2 issues the Philadelphia Eagles need to fix before the playoffs

The Philadelphia Eagles are in a good spot. It’s cool to be able to think that the team only has a few things that they need to get right to be dominant in the postseason. That being said, the things that need to be fixed are pretty important.

There are six weeks left in the regular season so there is a little time to get everything right, and the Eagles have a pretty soft schedule that will allow them to figure it out. 

Eagles have an issue on offense and an immediate and glaring issue on defense

If you have issues on defense, you’d rather not have them show their face the week that you’re going to play one of the best offenses in the NFL. On the other side of that coin, if you’re having trouble with part of your offense, playing the Ravens' defense is probably one of the better weeks to get right.

The Eagles passing game is relatively lackluster

The Eagles have more rushing attempts than any team in the NFL and they have the least passing attempts of any team in the NFL; a wise man avoids all extremes. 

You could argue that the Eagles' passing game is working exactly how it needs to: as a compliment to a prolific running game. The team is on a seven-game win streak, so until that game plan stops working, why move away from it? 

It just doesn’t feel right, and this is a team with A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith, so how could it?

A.J.’s been amazing. He’s only played in eight games this season and he’s had over 100 receiving yards in half of those. That’s incredible. In 2022, he only hit the 100-yard mark five times.

This is going to sound bad, wildly arrogant, and unappreciative of A.J., but we haven’t had a game that’s made you say, ‘It shouldn’t be legal for A.J. to be on the field right now. What he’s doing is assault, both mentally and physically,’ yet. We know he can do that, and 12 games into the season we haven’t had that. 

Again, he’s awesome. What he did last week against the Rams was impressive. He was one of the four players to catch a pass, and he put up 109 yards and a touchdown. 

DeVonta Smith is a totally different story. He doesn’t have a game with over 100 receiving yards yet, and he was WR1 for four games while A.J. was out with a hamstring.

His best game so far has been the Jaguars matchup where he had four catches for 87 yards and one of the best touchdown catches anyone has had this season. That just can’t be his peak this season. 

Think about it like this: The Week 11 game against the Commanders was a revenge game for Jahan Dotson, and on the very first offensive play of the game the ball came to him. That's showing that in this offense can force-feed players the ball… if it wants to. For some reason, DeVonta isn’t a priority unless he has to be. 

Involving DeVonta in the passing game isn’t going to immediately fix it, but it’s a really good spot to start because DeVonta rocks.

Eagles need to figure out the EDGE situation

Brandon Graham’s season coming to an end is a big problem, and it came out of nowhere. The Eagles might be in trouble because now there are only two edge rushers on the roster who are trustworthy: Josh Sweat and Nolan Smith. 

The biggest problem here is the potential (and probable) increased snap counts from those two. Take the 2023 season: per Next Gen Stats, Josh Sweat played a whopping 71.9 percent of the defensive snaps, and in the second half of the season he played like a shell of himself, and it was sad and we all had a terrible time. 

Right now, Sweat is playing really well, and part of that is due to him only playing 63.1 percent of the snaps. It turns out that when guys who play a rotational position can actually rotate, they play a whole buttload better. Who’da thunk?

BG was playing 33 percent of the snaps this season (on average), and the goal should be to make sure Nolan and Josh take on as little of that 33 percent as functionally possible. 

Luckily, Vic Fangio was asked about where those snaps were going to go in his Wednesday press conference. Vic said, “...It’s gonna be a lot of guys picking up his load that he’s been playing. It won’t be one guy.”

One player that will be used to fill that role is Jalyx Hunt, the 2024 third-rounder out of Houston Christian. But that only makes three guys who have been on the 53-man roster since the beginning of the season.

They also have Tarron Jackson, KJ Henry, Ochaun Mathis, and Charles Harris on the practice squad, so there are definitely options to pick from. Hopefully one or two of those guys can provide something, but you can’t expect much. 

So there are plenty of guys that Fangio will be able to use for his Edge by committee. Hopefully at some point, one of these guys will be able to stick and offer a reliable early down run stopper so Sweat and Smith can stay relatively fresh for third downs. 

On the flip side of that, if no one works out we’ll know exactly who to blame when things go wrong. Let’s just hope that’s not the case.

It stinks that the Eagles have the issues that they do, given that they’re in pretty important spots… but Philadelphia are Super Bowl contenders because they only have two areas that need to get cleaned up/fleshed out.