Eagles Keeping their Rushing Attack on the Down Low?

PHILADELPHIA - If you were going to predict any Eagles player was going to get the bubble-wrap treatment during Thursday night's preseason-opening loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers the smart money would have turned to the over-30 crowd that makes up the foundation of Philadelphia's roster and have been the maintenance-day beneficiaries through the first 11 days of practice.

On the prop bet front, 24-year-old RB1 Miles Sanders would have been the longshot that cashed.

Despite saying everyone who was healthy would play, head coach Nick Sirianni backtracked with only two players: recently-arrived receiver Marken Michel who simply wasn’t up to speed on the offense, and Sanders, the young home-run hitter who could probably use some reps to hone his receiving and pass-protection skills.

Sirianni evidently doesn’t want to see anything else from the Penn State product, a clear foreshadowing that his offense is going to lean on the young back, perhaps a nod to an inexperienced quarterback Jalen Hurts and a struggling receiving corps outside of Quez Watkins.

“We just felt like we have seen him, we know what he is, we know that we’re excited about him,” said Sirianni. “We’re really excited about him, wanting to keep him fresh, and we’ll reevaluate and look at next week and if he’ll play next week.”

When pressed if there was any injury, even a minor one, Sirianni was quick to cut that off.

“No injury,” the coach answered.

Sirianni may have also foreshadowed his thinking earlier in the week when discussing the preseason opener.

"One of the things we have to our advantage is that nobody really knows what we're running. To say we're going to show everything on Thursday or the following preseason game or the following preseason games, it's just not going to be the case," Sirianni said. "That's an advantage that we have that other staffs don't because we don't have any tape out there of us."

Jalen Hurts vs. Steelers in preseason opener

The Eagles were in evaluation mode against the Steelers and when it came to Hurts specifically it seemed like Sirianni and Co. wanted to get the second-year signal-caller reps where he was throwing from the pocket during a short two-series stint.

The offense dialed up just 11 runs, and one of those was a Hurts third-down scramble. There were 29 pass attempts.

When game-planning and Atlanta come into play, you’re likely going to see a more RPO-centric offense focused on Hurts playing off Sanders.

With Falcons senior pro scout Rob Kisiel in attendance Thursday, the Eagles offense’s favorite flavor was vanilla.

In Sanders’ absence, veteran Jordan Howard got the start and ran the football once for three yards in just one series of work. From there it was Boston Scott for the second series and he also got one carry for four yards.

Only deep reserve Jason Huntley got more than two carries as third-down incompetence proved to be a time of possession nightmare for the Eagles.

To extrapolate all of that out and assume owner Jeffrey Lurie is going to force the passing game is specious, however.

Sirianni will highlight the run, at least until he gets the kind of QB who can air it out on a consistent basis.

John McMullen contributes Eagles coverage for SI.com's EagleMaven and is the NFL Insider for JAKIB Media. You can listen to John, alongside legendary sports-talk host Jody McDonald every morning from 8-10 on ‘Birds 365,” streaming live on both PhillyVoice.com and YouTube. John is also the host of his own show "Extending the Play" on AM1490 in South Jersey. You can reach him at jmcmullen44@gmail.com or on Twitter @JFMcMullen

Ed Kracz is the publisher of SI.com’s Eagle Maven and co-host of the Eagles Unfiltered Podcast. Check out the latest Eagles news at www.SI.com/NFL/Eagles or www.eaglemaven.com and please follow him on Twitter: @kracze.

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