The Panthers sacked Carson Wentz three times and he only threw 30 passes. Cam Newton threw 52 passes and the Eagles sacked him just twice. The pass to sack ratio there favors Carolina by a wide margin. Just looking at the stats, you would conclude the Panthers D-line was better on Thursday night.

That’s not the case at all.

Carolina didn’t get much pressure early in the game so they began to blitz. Two of their sacks came from a LB and a CB. That tells you they were aggressive and creative in getting pressure.

The Eagles didn’t blitz much. They didn’t have to. The D-line consistently got good push. They didn’t have free runners landing highlight hits on Newton all night long, but they affected him with pressure. Newton threw 52 passes and only got 239 yards. That is…bad. Consider that in the previous game, Newton threw 33 passes and had 355 yards.

The pressure generated by the Eagles did two big things. First, it sped him up. The Panthers love to throw the ball downfield. They couldn’t do that with the Eagles DL getting regular pressure on Newton. Suddenly he was throwing the ball to RBs and TEs in the flat. Rookie Christian McCaffrey had 10 catches for 56 yards.

The other thing pressure did was make Newton uncomfortable. That led to some poor decisions and to sloppy mechanics. There was a play late in the game when Newton did try to go deep to McCaffrey. Pressure on the play took away his chance to step into the throw and the pass landed a few yards out of bounds. There was a play late in the game where Rasul Douglas should have had an INT. That happened because Derek Barnett hit Newton as he threw. He got rushed into making a decision and also made a poor throw.

Go back to last week. The Cardinals got into several 3rd & longs. Each time, Carson Palmer dropped back and immediately dumped the ball off to an underneath receiver. Those were complete give-up plays. There is nothing wrong with a screen or draw in those situations, but Palmer couldn’t wait to get rid of the ball. The reputation of the Eagles DL caused problems. They got some pressure in the game, but just the fear of them affected the Arizona offense.

That’s impressive.

The Giants built their whole gameplan around avoiding the Eagles rush. They were throwing the ball about as fast as you’ll ever see.

The best part of all this is that the Eagles don’t just rush the passer. They are 2nd in the NFL in run defense right now (and tops in the NFC). The D-line has been tremendous against the run this season. Vinny Curry has been especially outstanding. The DTs eat up blocks and also make plays. Tim Jernigan has 6 TFLs already.

Good run defense makes a huge difference. It makes offenses one-dimensional and puts pressure on the QB to get everything done through the air. When that happens, the Eagles can attack the QB and put pressure on him. All the negative plays have led to lots of long yardage situations. That’s when teams get scared and just dump the ball off. The Eagles have done a great job this year of playing the sticks. They attack the ball and keep the receiver short of the line to get, which leads to punting situations.

All of this starts with the front four…or should I say the front eight. The starters are Brandon Graham, Fletcher Cox, Tim Jernigan and Vinny Curry. They play most of the reps. But you can’t ignore Chris Long, Beau Allen, Justin Hamilton, Elijah Qualls, Derek Barnett and Steven Means. Those guys all combine to get the job done. Destiny Vaeao played in the opener before getting hurt.

Jim Schwartz plays a lot of guys up front and isn’t afraid to play backups in key situations. He rolls his guys in and out, always trying to keep his players as fresh as possible. Everyone contributes. Allen had a sack and TFL last week. Long had a strip sack in Los Angeles. Hamilton got pressure on multiple plays on Thursday night and even got half a sack.

You can debate whether the DL wore down last year. That should not be the case this season.

This line still has a ways to go to get to the level they want to be at. Right now they are getting the job done, but this group of players isn’t satisfied with that. They want to be great. We’ll have to wait and see if that happens. With guys like Cox and Graham, anything is possible.

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