Last week, The Athletic reported that the Philadelphia Eagles are facing internal frustrations about their offensive approach. It’s news because it confirms that one of the Super Bowl favorites, the team with a record among the best in the league, is facing an identity crisis in the second half of the regular season, but really, it’s not new. It’s just reached a boiling point, especially as star receiver AJ Brown has expressed his own frustrations.

“You can’t just keep slapping a Band-Aid over that and you expect to win later in the year,” Brown said 

It is clear why Brown is frustrated: even though the Eagles are 8-2, they rank 25th in total yards and 28th in passing yards. Undoubtedly, that’s unacceptably low for a team with as good a receiver as Brown, but they were actually worse in passing last season — they were 29th in passing yards and dead-last in pass attempts. Those are the facts.

And I’ve seen people, whether fans, media pundits, or plain-old haters, point to Jalen Hurts as the issue, claiming that he runs too much. That’s the easiest claim to make, especially for the “quarterbacks are supposed to get the snap and throw, not run around in the pocket” crowd. And the rankings above support that claim in one way or another. But it ignores the facts, and it misdiagnoses what the problem actually is.

Let’s start here: Hurts has thrown 16 touchdowns compared to one interception. He has a 0.4 percent interception rate, which not only leads the league but puts him in contention with the record Aaron Rodgers set in 2018 with the Green Bay Packers with his 0.3 percent pick rate. He’s running less — his rushing attempts and yards per game are at their lowest point since he became a full-time starter in 2021.

And some might say “what about the eye test? The offense just doesn’t look good and it’s on the quarterback to make sure it’s in order.” That’s true, but one person can’t do everything. I get that quarterbacks get the blame for flailing offenses, but it’s more than that. It’s about the Eagles having an offensive scheme that makes explosive plays difficult to come by.

A breakdown from Joel Moran of the ‘Pick a Side’ podcast on X shows the Eagles are running hitch routes more than any team in the league, a tendency that only reinforces how difficult their scheme makes it to create explosive plays. Furthermore, they don’t get many yards after catch on top of that. 

That’s where Brown has a point. They have him and they have DaVonta Smith, a duo some have called the best receiver tandem in the league. They have Dallas Goedert, too. But they don’t have a receiver or tight end ranked in the top-49 in the league in yards after catch — Smith is number 50 and Saquon Barkley, a running back, is 33rd on the list. How is that possible? Brown and Smith are among the best receiver duos in the league, yet they don’t get the ball in space, on the move, or in situations where their talent actually matters.  

So in other words, Hurts is throwing short pass after short pass, and instead of picking up more yards, the receivers are going down. And that lack of consistent explosiveness in the passing game is damaging the entire scheme. It makes it impossible for the offense to thrive through Barkley and the running game as it did in the past — linebackers don’t have to play as deep because there’s no major threat of Hurts launching one over the top. And that derails the entire offense.

Last season, the Eagles got their explosive plays through the run game.  They ranked top-five in the major rushing categories: attempts, yards, yards per attempt, and touchdowns. They were led by the eventual AP NFL Offensive Player of the Year, the 2,000-yard rusher in Barkley. And he averaged 3.8 yards before contact last year, but he’s down to 2.3 this year. Put simply, Barkley and the threat of Hurts running at any moment — he averaged 42 yards per game — helped set up the passing attack. They forced defenses to respect multiple stress points. But that’s not happening this year. 

They have been scrambling with injuries keeping center Cam Jurgens, left guard Landon Dickerson and right tackle Lane Johnson off the field from time-to-time this year, and that could explain some of the disruption. But even with the injuries, the issue isn’t purely personnel — it’s that the offense hasn’t adjusted. The explosiveness that once came naturally now has to be manufactured, and the Eagles haven’t found a way to do it

The reality is that this offense could be lethal. They have a mobile quarterback, a top running back capable of taking over a game, an elite tight end, and two receivers who cause havoc for secondaries. It is essential to use all of those weapons instead of shrinking the playbook and asking Hurts to win from a box he was never meant to play in.