Philadelphia Eagles, Miami Dolphins Choosing Different Paths to Offensive Success
PHILADELPHIA - To the casual Philadelphia Eagles fan, Sunday night's home game is about Kelly Green uniforms. To hardcore football fans, the matchup between Nick Sirianni’s 5-1 team and Mike McDaniel’s win/loss doppelganger in Miami, it’s about motion and the divergent viewpoints the two coaches have on it.
No one in the history of the game is using more movement than McDaniel, who leads the NFL in motion rate at 80.2 percent overall and 62.2 percent at the snap. Conversely, Sirianni’s offense is dead last in motion rate at 21.7 percent and No. 31 of 32 with players moving at the snap (8.2 percent).
Down in South Florida, Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa broke out a common cliche when talking about the paths he and his friend and former teammate at Alabama, Eagles signal caller Jalen Hurts, took on their way to the top of their profession.
“There’s different ways to skin the cat, right?” Tagovailoa said. “Many different ways.”
Tua could have also used the same turn of phrase to describe how the two offenses have gotten to the two top spots in the NFL.
Miami has the top offense in the NFL, averaging 498.7 yards per game and 37. 2 points, an over 100-yard advantage over the No. 2 Eagles, who are piling up 395.0 yards per contest.
McDaniel has been the toast of the NFL with his “eye candy,” something even Sirianni acknowledged.
“I think you're seeing a trend in the NFL of the motions that he's running that everyone is getting, like, ‘oh I like that.’” Sirianni said. “We've done it. There are plays we've done, and there are plays we did late last year that we took from the Dolphins.
“So, I think any time you are influencing the rest of the NFL to copy some of the things you're doing, that's pretty cool.”
Part of the reason the Eagles use less motion than just about anyone is the team’s devotion to tempo and empty sets, two tools that would become less effective with window dressing.
“They rely more on their formations and alignments to accomplish the things that others use motion for,” a former NFC personnel executive said. “It gives Hurts a cleaner look at the coverage alignments and techniques. … I may not necessarily agree with it totally, but I get it.”
The one objection for the exec is the red zone where Philadelphia has struggled this season with a 45.4 percent touchdown rate, good for only 23rd in the NFL. The Dolphins, on the other hand, are at 80.8 percent, again No. 1 in the NFL.
“I think they should use (motion) more in the red zone but otherwise I understand their logic behind it,” the executive said. “... In the field between the 15-yard lines, they can get away with it in the pass game. There’s not the same amount of open space to throw to in the red zone though, which is why they struggle to throw it down there.
“Motion works great to create that space.”
No one uses motion more and more effectively than the Dolphins.
© Sam Navarro, USA TODAY
The Eagles were terrific in the red zone in 2022 but that was built on the running game. So far this season, teams have loaded up to stop the Philadelphia ground attack in condensed spaces. Hurts, meanwhile, has completed just 10 of 22 passes for 38 yards in the red zone with three red zone touchdown passes. A total of 25 quarterbacks have more red-zone TD passes than Hurts and 27 have a better red-zone completion percentage.
Sirianni is fond of saying a “wise man avoids all extremes” and that you “never want to be bottom five in anything in the NFL.”
Perhaps the compromise is scheming up things a little more when things get cluttered in the tight spaces of the red zone.
That said, it’s not No. 1 but second place in a 32-team league can’t exactly be labelled a failure.
“There are multiple ways to do things,” Sirianni said. “It's about doing them with attention to detail, doing them the right way, being all in on the way you're doing it. Many different things can succeed, especially when you have good players like they have and good players like we have.”
