On Halloween, when countless millions were wearing costumes for a few hours, the Philadelphia Eagles went a little further and adopted an entirely different persona. Previously one of the most pass-happy teams in the NFL, the Eagles transformed into a squad with a fearsome ground attack in an Oct. 31 rout of the Detroit Lions.
The Eagles liked it so much, they decided to stay in character — and the results are becoming increasingly scary for the opposing teams in their path.
After a 2-5 start, Philadelphia is now 5-6, just a half-game out of the final playoff spot in the NFC. And with the team having one of the league’s softest schedules the rest of the way, a postseason run can hardly be ruled out. As it is, the Eagles have not just clawed back into relevance; they have found an identity under first-year coach Nick Sirianni and have relieved second-year quarterback Jalen Hurts of what had been a heavy burden.
“We’re going to continue to attack, continue to play our game,” Hurts said after a 40-29 win Sunday over the New Orleans Saints in which Philadelphia ran for a whopping 242 yards on 50 attempts, the most by any team this season. “I think identity is not, ‘We’re a running team,’ ‘We’re a passing team,’ or, ‘We’re a team that doesn’t give up big, explosive plays.’ That’s not what identity is. Identity is a mentality. It’s an approach. It’s the detail you put in day in and day out throughout the week. It’s being physical. It’s wanting it. It’s effort.”
Hurts is not wrong that a team’s effort level is at least as important as its preferred strategy, but it’s also true that the Eagles have very much gone from a passing team to a running team.
From Week 1 through a Week 6 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in which Hurts handed the ball off to a running back just once before halftime, Philadelphia threw the ball at the league’s 10th-highest rate (per Sharp Football Analysis). At that point, the Eagles effectively had the lowest percentage of first-half running plays in the NFL, according to a Football Outsiders study that reclassified all quarterback scrambles as passing plays.
A Week 7 defeat against the Las Vegas Raiders showed something of a transition for Philadelphia, which tried to run the ball early before taking to the air as it fell behind. Then, given a Week 8 matchup with the winless Lions, Philadelphia took full advantage of its ability to jump out to an early lead. In what would end as a 44-6 rout, the Eagles ran the ball 46 times against just 16 pass attempts, including two by backup quarterback Gardner Minshew II in mop-up duty.
Over the stretch of four games that began on Halloween, Philadelphia has run the ball 68 percent of the time, a 1940s-esque rate that is by far the league’s highest in that span. It helps that the Eagles already had an experienced, talented offensive line that finished second last season in ESPN’s run-block win rate rankings and sits at No. 2 in that metric again this year.
Advanced statistics aside, though, the numbers that matter most to Philadelphia are the three wins the team has notched in that span against just one loss.
Along the way, Hurts has thrived as a dual threat. Along with increases from Weeks 1 through 7 to Weeks 8 through 11 in rushing attempts (from 9.4 to 12) and rushing yards per game (51.6 to 64.3), his numbers also have improved in some major passing categories, including completion percentage (61.2 to 62.8), yards per attempt (7.1 to 7.6) and passer rating (89.5 to 93.4).
At the same time, Hurts’s passing attempts per game have gone down drastically, from 34.6 to just 19.5 in Weeks 8 through 11. It is a striking shift away from what some critics of Philadelphia’s game plans were describing as an overreliance on a 2020 second-round pick who entered the NFL with great mobility but also questions about his accuracy. Through Week 7, Hurts’s combined 308 passing and rushing attempts dwarfed the 96 total rushing attempts of the Eagles’ running backs, compared with a ratio of 126-133 since then.
Asked this month whether Hurts’s reduced workload had led to increased effectiveness, Eagles offensive coordinator Shane Steichen replied: “Does it help? Yeah, it does, but at the same time, he’s a good player — he can handle a lot on his plate.”
In the win over the Saints, Hurts had nearly as many rushing attempts, 18, as passing attempts, 24, and Philadelphia’s ability to trample New Orleans on the ground was particularly impressive because of that defense’s track record. The Saints came into Week 11 ranked first in the NFL in both fewest rushing yards allowed per game (72.9) and yards allowed per play (3.07), and their stoutness against the run went back several seasons. That mattered little, though, against the new-look Eagles, who racked up their fourth straight game with at least 175 rushing yards and third in that span of over 200. Hurts is now a close second in rushing yards among quarterbacks to the Baltimore Ravens’ Lamar Jackson (639-618), with the Buffalo Bills’ Josh Allen a distant third (383).
“We know we’ve been running the ball well, and it’s a little different [for defenses] when Jalen’s in there,” Sirianni, who previously was the Indianapolis Colts’ offensive coordinator, said after Sunday’s victory. “. . . You want to make them stop what you do well first, and that’s definitely what our goal was.”
The Week 11 win also featured the return of Philadelphia’s starting running back, Miles Sanders, who had 94 yards on 16 carries. Oddly enough, the Eagles’ abrupt pivot to the running game began just after Sanders suffered an ankle injury. In his absence, Philadelphia called up from its practice squad Jordan Howard, a six-year NFL veteran and member of the Eagles in each of the previous two seasons who has thrived in his latest go-round with the team.
If Howard’s unexpected contribution pleased Eagles fans, it had nothing on the fact that the team was finally starting to run the ball with anybody. Many of those fans had commented on Sirianni’s former pass-heavy emphasis by cheering sarcastically when Sanders was afforded a rare handoff during the loss to Tampa Bay. Flash forward a few weeks, and the Eagles are pounding the rock early and often against everybody.
In an NFL season that has had its share of twists and turns, Philadelphia’s sudden — and successful — devotion to the running game is one of the most surprising things that has come to pass.
