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The Eagles Had Eight Runs in Buffalo that Went for One Yard, or Negative Yards
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It’s conflicting to feel Negadelphia after the Eagles went into Buffalo and beat the 11-win Bills while holding them to 12 points.
But the reality of the situation is that they held on for dear life, and only a miracle defensive performance and bad miss from Josh Allen on the game’s final play allowed them to walk away with a W.
Offensively, the Eagles mustered less than 20 yards in the second half. Didn’t even complete a pass in the 3rd or 4th quarter. They continue to kill themselves with unsuccessful running plays, logging the following in this game:
- one-yard run
- one-yard run
- one-yard run
- one-yard run
- -2 yard run
- -2 yard run
- -2 yard run
- -3 yard run
Throw in a 3rd quarter Jalen Hurts sack for good measure. He did a good job of throwing the ball away on Sunday, and avoiding yardage loss, but that particular play was 3rd and 6 and they wound up punting for the third possession in a row after burning only two minutes of clock.
If you look at the Eagles’ totals, they ran the ball 26 times for 82 yards, a 3.2 YPC number. Buffalo entered this game with the league’s fourth-worst rushing defense on average, allowing 144.3 ground yards per game. The Birds barely reached half of that number while only having 18 of their 26 carries go for any kind of meaningful yardage, depending on whether or not two yards is “meaningful.”
It’s been a problem all season long for this team. They continue to lead the league in stuffed running plays, 55 total, amounting to -162 yards. They’ve been stuffed on 12% of their rushing plays, which is 3rd-worst behind the Raiders and Dolphins. Last year, for context, they were stuffed 50 times total for -121 yards, but the percentage was down to 8.1%, which was 9th-best in the league. And that was a run-heavy Eagles team that got Saquon Barkley to 2,000 rushing yards in the regular season.
Lane Johnson’s return will help. They just haven’t been able to move the ball on the ground against playoff-quality teams this year.
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