After the Philadelphia Eagles traded for Jay Ajayi, many thought he would become the feature back in Doug Pederson’s offense. Instead, the team added him to a three-man rotation along with Corey Clement and LeGarrette Blount.

At first glance, it seems that Ajayi and Blount have each received about one-third of the carries, while Clement takes only one-sixth, leaving the rest of the team to split the last sixth.

You can see this depicted above on the left. As seen on the right, however, Ajayi’s role has increased over the last 3 weeks, while Clement’s has decreased. When you compare this breakdown of carries to the breakdown of yardage gained by each runner, you see a few trends.

Clement has been the epitome of consistency, while Blount and Ajayi seem to alternate big weeks. Also, over the past three games, Ajayi’s production has dropped while Blount’s has been rising.

Finally, the team has had five straight games with fewer than 150 rushing yards. While the team has continued to win, this is a very startling realization that something is wrong with the offense.

Below is the yards per carry gained by each runner, graphed by week. All three backs have hovered around the league average for a few weeks now, and this indicates something isn’t working properly.

In each of Ajayi’s first three weeks on the team, all three backs were able to gain yards at an above-average pace. Since then, all three backs have been much closer to average. The reason for this is simple: The Eagles have become predictable and have used backs in the wrong situations.

Since Week 9, 87 percent of runs by LeGarrette Blount have been between the tackles. While the general perception is that Blount is a powerful, between-the-tackles runner, history actually shows that his elusiveness is more effective when used outside of the tackles.

Similarly, Ajayi, who has been efficient between the tackles, has run the ball inside only 45 percent of the time. Clement, who excels running the ball to the outside, like Blount, has only run 55 percent of his carries to the outside.

The Eagles should make the following changes to get the most of out of their running backs: