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IF THE EAGLES WANT SUCCESS IN 2026, THE O-LINE NEED TO COME TOGETHER
CHICAGO: It looked like Case Keenum had been waiting eight years for this chance.
One of the defining moments of the Eagles Super Bowl run at the end of the 2017 season was during the Eagles-Minnesota Vikings NFC Championship game.
The Birds were down 7-0 but virtue of, at least in part to Keenum's outstanding first drive.
But with 6:26 left in the first quarter, Eagles cornerback Patrick Robinson picked off a slightly deflected pass thrown by Keenum and ran it back 50 yards in spectacular fashion for a touchdown.
The noise made by the crowd at Lincoln Financial Field during Robinson's historic run could be heard in New Jersey and actually registered on a Richter scare in the area.
The play inspired the entire team to pull off a 38-7 win, a successful trip to the Super and logging Keenum into an infamous place in Eagles history.
Keenum got his revenge last week in Chicago when he led the Bears (2-1) to a 27-7 win over the Eagles (2-1) on Monday Night Football.
Was it all Keenum? The Eagles offense was a cluster you-know-what all night.
Eagles All Pro right tackle Lane Johnson talked about who was at the center of the loss.
“They got put in horrible situations by us, the offense,” Johnson said at his locker after the Chicago game. “You look at last week, it was pretty similar. There were some things as far as the run game and some stuff that we had some success with. Moving forward, we have to avoid the costly mistakes...and get more of that going.”
OFFENSIVE LINE HAS NOT BEEN THE SAME FOR A WHILE
When the Eagles came back to defend their Super Bowl crown, two Pro Bowlers were not healthy. Cam Jurgens and Landon Dickerson played through injuries the entire 2-25 season. Jurgens' back and Dickerson seemed to be hurting everywhere.
Dickerson admitted after the Eagles opener against Washington that he probably “should not have played” in 2025 at all.
Jurgens and Dickerson funded their own trips to South America to get treatment that is not allowed in the United States.
What were the results?
Jurgens is still struggling and Dickerson's play was so bad in this year's opener, he was put on injured reserve for four games. The 6-foot-6, 330 pound guard said his leg was rolled on during camp and caused a knee bruise that refused to heal while he practiced and played.
The Eagles moved Jurgens to left guard for the time being started Drew Kendell to center, his natural position.
The results have been mixed.
“At the end of the day, we haven't had too much time together as one cohesive unit,” Kendell said after a recent practice. “We're figuring it out how each different person likes to approach different blocks, different angles...that takes time of understanding with each other.”
Kendall said now that the games have started, there is not much time to figure out strategy and doing anything during a game isn't practical.
“There's just so much communication you can do [during a game], Kendall said. “You can't just say 'get this guy like this, then get out like that,' no...that's things that have leverage and reps with that guy so you can figure out to cut someone or how to help out the guy next to you and everything like that. That takes time. But we're making progress.”
THERE HAVE BEEN POSITIVES
Kendall has been getting praise for his work at center. The second-year interior lineman out of Boston College was critiqued by former NFL offensive lineman and longtime NFL analyst Brian Baldinger on world renowned “Baldy's Breakdowns.”
Baldinger was impressed with the number of near perfect snaps (over 70 snaps in the Birds game against Tennessee).
“You want to get into a 'flow' state,” Kendall said after a recent practice. “Once you're in it, you try not to try not to divert from it at all. You just try and stay in that good state of mind being extremely focused on what the job is, how we've got to get it done, just staying focused on that. The rest will take care of itself.”
TRAFFIC IN THE BACK FIELD
After just three games, Hurts has thrown three interceptions, been sacked eight times, eleven quarterback Hits, with 19 total pocket hits taken.
Those numbers are because of so much traffic in the backfield. Hurts is as elusive as any quarterback in the NFL.
Offensive coordinator Sean Mannion had some thoughts on the problem.
