Each week, I’ll publish two film-room previews: one focusing on the offense and one on the defense. These are primarily film-based, focusing on the schemes, tendencies, and matchups that could shape Sunday’s game, with all statistics coming from the Fantasy Points Data Suite. I also record a video version for Patreon, where I break down the plays in greater detail and where you can further support my work.
I expected a Robert Saleh defense to be relatively simple to identify. He usually has plenty of zone coverage, four-man rushes, and a front that lets its best players get after the quarterback. That is broadly what Tennessee showed against the Jets. I did not expect so much confusion behind it. The secondary repeatedly lost track of assignments after ordinary motion and shifts, the pass rush barely affected Geno Smith, and the run fits broke down in some surprisingly basic ways. This was a poor defensive performance. The Eagles just have to hope for more of the same this week…
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Defense
Pass Defense
Saleh is the head coach and defensive playcaller, and Week 1 looked like his defense on paper. The Titans played zone on 84.6% of their coverage snaps. Cover 3 accounted for 42.3%, and Cover 4 another 34.6%. That is a lot of familiar, four-man-rush zone football. Saleh has called zone on 76% of the dropbacks in the available career sample on Fantasy Points Data as a HC/DC, while blitzing only 20.3% of the time. So Week 1 was what you’d expect.
However, I can’t quite believe how poor the defense was at times in Week 1. The Jets used simple motion and late shifts to create chaos in the secondary. Defenders were still sorting out who had whom as the ball was being snapped. At times, a route would open up, and you could see a huge void where a defender should have been.
There was very little disguise to compensate for the confusion, either. When a defense is going to show you a fairly standard zone picture, the least it can do is communicate the assignments correctly!
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This is the first thing I want to see from Sean Mannion’s offense, which we did see in Week 1. Move Makai Lemon and DeVonta Smith around. Use motion, shifts, and different splits to make Tennessee declare its rules and pass routes off properly. The Jets showed that even straightforward movement could disrupt the Titans’ communication. We should find out immediately whether those errors have been corrected.
The open space was especially obvious against layered concepts, which the Eagles also used successfully in Week 1. On this under-center three-level stretch, the Jets had an easy completion because nobody accounted for the flat. This is just poor.
On another one, the outside corner was beaten on a deep comeback despite having outside leverage, and the flat was uncovered yet again.
The Jets also ran a three-level stretch with a crosser from the opposite side, and the crossing route was wide open. These were not exotic plays. They were basic ways to stretch a zone horizontally and vertically, and Tennessee had no answer on those snaps. They are either playing it wrong or can’t communicate and match these routes effectively.
That should be encouraging for an Eagles offense that managed only 10 first downs in Week 1 and relied too heavily on isolated explosive plays. Dallas Goedert settling into an open window, Saquon Barkley releasing into the flat, and Smith running the deeper part of a flood concept could produce the kind of easy, repeatable offense that was missing against Washington. I want to see Hurts take those completions when they are available, then punish the Titans if their cornerbacks fail to pass off a crosser or give up a deep comeback. There is no need to hunt a 30-yard throw on every snap when the defense is offering free yards underneath.
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The Titans allowed 0.88 EPA per play when it finished in a one-high look, the worst mark in the league in Week 1, while its two-high snaps allowed minus-0.18, eighth best. This is largely because of the busts that you can see above. If the Titans are going to play that much Cover 3 or single-high again, they have to show they can handle it better than they did against the Jets.
Without pressure, every coverage mistake looked worse. Tennessee generated pressure on only 23.1% of dropbacks, 28th in the league, and took 2.92 seconds on average to generate it. Smith had enormous pockets even on concepts that needed time to develop, as the clips above show. It was startling how rarely the Jets’ quarterback looked uncomfortable.
Jeffery Simmons is the obvious exception to any discussion of Tennessee’s defensive talent. He is still an excellent player and can wreck a series by himself.
He will test an Eagles interior line missing Landon Dickerson, and the Eagles must know exactly where he is before each snap. John Franklin-Myers can line up inside or outside, while Jermaine Johnson II gives Tennessee an athletic edge presence. Neither the additions around Simmons nor the rotations up front produced enough disruption in Week 1.
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The blitz numbers are fascinating, although I would be careful with such a tiny sample. Hurts struggled when Washington blitzed in Week 1, but Tennessee allowed an absurd 1.30 EPA per play on its own blitzes against the Jets. They were terrible when bringing pressure. Saleh has never been someone who needs to send five or six constantly, and Tennessee’s non-blitz snaps held up much better. I would expect him to try to manufacture pressure around Simmons while keeping most of his defenders in coverage. If the Titans do blitz, the Eagles need clear hot answers and better protection communication than they showed at times last week. They might try the Eagles occasionally after what happened in Week 1 vs. Washington, but I don’t think they will blitz a lot.
Anthony Hill Jr. had a good debut, so he is someone to watch. The rookie linebacker had 16 tackles and two pass breakups in his NFL debut, but the numbers do not fully capture how impressive he looked. In zone, he read consecutive routes developing across the middle and still had the burst to chase down Geno Smith on a 4th-down run. He can be a little too aggressive with his gap fit, as you would expect from a young linebacker, but he already looks like a serious player. Cedric Gray missed Week 1 and could return, so the Eagles may face a different linebacker pairing from the one the Jets saw. This will give them a boost.
Run Defense
The Jets ran 33 times for 145 yards and two touchdowns. The right-side B-gap was open often, and the Jets ran counter through it more than once. The Eagles should consider looking at running Counter more than once this week.
The second-level fits were late or wrong, and the safeties were not always quick to come downhill and clean things up. Here, the Jets involved a fullback and again exposed the same area.
The Eagles should use a puller to stress that B-gap, make the linebackers sort out their fits, and see whether Hill’s aggression can be used against him. Simmons may ruin some interior runs because that is what great defensive tackles do. The goal is to make the defenders around him play their assignments correctly over and over again.
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The Titans also had a few issues setting the edge. Here, their defenders appeared unsure who was setting the edge; the confusion was made worse by players trying to leave the field at the last moment. This is just a bad look.
That is exactly the kind of defensive hesitation that outside zone can punish. Let Barkley press the edge, force the linebacker and safety to commit, and give him the option to bend it back if the edge is sealed. The Week 1 chart also shows poor results against runs to the offense’s left edge, but there were only three such carries, so it’s a small sample size.
Final Thoughts
The Eagles should have success against this defense. I was struck by how many ordinary passing concepts produced open receivers and by how much time Smith had to throw. The obvious caveat is that Saleh is a good (I think?!) defensive coach and this is one game of a new defense. I would be surprised if Tennessee is quite this disorganized again. The two-high coverage results show the unit can play sound football. If those communication errors disappear and Simmons wins repeatedly against the Eagles’ interior offensive line, which struggled in Week 1, the Eagles will have a more difficult afternoon than the Jets did.
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Still, this is a real opportunity for Mannion and Hurts to show that the Week 1 offensive struggles were a starting point, not the final result. We should make the Titans communicate through motion, challenge the outside cornerbacks, and return to the run concepts that expose the B-gap and edge. Most of all, sustain drives. If the Eagles finish with 10 first downs against a defense that looked this vulnerable on film, it will be difficult to blame the matchup.
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