In this Super matchup, it’s the Eagles and Nick Foles who have the edge
When you look at the Super Bowl matchup, people have a tendency to think one thing:
It’s Tom Brady. How are you going to stop him?
But defensively, the Eagles are built similarly to teams that have limited Brady and the Patriots. Up front, they can pressure with four. They are very physical and have non-stop motors, led by Fletcher Cox, who is just relentless. They just don’t stop.
The real question for Philadelphia is whether it is going to be able to score enough and if Nick Foles is going to play well enough to put pressure on Brady and the Patriots.
What is Foles going to bring? How is he going to be effective against the Patriots?
New England has two weeks of prep time and every ounce of film on him. They’re going to know that offense just as well as the Eagles.
Foles is going to have to be on his game.
But what Philadelphia has going to for it is this new style of offense that has crept into the NFL with run-pass options and zone reads.
At first everyone saw it and said, “Why are quarterbacks running zone read in the NFL? They’re going to get hit. They’re going to get beat up.” And, they did. A lot of quarterbacks who tried to run that zone read got hit a lot. They got punished. But those schemes have evolved.
The quarterbacks in the NFL are elite passers and you can still run those same schemes where it’s a run-pass option. It doesn’t have to be read and a keep with the quarterback. It can be a read on a linebacker and a pass, and that is something that the Eagles do better than anyone in the league. That’s also something that Foles has done exceptionally well, going back to when he was with Chip Kelly in Philadelphia and he had a record-breaking season.
Doug Pederson, a couple of weeks back, he went back into the Kelly files and watched film – specifically what Foles did well.
The Eagles already were doing a lot of the run-pass options with Carson Wentz and Pederson is a big fan – they do that a lot in Kansas City, and that’s where he came from. So those plays have always been there, but now the Eagles have just really ramped it up. In the NFC Championship game, their first 40 plays, 10 of them were run-pass options where Foles could hand the ball to the running back or he could pull it and throw it quickly.
It’s difficult to stop that when you’re in zone defense schemes where you’re responsible for a gap and a pass area. It’s very hard to defend that.
David Carr
Out of those 10 plays, Foles probably threw five or six slant routes right behind linebackers who were stepping up and had to play the run option.
It’s difficult to stop that when you’re in zone defense schemes where you’re responsible for a gap and a pass area. It’s very hard to defend that. Philadelphia takes advantage of that very well, and Foles gets into a rhythm that way.
In the NFC Championship, he was throwing off-balance and making big-time throws to Zach Ertz and Alshon Jeffery. I think they have a distinct advantage with the run-pass option, because of how good their run game has been. On the other side, New England has struggled against the run. The Patriots have been giving up yards on the ground all season while Philly has been eating up yards on the ground at the same time.
New England is going to have a tough time because it’s going to have to do what Minnesota tried to do in the NFC Championship and that’s play some man coverage.
When you play man you take guys out of the responsibility of having to read run and pass. The linebackers can attack the line of scrimmage, attack the run. But that puts a lot of pressure on the secondary, and I think Minnesota has as good a secondary as anybody and you saw what Philadelphia did to them.
I think the Vikings are better than the Patriots in the secondary so that’s a real challenge for Patriots and for Bill Belichick. How are they going to defend that part of the game?
The Eagles still have to go out there and execute and that’s the wild card. It’s the Super Bowl. People are going to tell them it’s just a normal game, but it’s not. It’s the biggest game of your life. You have all these distractions going on.
These guys who they’re playing, the Patriots, they’ve been there. Eight times. I don’t even know if the Eagles have eight guys who have been to a Super Bowl.
But if the Eagles get Foles into a comfort zone throwing the football early, then he’s able to take big shots down the field. He stays strong in the pocket. He’s poised. I think Pederson has struck gold with what he has been able to ask Foles to do. If you’re successful in that, then you have him for the rest of the game – and when Foles gets into a rhythm he’s an elite passer.
Now you can go head-to-head with probably the best quarterback of all time and you have a chance.
Question of the week
From Vickie Raynor: I understand you now coach football with your brother and dad. Is coaching these newbies just as fulfilling in a different way?
My brother Darren was really excited about the job opening at Derek’s old high school. We had always talked about and joked about coaching together at some point. The interesting thing is I was just off playing and still pretty sure that I was going to be done unless the perfect opportunity came up. But when he called me and said he was going to take it and needed to know if I was going to be here – and it was at the school that I was going to send my children to – I had a hard time saying no. It’s something that I know that he loves, and he’s a fantastic head coach. He’s great for those kids, and any time you get a chance to help your bother out, that’s what you do. It has been a blast coaching with him.
It has been great. I knew that I would enjoy coaching my boys, which is one of the main reasons I did it. It’s better that I call plays than sit up in the stands and complain about someone else calling plays, so I figured I might as well do that if I’m going to be at the games. But what I didn’t expect is how much fun I’d have just coaching in general, coaching the game and just being able to tell stories to some of these kids. They have questions every day that don’t even pertain to what we’re doing on the field at that moment. They’re fans of the game. They want to know about the Super Bowl, about college, about Fresno State, about New York. It has been cool to give that to them.
And then to see them get it – when the light goes on with a kid about something you’ve been telling him over and over and they kind of believe you, but they’re not really sure. They’re like every other 15- or 16-year old that they have it figured out. But when they finally do it how you’ve been coaching them to do it and the light kicks on, they go out and execute it, and they just change as a player. That has been really cool, too.
David Carr is a former Fresno State quarterback, NFL No. 1 draft pick and Super Bowl champion. Now he’s an analyst for the NFL Network and writing a weekly column in collaboration with The Bee’s Robert Kuwada. The column is sponsored by Valley Children’s Hospital.
This story was originally published January 31, 2018 at 11:59 AM with the headline "In this Super matchup, it’s the Eagles and Nick Foles who have the edge."