“Some of it is just execution, some of it’s fundamentals,” Mannion said at a recent press conference. “The biggest takeaway for me from the game was just being able to stay on schedule. We get behind the sticks a little bit. If there's a guy unaccounted for -- we had a free safety pressure early. We've just got to communicate a little bit better upfront.
“In large part, we always want to have a hat for a hat. We try to avoid those situations. Some of it’s execution, some of its fundamentals, but the better we're able to stay on schedule, the better we're going to be as an offense. That was the main takeaway from the game. That was some of it. Just a couple instances where it kind of got behind the sticks.”
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN DICKERSON IS CLEARED TO PLAY?
Kendall sounds like a guy who believes he will be playing center for the Birds for a long time.
Dickerson will supposedly be back in a few weeks.
What does Nick Sirianni do when Dickerson is cleared to play?
Will he leave Kendall at center and sit Jurgens?
All this impacts Saquon Barkley the most. If he is to succeed, the O-line has to be the complete deal.
That is just basic football.
Against Tennessee, Barkley left the game in the first half with a stinger.
He barely played.
Against the Chicago Bears, Barkley, sporting a “cowboy collar” to stabilize his neck against hits, was hitting on some productive runs, finishing with 82 yards on 15 carries with a healthy average of 5.5 yards per carry.
Jalen Hurts finished with four carries for 25 yards and the team's only trip to the end zone.
Oddly, those two were the only ones who made a carry the rest of the game.
There must be more players involved in the running game, obviously.
Barkley after a recent practice was asked how to improve the run game over all.
“The best way to answer that, is it's not a finished product,” Barkley said. “We don't want it to be a finished product in week 2, week 3. We want to continue like this. We've got to buy into what we're doing.
"It's all relatively new to all of us. As we're learning, trying to continue to buy into something new, we're going out there and seeing some funky looks, some weird looks. It's a sign, the defenses are respecting the run game which has opened up some other things.”
Ever positive, Barkley finished his thoughts on a positive note.
“It's going to be a beautiful thing when we're all firing on the same page.”
MORE FROM SIRIANNI
Sirianni was asked recently what he thinks is the reason there is so much traffic in the backfield on pass plays.
“There's obviously different reasons somebody would get home different times,” Sirianni said. “Sometimes you don't have a hat for a hat. Sometimes they bring one more than you could actually get.
“Sometimes it's losing a one-on-one matchup at offensive line or back or tight end. We just all as a whole have to be better against pressure situations.
“There's been times that we've done that. You can't look at just one game and say that's who we are. You've got to look at the sample size of what we've done. We've had some good moments of handling pressure.
We won on a blitz zero in the Tennessee game, where Jalen drifts away from it and throws the touchdown where they had it against us in that game.
“Again, we didn't coach well enough. We didn't play well enough in the last game that we played, and that's what today has been. Not only an introduction to the Rams and your
Wednesday work on the Rams, but also fixing the things that popped up from the game on Monday night.
Sirianni was asked about the pressure on his quarterback affecting how often you're going to use play action? There was some success that started with the run game and almost got lost in the second.
“No. It's hard to look at it and say, 'Hey, the numbers say this.' Sirianni said. “Obviously, we had success in our run game in the first half.
“Then, in the second half, we weren't in phase as much as we'd like to be. When the run game was clicking, we kept calling runs, and we were moving the football that way.
“Then, in the second half, it felt like we weren't able to run our whole offense the way we wanted to run our offense because we weren't quite in phase.
“We weren't getting the six- or seven-yard runs. That doesn't mean you can't do it on first down. I understand that, but I just felt like we weren't quite as in phase there as we were in the first half that caused some of that.
“We want to be able to run it. We want to be able to do play action off of that and with the runs that we have. That is definitely an emphasis, and we've got to make sure that we're in phase to be able to do that and run our offense the way we want to.” *
Email Al Thompson at al.thompson@footballstories.com
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