Run game leads Commanders to victory over Eagles
Breaking down how the Commanders were able to run the ball successfully against the Eagles.
The Washington Commanders had their biggest win of the season on Monday night, handing their divisional rivals the Philadelphia Eagles their first loss of the season. They did so with an old school approach of running the ball, dominating the time of possession and playing some decent defense. The success of the run game was critical to the victory and while the Commanders didn’t manage to hit any huge runs, they did manage to consistently pick up chunks and stay ahead of the chains.
As a team, the Commanders had 49 rushing attempts for 152 yards and two touchdowns at 3.2 yards per carry. It wasn’t particularly efficient but it was effective in being able to control the time of possession and keep the Eagles’ offense off the field. There were a few factors that went into the run game being successful, so let's break them down.
Scheme
For the first two seasons with Scott Turner as the Offensive Coordinator, the Commanders leaned more into zone run concepts than gap scheme runs. They’ve typically had athletic interior lineman that can generate movement up front and climb to reach second level defenders. This year they’ve not quite had the same success in that regard, but they have been able to introduce more of the gap scheme runs, especially with their personnel both up front and in the backfield.
They’ve still been a predominately zone-based team, but against the Eagles they changed the game plan. The Eagles like to use a lot of three or five-man fronts, depending on how you count them. It can essentially look like a 3-4 scheme with three interior defensive lineman between the tackles and two outside linebackers on the edge. This can be a tough type of front to run zone scheme runs against because it’s not as easy to generate the double teams up front with an extra body on the line of scrimmage. So instead, the Commanders switched to mainly running gap schemes like power and counter against this look.
Here we can see that front from the Eagles which is essentially a 3-4. Scott Turner anticipates that look and calls a counter trey scheme with down blocks from the right side of the line and both left tackle and left guard pulling to the right side to create extra gaps over there. The scheme works nicely with John Bates in particular making a strong block on defensive tackle Fletcher Cox with some help from right tackle Cornelius Lucas. Left guard Andrew Norwell pulls across to kick out the edge defender while left tackle Charles Leno follows behind him to pick up the second level defender. Lucas and Bates are too preoccupied by Cox to peel off and pick up the linebacker, otherwise this could have been a huge gain. But as it was, Brian Robinson does a nice job following his pullers to the edge before cutting back inside and running through the linebacker before being brought down.
Scott Turner had some early success running these gap scheme concepts against this five man front, so he stuck to them. But he didn’t just run the same play over and over again, he dressed it up in lots of different ways by having a different combination of players pulling and executing certain blocks.
This is a very similar type of play, but instead of the left guard and tackle pulling to the right side, both tight ends align to the left and pull to the right side. Armani Rogers acts as the guard as he works across the line to kick out the edge defender while Logan Thomas acts as the tackle that wraps around for the next defender. Robinson aligns offset to the right and takes the hand off initially looking like he’s working to the left side or up the middle, but he quickly works back to the right side as he follows his tight ends. Thomas just loses his block as Robinson arrives, but Robinson manages to squeeze through and into the second level of the defense for a nice gain.
When the Eagles did show a rare four-man front on first or second down, Turner reverted back to the zone scheme.
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