Brian Johnson with a Couple of Choice Route and RPO Press Conference Nuggets

Couple of nuggets from Brian Johnson’s weekly press conference. First, DeVonta Smith was running a choice route on the big TD pass against New York:

Q. QB Jalen Hurts’ passing chart from this game had one throw across the middle touchdown to WR DeVonta Smith. Is that based off what the Giants were showing you, and do you think you guys should be throwing to the middle of the field more? (Josh Tolentino)

BRIAN JOHNSON: I think he had an option route, and it was an in-breaker and they did a great job of reading that coverage. Offensively, you want to make teams cover the entire length and width of the field. I think for us, we are very uniquely built in terms of we have got guys who do a great job of winning one-on-one on the perimeter. So a lot of that focus and attention goes to that. Ultimately, we just got to continue to put our guys in the best spots possible. I don’t know if you ever look at and go into it and say, the ball has to go here or to this particular part of the field, right. You’re thinking defensive structure, you’re thinking matchup, you’re thinking players not play.

Smitty was basically untouched on the play.

It’s the one where Olamide Zaccheaus threw the big block on Adoree’ Jackson, but yeah, New York was in single-high safety on this play. The corner playing Smitty had inside help via the linebacker, so he played outside leverage instead. Johnson mentions in that quote that “attention” goes to 1v1 winners on the perimeter, and sure enough, the safety is worried about A.J. Brown, so he shades down there and gets cooked when DeVonta chooses to go inside:

Johnson also said this about pounding the rock:

Q.What did you make of the run the ball chant? (Brooks Kubena)

BRIAN JOHNSON: I’m just trying to call the game, man. At that point, what was it, first and 20 and then it was second and 20.

It was interesting, like sometimes you call some of these RPOs, right, and based on the defense you get presented, it could be a run, it could be a pass. Very rarely are we in situations where it’s — we’re only calling runs, we’re only calling pass, we are only calling screens. These plays have a bunch of different options, and they can unfold a bunch of different ways based on what you’re getting defensively.

There’s more to the answer, but that’s the most relevant portion. The RPO and zone read components of the offense make it really hard to accurately log and categorize what the Eagles are doing offensively.

For instance, if you call 100 run/pass options, and the defensive end crashes every time, then Jalen Hurts pulls and throws the ball 100 times.

Does that mean they need to run the ball more?

And if you call 100 zone reads, and the defensive end crashes every time, then Jalen Hurts runs the ball 100 times.

Does that mean D’Andre Swift isn’t getting enough touches? Is Hurts himself doing too much running?

That’s why it can never be as simple as “the Eagles ran the ball X times and threw the ball Y times.” A lot of plays have multiple outcomes and the directive is predicated on what the defense is showing you. So whenever we have a discussion about run/pass ratio, we always have to consider that nuance and context.

One more quote:

Q. Do you chalk up the interception as an unavoidable play? Obviously, TE Dallas Goedert slipped and just move on from that and say, hey, this is like a no-fault car accident?’(Bob Brookover)

BRIAN JOHNSON: You get into like the details of like break mechanics and things of that nature, but this is football and things happen. That was a very, very unfortunate play. Again, we had another RPO called that got thrown, and unfortunately, we slipped and [New York Giants CB] Adoree’ [Jackson] made a good play on the ball and was able to catch it and run it back.

Johnson calls this an RPO, but there’s no pull on the play. That probably means there was a pre-snap determination made on the Giant’s alignment, and/or the running option in this case was Hurts, and not the tailback:

Goedert slips out of his break and the Giants score a TD smh pic.twitter.com/WnACDg112z

— Shane Haff (@ShaneHaffNFL) December 26, 2023

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