How the Commanders let A.J. Brown dominate them again
Breaking down the terrible plan that led to Eagles WR A.J. Brown dominating the Commanders a second time this season
All the action at the trade deadline has distracted from what was an abysmal defensive performance by the Washington Commanders against the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday. The Commanders gave up 38 points and it could easily have been more had they not caused two fumbles inside their own five yard line. One of the standout failings of the Commanders was the inability to stop Eagles receiver A.J. Brown.
Just a few weeks ago, when the Commanders played the Eagles in Philadelphia, Brown dominated the game, catching nine passes for 175 yards and two touchdowns. A fair bit of that was against Emmanuel Forbes and his struggles with double moves, but Forbes wasn’t the only one that struggled with Brown on the day. So you’d imagine the Commanders would want to correct that issue the second time around and adjust their game plan to better account for Brown.
Well, Brown still dominated the game with eight catches for 130 yards and two more touchdowns. That means in two games against Washington this season, Brown totaled 17 catches for 305 yards, an average of 17.9 yards per catch, and four touchdowns. That is outrageous poor from the Commanders and needs to be addressed. So what exactly was the plan to try and handle Brown and what went wrong for Washington this time? Let’s take a closer look.
The plan in the first game for the Commanders was to put rookie corner Emmanuel Forbes on Brown, hoping his quickness, length and ball skills could be a good matchup. Obviously, we all saw how that went and Forbes was promptly benched. So this time instead of trying to pay Brown more attention by doubling him or using some zone coverages, the Commanders appeared set on sticking with man coverage and letting Benjamin St-Juste have a go instead of Forbes. Pretty early on, the Eagles saw this was the intent and went after it.
Here, the Commanders have battled to a third and four situation with a chance to stop the drive and get off the field. The Eagles line up Brown in the slot to the right and the Commanders have St-Juste follow him inside. Brown runs a deep out-breaking route from the slot while the outside receiver breaks quickly inside underneath him. At the snap, St-Juste does ok getting his hands on Brown. He doesn’t fully jam him but he does force Brown off his path a little bit by shoving him inside a yard or two further than Brown likely intended.
However, after that initial contact, Brown manages to break free of St-Juste and get a step on him. This is where St-Juste struggles as he no longer has control of the route. Brown gets to the top of his route and fakes a cut inside before breaking out towards the sideline. St-Juste doesn’t bite too heavily on the fake, learning from his mistake against DJ Moore with the Bears earlier this season, but he’s still unable to recover from his lost position. Brown maintains his distance as he breaks outside and quarterback Jalen Hurts finds him for a 24-yard gain and a first down.
Later on that same drive, the Commanders managed to get the Eagles into a third and 11 situation, which should be a favorable situation for the defense.
With St-Juste already having been beaten by Brown, the Commanders opt to put Forbes back in the fire in a key situation. Now in fairness, the Commanders don’t call a pure man coverage like they did on the last play, instead they look to play a form of quarters coverage. However, that quarters coverage comes with an adjustment against certain looks.
On this play, the Eagles have three receivers bunched together to the left of the formation with Brown isolated out to the right. With three receivers to one side, this version of quarters asks the safety on Brown’s side of the field to read for any crossing routes from the three receiver side of the field, leaving the corner on Brown’s side effectively one-on-one against Brown. So while the call itself wasn’t for man coverage, the Eagles were able to manipulate that type of situation by their formation.
Before we even get into the play, this is a scenario that the Commanders had to have a plan for. After Forbes struggled so much with Brown earlier in the season that they have benched him since then, there’s no way they could afford to throw him back into the fire against Brown, especially not in a situation that could be manipulated into a one-on-one. That is bad coaching. At the very least, have Forbes switch sides and not have to think about playing against Brown, or if you have to use Forbes there due to injuries or whatever, you have to provide him with help. To have this situation occur is malpractice from the Commanders coaching staff.
After the ball is snapped, Forbes is naturally very cautious about getting beat deep having given up numerous big plays to Browne he last time he played him. The Eagles of course instantly look to attack Forbes with a double move, which Forbes doesn’t bite on. However, because of the double move, Forbes sinks back even further to stay on top of any deep throw to the end zone. As a result, he loses track of Brown, who works into his blind spot before suddenly peeling off and sitting down. Hurts is able to make an easy throw to Brown, who catches the ball five yards away from Forbes. Forbes, to his credit, then manages to close up and tackle Brown, but not before giving up 20 yards and the first down conversion.
The fact that Ron Rivera, Jack Del Rio and the rest of the defensive coaching staff put Forbes in that situation in the first place given the context of Forbes’ season so far is completely unacceptable. To make matters even worse, as the game went on, they continued to provide no help to defenders covering Brown.
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