Eagles film review: Is Jalen Reagor as bad as his numbers indicate?
By Hunter Doyle
The Philadelphia Eagles quarterback needs to help Jalen Reagor out.
On the first drive of the game, the Birds faced a 3rd and 5. Sirianni went gun empty and motioned Kenneth Gainwell to the sideline and then back in towards the stack formation to give him a head start on his drag route and create some traffic. Pre-snap the Chargers came out in a two-high look with a lot of men at the line of scrimmage but rotate into a single high defense post-snap. The strong safety will buzz down.
Our best guess is that Los Angeles is playing Cover 3 buzz match. The Eagles are on the right hash and have two receivers to the field side or left side. Both receivers ( Dallas Goedert and Reagor) stem vertically. In response, the slot and outside corner both pattern match and carry them man-to-man. On the opposite side with Gainwell and the stack formation, Gainwell runs the drag, and #2, Quez Watkins, releases to the flat and the Chargers defenders play Cover 3 zone in response since they don’t run vertically.
Goedert runs a hook to the middle of the field versus the slot and is open. With Reagor one-on-one on the outside and the slot cleared out of the area, he is going to have a void to run his dig. Reagor continues vertical and once the corner playing in off-coverage flips his hips, he plants his foot and runs a speed turn to the middle of the field.
The throw is there to be made to both Goedert and Reagor. However, it looked like Hurts kept his eyes on the drag to Gainwell for too long. The middle-of-the-field defender had that covered. Once that read wasn’t there, Hurts looked for room to run despite having a clean pocket.
Later in the game, the Chargers run 3 buzz match again on a 3rd and 4 in the fourth quarter at midfield. The Eagles ran the mesh route concept and Reagor ran a nice dig by stemming vertical and outside before sinking his hips at the top of his route and breaking inwards with plenty of space. Hurts went airborne for the first down after evading the rush which leads to our next issue.