Week 4 Preview: Injuries Loom Large in Eagles-49ers Matchup

PHILADELPHIA - The Eagles will take a fourth shot at earning their first win of the 2020 season in Santa Clara on Sunday night.

One of the more banged-up teams in football, Philadelphia will have the luxury of facing perhaps the one team fighting through more injuries than it is.

The Niners will likely start backup quarterback Nick Mullens for a second consecutive week as Jimmy Garoppolo continues to rehab an ankle injury. The reigning NFC champions are also missing plenty of other difference-makers on both sides of the football like edge rusher Nick Bosa, cornerback Richard Sherman and perhaps dynamic second-year receiver Deebo Samuel, who remains on injured reserve but the Niners activated his 21-day practice window.

"He's healthy, so I just want to see him out there and get back in the swing of playing football," 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan said of Samuel. "It's been a while since he has. I know he's been working hard on his own with our trainers and everyone else with rehab. But we just need to see him go through three days (of practice) and what type of shape he's in. And if he can protect himself."

All eyes locally will be on the Eagles injury report Friday as Doug Pederson will have to cobble together representative groups at both WR and cornerback.

49ERS OFFENSIVE SCHEME: Shanahan is regarded as one of the top schemers in the NFL with an offense built on an innovative running attack married to the play-action passing game.

The Eagles, in fact, were so enamored with what Shanahan does that they hired Rich Scangarello as a senior offensive assistant.

Scangarello was Shanahan’s quarterbacks coach with the Niners in 2017 and 2018 before getting the offensive coordinator job in Denver in 2019. He actually first left the college ranks to work with Shanahan in Atlanta because he liked the coach’s offense philosophy, something Scangarello described back in the summer.

“I think Kyle has a great deal of respect in the league for how he's married the run system to the pass system,” Scangarello said. “The details of that are very important. It goes back to his days learning from his dad when he was a teenager in Denver, then his experience with the Houston Texans with Gary Kubiak, then him shaping his vision for how all that comes together.

“To be part of that process, you just learn details and intricacies that very few people know, that come from him ultimately. People see it on film, and they think they know, but they really don't."

49ERS DEFENSIVE SCHEME: Robert Saleh’s 4-3 attacking approach was built on perhaps the best and most talented defensive line in the NFL last season as the Niners made their Super Bowl run.

The Eagles catch a break with Bosa out for the season with a torn ACL and a number of other key contributors will also be missing in Soloman Thomas and Dee Ford.

Saleh has taken a more aggressive approach without Bosa and Ford because the Niners can’t get home as easily with four so blitz pickup will be key for the Eagles revamped offensive line.

STRENGTH: Typically it would be the defensive line or the running game but with Bosa out of the lineup and the top three RBs either out or banged-up, you might have to default to tight end George Kittle, who is expected to return to the lineup and is probably the most well-rounded TE in football.

Nate Gerry’s early-season struggles have been well-chronicled so it’s likely Jim Schwartz takes a village approach to combating Kittle with Rodney McLeod and Jalen Mills also getting opportunities.

“He's a good football player, don't get me wrong. He's one of those rare tight ends who can do it all,” Gerry said. “He’s really good when it comes to run blocking. He’s good when it comes to pass-catching, running routes, being vertically fast, he's quick. He's just overall a really good tight end to be honest with you.

“I think we got a pretty good scheme schematically for him. We just got to stick to what we know, what we're gonna do best, and we'll get a lot of bodies to the ball when he catches it.”

WEAK LINK: The receivers without Samuel are a very pedestrian group. To date, Kendrick Bourne and rookie Brandon Aiyuk have gotten the majority of the work so a short-handed Eagles secondary might get a bit of a break. Philadelphia will be down Avonte Maddox and perhaps Trevor Williams but Darius Slay should be able to shut down one-half of the field against this team even if Samuel goes.

UNDER THE RADAR: Bosa is the superstar but the team’s other end, the lengthy Arik Armstead, is really good as well and a pain in the you know what for opposing quarterbacks.

“He's got a lot of length to him. Maybe 6-foot-7, 290, so a little bit bigger than the DEs I usually go against,” Lane Johnson said.” But a long, rangy guy, makes a lot of good plays.”

Carson Wentz will have to be aware of the passing lanes when he’s thinking about going over the top on Armstead’s side.

MATCHUP TO WATCH: The 49ers running game vs. the Eagles run defense. The Eagles spoke in almost reverence about the San Francisco run game all week but in the early going the Niners are just 12th in the NFL while the Eagles defense is No. 9 at stopping the run.

It’s typically a committee approach with the Niners but with Telvin Coleman is on IR and Raheem Mostert banged-up with a sprained MCL, Jerick McKinnon could be a bell cow despite fighting through a rib injury.

McKinnon is a well-rounded back who can hurt you in both phases and is back in the lineup after missing two seasons with injuries. Jeff Wilson should also get plenty of touches especially if McKinnon can’t handle a typical workload.

“They run a really, really good scheme,” safety Jalen Mills said. “They got so many different personnels that they throw out on the field and a lot of eye candy, a lot of shifts, a lot of motions, guys going here and there.

"So I think the biggest thing for us as a defense is whoever your guy is you just have to clue your eyes to him. You can’t get distracted by anything else that’s going on, and I think we’ll be pretty good.”

OUTLOOK: In many ways, Sunday night's game between the Eagles and 49ers is the Attrition Bowl with both sides having the drug-store receipt-sized injury lists.

One of the bigger disappointments with Philadelphia to date his season is the way it has handled the COVID-19 environment. The landscape is like a stress test for the entire league and as a perceived strong organization with a veteran coaching staff, the Eagles should have had the advantage over most. It hasn't turned out that way early and now you have another hurdle in the form of the first cross-country road trip under the far stricter traveling protocols.

“We're basically bottling up our bubble and putting it on an airplane and taking it across the country,” said Pederson. “Obviously, the Rams have done it and teams have done it already this season and they have done it successfully. It's just about ownership. It's about each man or woman that travels with us to do the right thing.”

On the field, the Eagles are just not making plays. The offensive struggles are obvious and well-chronicled but the defense is actually a top-10 unit right now - No. 9 against the rush, No. 7 against the pass, fifth in third-down defense, and No. 5 overall. What the unit hasn't done is create turnovers through three games and the Eagles' minus-7 turnover differential is dead last in the entire NFL.

In theory, a backup quarterback is more likely to give it away but the assumption on both coasts seems to be that Nick Mullens isn't all that different from Garoppolo and the main issue with the 49ers will be stopping perhaps the most innovative run-blocking schemes in the league.

If the Niners were healthy this would be a no-brainer. Instead, it should be a dog fight but until Wentz stops providing turnover-worthy plays for the opposition and Schwartz's defense starts generating some game-changers of its own, it's tough to predict success.

FINAL SCORE:

JOHN MCMULLEN: 49ers 23, Eagles 20 (0-2-1 on the season, 0-3 vs. the spread)

ED KRACZ: 49ers 28, Eagles 17 (0-2-1 on the season, 1-2 vs. the spread)

John McMullen contributes Eagles coverage for SI.com's EagleMaven and is the NFL Insider for JAKIB Media. You can listen to John every Monday and Friday on SIRIUSXM and every Monday and Thursday with Eytan Shander on SportsMap Radio. He’s also the host of Extending the Play on AM1490 in South Jersey. You can reach him at jmcmullen44@gmail.com or on Twitter @JFMcMullen

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