What happened to Super Bowl champions’ offense? It moved to Indy, David Carr says

The Philadelphia Eagles have a lot of high-profile offensive players who put a Super Bowl ring on their finger last season – Carson Wentz, Zach Ertz, Alshon Jeffery, Nelson Agholor.

That’s a lot of firepower for a team ranked 24th in the league in points per game.

And when Wentz or someone else is asked, “What has been the issue?” they can’t really put their finger on it. They’re not really sure what’s missing, and that’s concerning because if you don’t know what the problem is, it’s hard to fix it.

Let me help. If anyone is wondering where the Eagles’ offense is, it’s in Indianapolis.

Colts coach Frank Reich was the offensive coordinator in Philadelphia last season and aside from play-calling, he’s a guy who in the locker room is a fantastic leader. He brings perspective to a locker room, to a quarterback room, to an offensive staff.

Also, John DeFilippo was with the Eagles as quarterbacks coach and now he’s the offensive coordinator in Minnesota. He’s a great coach, as well – he was with Derek Carr in Oakland and I’ve known John for a long time.

The Eagles’ run game obviously isn’t the same, and that gets a little lost. They were the No. 3 rushing offense in the NFL last season.

People think it was Carson Wentz, and then Nick Foles came in and did his thing. But if you’re going to run Frank Reich’s offense, or Doug Pederson’s offense, you have to be able to run the football, and they did that last season with LeGarrette Blount and Jay Ajayi. All that play-action pass, getting the ball out of the quarterback’s hands in a timely and effective way, it all comes off the run game.

But it’s no secret why the Eagles aren’t playing solid football, and the Colts are.

I’m a huge believer in coaches and the effect they can have on teams, and if you lose a Frank Reich and a John DeFilippo off an offensive staff, that’s very difficult to replace.

Look around the league at the good football teams. The Chiefs, the Rams and the Saints come to mind, and they have the three best offensive coordinators/play-callers in Andy Reid, Sean McVay and Sean Payton, and offensive staffs that for the most part have been together for a while. That’s what the Eagles had with Pederson, Reich and DeFilippo.

But now, instead of a solid three-man team in Philadelphia, it’s a one-man team. Pederson is a tremendous coach, but the head coach has to manage the entire group and there’s only so much time he can spend on offensive game planning. That’s up to coaching staff and the head coach has to trust that his staff is going to put together a good plan.

I think they believe that they can, it’s just clearly not the same.

They added a solid piece in Golden Tate, and the offense hasn’t really improved. That’s a scary sign. If you add a player like Golden Tate your offense should be better – he lives in that realm of catching the ball short, breaking tackles and making things happen

But the past couple of weeks it hasn’t been, so you have to look even deeper. You have to question what the offense is doing from a schematic standpoint.

Last year, the Eagles were at the cutting edge as far as pushing the envelope and really bringing the RPO, the run-pass option play and scheme, into the limelight and they won a Super Bowl by doing that. Now, it’s just a different situation.

Meanwhile, the Colts for so many years relied on deep drops by Andrew Luck, taking shots down the field. He was throwing the ball a ton and he was paying the price. He was always at or near the top of the league in sacks, and he has been banged up.

Now, the Colts have a great scheme. And with a good offensive line led by Quenton Nelson, Luck is getting protection. It’s no surprise, If you protect your quarterback you’re going to have success.

Luck does a great job seeing the field and he can almost play point guard out there by spreading it out, running the football and running play-action pass off that. It’s a recipe to keep your quarterback healthy.

Early on people were saying it’s a dink-and-dunk offense, but people were saying the same things about the Eagles last year, and the Chiefs.

Now Indianapolis is doing the same things. I think it’s going to keep Andrew healthy. It’s going to prolong his career. Now you have a franchise quarterback for a much longer time.

It’s a great combination. In Philadelphia, it’s just not.

David Carr answers your questions

David Carr answers reader’s questions. Submit your questions by email to sports@fresnobee.com (please put “David Carr” in the subject line)