{"id":851589,"date":"2026-04-03T17:00:22","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T17:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/851589\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T17:00:22","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T17:00:22","slug":"offensive-goals-are-more-modest-than-advertised","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/851589\/","title":{"rendered":"Offensive Goals Are More Modest Than Advertised"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jalen Hurts has now officially lapped A.J. Brown in the latest chapter of the Eagles\u2019 ongoing soap opera \u2014 and it\u2019s understandable. The simmering questions about the QB1\u2019s impact on Philadelphia\u2019s stagnant passing game have finally boiled over.<\/p>\n

For the sensitive Eagles fans in the public square, this is where you might want to put on the earmuffs.<\/p>\n

\"\"Add us as a preferred source on GoogleFollow<\/a><\/p>\n

Yes, Hurts really liked \u201cfour verts\u201d in the season\u2019s biggest moment. (Hot take: it\u2019s not nearly as uncommon as you\u2019ve been led to believe, and if executed properly, it might have even worked.) He also favors hitch routes and remains less comfortable under center, turning his back to the defense, or operating with extensive pre-snap motion.<\/p>\n

Virtually the entire narrative surrounding Philadelphia\u2019s offense \u2014 from Hurts to Nick Sirianni, and the coaching shift from Kevin Patullo to Sean Mannion<\/a> \u2014 has centered on the passing game.<\/p>\n

Ironically, multiple team sources tell Eagles On SI that the answers Sirianni has been seeking are more about the ground game.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would say it’s more about the run game concepts,\u201d one team source told Eagles On SI when asked about the move toward a Kyle Shanahan-style offense. \u201cHe likes the answers those kinds of offenses provide when things get muddy. The marrying of the run with the pass concepts follows that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sirianni expressed a similar sentiment when speaking with beat reporters before the scouting combine.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the way the NFL is now, without getting too schematic, you see a lot of teams where they\u2019re reading pure progressions and handling all the junk that\u2019s being thrown at you by the defense [in the passing game],\u201d the coach said. \u201cWell, this version of the run game is kind of in that mix as well. It\u2019s the run game version of it \u2014 where there\u2019s a lot of run game junk being thrown at you, and this handles all of it.\u201d <\/p>\n

Run Game Junk\"Nick<\/p>\n

Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni played catch with his receivers as they warmed up for practice two days before the season opener. | Ed Kracz\/Eagles on SI<\/p>\n

The Eagles saw far too much of that run-game junk after Saquon Barkley\u2019s historic 2024-25 season. <\/p>\n

Barkley finished with 41 negative runs last season, second-most among all NFL running backs behind only Las Vegas rookie Ashton Jeanty (45), according to SumerSports. Breece Hall of the Jets ranked third with 33.<\/p>\n

Way too many first-and-10s became second- and often third-and-longs, putting an already limited passing game in untenable situations, a common theme of Patullo and Sirianni when discussing the offensive struggles last season. <\/p>\n

The goal moving forward is to get Hurts and the passing game<\/a> \u2014 whatever it looks like schematically or from a personnel standpoint (A.J. Brown or not) \u2014 into far more manageable situations.<\/p>\n

Sirianni offered another Easter egg when discussing what Mannion\u2019s offense will look like.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I love about it is the way it meshes up and marries to the play-action world,\u201d the coach said.<\/p>\n

The objective here isn\u2019t to turn Philadelphia into a reboot of \u201cThe Greatest Show on Turf.\u201d It\u2019s far more modest: run the ball effectively on first down, and let the rest fall into place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jalen Hurts has now officially lapped A.J. Brown in the latest chapter of the Eagles\u2019 ongoing soap opera…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":851590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2068],"tags":[25,7,6,242,109,2476],"class_list":{"0":"post-851589","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia-eagles","8":"tag-eagles","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-philadelphia","12":"tag-philadelphia-eagles","13":"tag-philadelphiaeagles"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116341852170665627","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=851589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/851590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=851589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=851589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=851589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}