The key is notice the great cutback and vision RB Marshawn Lynch has as both double teams get enough of their interior DTs Allen and Cox. It is noted that Jernigan is out on this play so that initial play side double team may not be as strong but nonetheless, Falcon’s RB Freeman can certaintly mimic the cutback ability or even run tight following the FB and churn yardage. Just dont expect huge chunks here.

ATL’s passing attack is something of a mystery in the sense that it rarely dominates and certainly is not putting up the huge numbers from last year, but is as talented as any at the WR level in football. Speaking of last year, the Eagles traveled to Atlanta in mid November of last year. PHI’s secondary was in a MUCH different place in Schwartz’s first year, and they did not rotate much coverage or try to double WR Julio Jones in that game. He had a good production day with 10 targets and over 125 yards receiving, but overall Ryan lacked accuracy at times and his WR core had 5 drops in a kind of sluggish performance. Like this year, they struggled pushing the ball down the field (Ryan was 5 of 13 on passes>20 yards), but interestingly Ryan did play well under pressure in that game with a 120 QB rating and a TD when hurried. More on that in a bit.

PHI secondary is playing at a much higher than at any point last year and functions well in both man and zone coverages. Their corners will play sides (Mills on the left, Darby on the right). Mills is a physical corner (plays almost bigger than his size 6'00" and 194 lbs), and despite some lapses in coverage (mental mistakes, physically susceptible to double moves, overall default aggressive) he will match up well on the intermediate drags and digs, very similarly to Troy Hill on those routes last week. Darby has a bit more speed, and will do ok on crossing routes as well, but can be out matched physically when competing for balls one on one, and also to double moves. We pulled an example from Week 15 against the Giants, where TE betweener Engram was lined up at X and runs a hitch route and beats Darby. See below: