Eagles' OC Offers Context to Lopsided Run/Pass Ratio In Week 5

PHILADELPHIA - The Eagles “dropped back” 44 times and only ran the football on nine occasions in a 21-17 loss to Denver in Week 5.

Coming off a week where both A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith aired some grievances and many other outside voices took aim at Philadelphia’s offense, offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo was eager to explain the anomaly when asked about the issue of three-and-outs.

“I think really it's just the best we can do is just stay ahead of the sticks,” Patullo said, pointing to negative plays that have derailed drives too often this season.

The Eagles have an NFL-high 19 three-and-outs through Week 5, tied with Minnesota.

“So first down, we've got to have positive plays that lead into second down,” the OC explained. “When you get behind on second down, it gets tricky, and that's kind of what happened in the game a little bit.”

From there, Patullo explained that the game plan against Denver was RPO-heavy, which has been rare recently, and situational football demanded an inordinate amount of passing plays.

“We had 10 two-minute plays, so that's 10 passes. We had the RPOs, that's six passes, and we had like four third-and-longs, so one of them was in explosive to DeVonta, but that's four more passes. So, you're looking at like 20 passes right there just because of situational football. So that can get the game going in a direction,” Patullo said.

RPO Heavy

Oct 5, 2025; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts (1) under pressure from Denver Broncos safety Talanoa Hufanga (9) at Lincoln Financial Field. | Eric Hartline-Imagn Images

Back when the RPO was a bigger part of the Eagles’ offense during the Shane Steichen era and before the league’s point of emphasis on being stricter in calling linemen downfield, the now-Indianapolis head coach used to point out the context of a run-pass option or sometimes RPR in Philadelphia (run-pass-run due to the presence of Jalen Hurts and a strong running game).

From a coaching perspective, an RPO is not considered a “called” run or pass because both options are built in and based on correctly reading the defender in conflict.

While the explanation isn’t going to resonate with those looking at just the raw data, absent the added context, nothing Patullo was saying can be disputed, and Hurts was reading the RPOs as pass against the Broncos.

Meanwhile, staying ahed of the sticks would eliminate third-and-longs as obvious passing situations.

“That's why we’ve just really got to focus on staying ahead of the sticks and advancing it forward,” {atullo saod. “... We talked about it [Tuesday] as an offense and we just got to keep progressing and working through this. Everybody's into it. Everybody's being super detailed on what they need to do. We've just got to keep pushing it because when we've done what we need to do, we've moved the ball extremely well at a high rate.

“We've just got to continue to do that.”

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