with it and had success with the other two.

Here’s the first:

A swing pass for Miles Sanders on the strong side. My only issue there is he’s catching the ball five yards behind the line of scrimmage, and if you don’t execute those in a bang-bang type of way, then the blocking receivers have a LOT to do. In this case, it gets blown up for no gain.

The second one was fantastic though:

There are a few things going on here.

First, they put Quez Watkins into orbit motion, which results in his guy chasing him around. It’s man coverage in single-high safety, five WFT players on the line. They then go run/pass option while reading the opposite side defensive end. When that end collapses on the hand off option, Hurts pulls the ball and throws it to the other running back, who snuck through, for a big gain:

The final tidbit there is the lone receiver is running a slantish/inside route to clear his man out of the way and give room to the pass catcher to run. Really pretty stuff. Love it.

Here’s the last one:

This is very similar to what you saw in play #2, but they bring in Slay to be the decoy here, and they are instead going with one tailback instead of split backs. But it’s the same idea; Slay is motioning off the right hash and Hurts is reading the defensive end on the other side. In this case, the end stays home, so he simply hands the ball off instead for a big run.

It’s creative and fun stuff. The orbit motions themselves are more like eye candy, though they will throw the occasional pass to that person. More often than not, it’s something else for the defense to think about before the Eagles option off an unblocked player on the other side, and Hurts does a really nice job of making those reads. He did a ton of it in college at both Alabama and Oklahoma, so it’s a strong suit for him. There are a lot of ways you can scheme up these multi-option plays, and Sirianni and Steichen have really done a great job with this in recent weeks.

Kevin Kinkead
Kevin Kinkead

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

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