After the Monday night debut there has been some discussion about the Eagles gameplan and how they chose to attack the Falcons defense. Heading into the game we knew this was going to be a Cover 3 defense and we talked about a variety of ways the Eagles would attack that Cover 3 defense . Certainly we were expecting a heavy dose of the running game with our 60 million dollar backfield and some deeps shots against that Cover 3. Turns out, we didn't see much of either. So what did we see?

After reviewing the game several times, it was pretty obvious that Chip and Pat decided that the best way to attack this defense was in the short passing game as they saw matchups to exploit with Ertz, Matthews, and the running backs. All those players made big plays in the passing game throughout. The big question going forward, is whether the short passing game is part of Chip's philosophy moving forward with Bradford, or whether it was more gameplan specific. After all, we were told when he came out of Oregon how much Chip hates QB who take sacks (who doesn't?) and how he wants his QB to get the ball out of his hands in 1.5 seconds or less. While that philosophy is a bit unrealistic at the pro level we might see some of it bare fruit now that Chip has an accurate decision maker combined with a quick release (something he hasn't had since coming to the Eagles).

There were many comments after the game pondering whether the lack of deep ball on Monday night was a function of Chip's offense and gameplan, or whether Bradford was a little gun shy in his first game in over 2 years. My summary, as you will see below, is that for this week anyway, it was certainly more about Chip's offense and how he chose to attack the Falcons, although there were some moments where it seemed Bradford was a bit too quick to pull the trigger and could have let some plays develop. However, we did see some glimpses of that arm talent that made him the #1 overall pick.

Short Stuff:

Here's a look at some of the play designs we saw, especially in the first half of the game. You will notice a trend here.

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All plays with multiple passing options all designed within 10 yards of the line of scrimmage. There were a lot of these plays on Monday night where Sam didn't have a deep option on the play. One thing that's worth expressing is how nice it is to have a QB who can make quick reads and get the ball out on 2 and 3 step drops. We haven't seen that perhaps since Jeff Garcia.

But there were opportunities where Chip opened up the playbook starting with a couple of throws that Sam would love to have back.

Early in the 1st quarter, as predicted, the Eagles went with a 4 Verticals concept against the Falcons Cover 3. As you see below, they line up in a double stack formation as they spread the field wide. Look at the position of the safety highlighted in red as the Eagles will run 4 vertical routes from this formation. You can see the pressure this applies on the deep safety:

Miles Austin runs a nice route and quickly gets inside the DB and as you can see Bradford has a huge throwing window down the seam.

But Bradford throws it a little bit out of Austin's reach. Could have been a potential TD for Austin:

It's worth crediting that Bradford does a nice job of looking that deep safety off as he first glances to the left side of the field, pulling the safety over with his eyes, which opens up the seam route to Austin:

Later in the game, in the red zone, Bradford has another great opportunity on a seam route again on a 4 verticals concept. This time, from 12 personnel the Eagles run a 2 tight end set with Celek and Ertz:

Ertz gets inside into the sweet spot of the zone and provides Bradford with a nice throwing window. Bradford doesn't hesitate:

But throws the ball well behind Ertz missing on a sure TD. Hard to tell if Bradford was trying to back shoulder it a bit. If he leads Ertz into the end zone he's likely to get clocked by the safety, but Bradford still misses this on a throw that has some nice zip:

Moving along to some of Bradford's nicer down the field throws. He proves he can hit that seam route on this throw which is nice play design combining the wheel route with the seam down the field against the one deep safety look (more on this later):

The inside safety will take Mathews on the wheel route and Ertz gets a nice inside release down the seam. Bradford has a nice throwing window but has to be cautious of the dropping LB:

Bradford sails the ball over the outstretched LB and puts it in a spot where only his athletic TE can make the play. Great catch from Ertz:

His most impressive throw of the night came on the 4 verticals switch concept we spoke about leading up to the game. We covered this in the last post, but we get a great look here from the All-22:

A couple of other plays to highlight on the debate of whether Bradford left some plays on the field. In general, I don't think he did, but you would like to think that he would recognize some coverages pre-snap and look for some opportunities to get the ball downfield when his playmakers draw single coverage. Here's one such example. You'll essentially see a three man route on the top of the screen with Matthews running a wheel from the slot and Ertz running a shallow drag. Bradford has a one deep safety look and the safety is standing on the top hash mark. Looking at the bottom of the screen he has Nelson Agholor lined up in single coverage on the wide side of the field.

You'll see as the play develops, Bradford had Agholor open deep but he's already gotten the ball out on a short one to Riley Cooper. Would have loved to see Bradford air one out to the rookie there.

Looking at another familiar concept we've covered extensively over the last few years, the Eagles ran the snag concept on the Demarco Murray's first TD. Frequent readers of the blog will recognize this concept. It is a 3 man route combination highlighted on the top of the screen below. Generally Bradford is going to be looking for the corner route first which is being run by Jordan Matthews out of the slot. We saw Bradford hit Matthews on this a couple of times in the preseason:

As the play develops, you'll see all 3 of Bradford's options on the top of the screen. Celek and Huff are covered. You can certainly argue that Sam could take a shot at throwing a jump ball to the sideline for Matthews, but he instead quickly moves to the opposite side of the field and gets the ball to Murray in the flat. Demarco makes a nifty move for the TD:

To close the loop on this, we are talking one game and its a limited sample set. As expected, Chip used a lot of 4 verticals to attack the Falcons Cover 3 defense and obviously liked his match-ups in the underneath passing game getting Ertz and the running backs lined up on the LBs. I expect him to attack the Cowboys in a variety of different ways as they are a very different defense. I'd also expect to see Bradford go deep on the first drive, maybe even the first play.

Sproles the Receiver:

Just wanted to re-visit one other point. All offseason we were hearing how Chip was likely to use Darren Sproles more as a receiver. We got a taste of that in the preseason and more on Monday night. I keep waiting for defenses to see Sproles on the field and to roll out their nickel package. You just can't cover him with a linebacker and teams need to start avoiding that. In a couple of instances the Eagles found themselves with a very favorable matchup. Here's Sproles in the slot lined up against the Falcons SAM LB (and former DE) Kroy Biermann:

On this one, Sproles just runs a short route and Bradford gets the ball to him quickly:

Later in the game, the Eagles got that match-up again, and this time the call was the exact same play I highlighted earlier that went down the seam to Zach Ertz:

This is really nice play design and the Eagles got the exact matchup they were looking for. With Ertz carrying the safety on the seam route this leaves Sproles one-on-one against Kroy Biermann on the wheel route:

He has no chance on this play:

Bradford makes a nice throw and Sproles would have gained a lot more had he been able to stay in bounds: