Eagles Offense is Still Searching for an Identity

PHILADELPHIA - Doug Pederson was asked about the identity of his offense on Friday and the Eagles coach wasn't exactly able to offer up a definitive response.

After hemming and hawing a bit, Pederson finally defaulted to his struggling quarterback Carson Wentz, a player who has produced more turnover-worth plays than any other NFL signal-caller during the Eagles' disappointing 0-2-1 start.

"I would define the identity as using the strength - number one, you've got to go off the strength, I think, of your quarterback, and then you build your plans around that," Pederson said.

Building off of Wentz hasn't been successful early and there are many contributing factors to that, most notably a constant shuffling of the deck chairs on a banged-up offensive line and the continued poor performance by the team's receivers.

Wentz, meanwhile, has been graded as No. 33 of 36 quarterbacks by ProFootballFocus.com so far, ahead of only the Denver duo of Drew Lock and Brett Rypien, as well as Dwayne Haskins of the Washington Football Team, who actually outdueled Wentz in Week 1.

Overall, the Eagles' offense is 24th in the NFL in yardage and even worse when it comes to the efficacy of scoring points (No. 27 overall).

The running game, fueled by the return of Miles Sanders in Week 2, has been more impressive than the passing game which is now without the injured Dallas Goedert and Jalen Reagor, and will also be missing DeSean Jackson for Sunday night's game at San Francisco.

Meanwhile, Sanders himself has admittedly been dealing with some conditioning issues and now has a glute problem that could impact his playing time against the 49ers.

Without anything to hang his hat on, Pederson went all over the place

"Obviously the identity, you want to be able to run the football, play-action pass, the QB movements, and then the screens, you've got to mix in the screens effectively in your system," the coach explained. "You want to be physical up front. That goes without saying. You want to be dominant there, control the line of scrimmage, all of that, and that's where the run game comes in."

A clearer way of saying that is perhaps 'we don't have an identity just yet but this is what we hope to be.'

Pederson did admit the offensive product is hardly a finished one.

"You've seen the identity a little bit kind of rear its head up in these games, and then it goes back down because we haven't been as successful on first down," he said. "Been in too many second-and-long and third-and-long situations, which gets you out of who you are a little bit as an offense."

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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