Iggles Blitz

by Tommy Lawlor

Game Preview – PHI at GB

Posted November 9th, 2025 | 3 Comments »

The inconsistent Philadelphia Eagles will play the inconsistent Green Bay Packers on Monday night. Both teams are good, but also highly frustrating. The Eagles lost to the Giants. The Packers lost to the Browns. It feels like that is representative of the entire NFL season. Any team can beat any other team. That feels more true this year than most.

Green Bay has a bad habit of playing to the level of the competition. They lost to Carolina and Cleveland. They tied Dallas. The Packers have significantly more talent than those teams and should have won all three games, two at the very least. Some blame this on coach Matt LaFleur.

LaFleur won 13 games in each of his first three seasons. Since then GB has been more erratic. And he’s only 3-5 in the postseason. He’s clearly a good coach, but he hasn’t been able to take the Packers to the next level since 2021, and that team didn’t win a playoff game. With GB coming off a frustrating loss, I would expect them to play with a chip on their shoulder on Monday night.

At their best, the Packers run the ball well, get explosive plays in the passing game and play stout defense. They just haven’t done those things with any consistency this season. Part of the problem was missing WR Christian Watson, their best deep threat. He’s healthy now and should give a boost to the deep passing game. The flip side is that speedy rookie Matthew Golden is banged up and TE Tucker Kraft is out for the season.

QB Jordan Love can look great in wins over Dallas and Pittsburgh and then lay an egg in a loss to Carolina. He is aggressive to some, reckless to others.

I’m guessing Vic Fangio will try to play a lot of Cover 2 or Cover 4 to keep GB from going deep. I think that makes Drew Mukuba a key player. He’s been up and down with deep coverage this season, but it does feel like he’s been better recently.

GB is 5th in the league in rush attempts, but only 16th in yards. That stat is more about the OL than Josh Jacobs.

That actually sounds awfully familiar. The Eagles OL has struggled this year, with Saquon Barkley getting hit behind the LOS way more than you want. The Packers OL has not played as well as expected. Rookie RG Jordan Morgan will have his hands full with Jalen Carter. RT Zach Tom is a really good player, but he”s banged up right now.

The normal goal is to get teams into third down and then attack. The Packers are good on third and long so getting into that situation isn’t good enough. You have to play good situational football to get them off the field.

It will be interesting to see what Fangio does with his pass rushers and his corners. I’m guessing Nolan Smith and Jalyx Hunt start, with Jaelan Phillips and BG coming off the bench. That could be fun. Jaire Alexander won’t make the trip to GB so it will be Kelee Ringo or Adoree Jackson. Unless Fangio goes with Michael Carter in the slot and Cooper DeJean outside. Jakorian Bennett still hasn’t been activated as of this writing.

The Eagles offense played really well against the Giants in the last game. GB has a better defense, to put it mildly. This will be a much better test. The offense will get AJ Brown back, but will have another week without Cam Jurgens. The big question is if the run game can have another big day. The Packers are 5th in the league in rush yards allowed. The Eagles are coming off a game where they ran for 276 yards. GB allowed 163 rushing yards in their last game.

Brett Toth played well at center last week. The Eagles figured out how to use him and got a good performance from Toth. He is at his best on the move. You don’t want him doing reach blocks. GB has studied the tape and will have some ideas on how to deal with him.

Micah Parsons will attack from all over. He will line up on the edge, inside or off the ball. Where’s Waldo? But Waldo runs 4.3 and can wreck games. The Eagles have faced him a lot, just not as a Packer. Hurts and his blockers must do a good job of identifying the front and where Parsons is. Then they have to make sure to have him blocked. Parsons has 6.5 sacks and 14 QB hits so far this season.

GB, like the Eagles, is good at limiting explosive plays.

If the Packers can limit the Eagles run game and take away deep balls, Jalen Hurts will have to beat them with the short and intermediate passing game. That’s not his strength so this will be a challenge for him. Hurts struggled against them in the playoffs last year, going 13-21-131. The Eagles won that game 22-10, but had 4 takeaways and GB missed a FG. The Packers offense didn’t get the job done, but the defense was tough in that game. They made the Eagles earn that win.

Kevin Patullo is coming off his best game of the season. His reward is getting to face Parsons and a tough GB defense. Feed Saquon the ball and throw it to Dallas Goedert. That formula worked back in January.

There is a lot to like about the Eagles in this game. They are coming off a bye, which means the players are rested and the coaches were able to make some tweaks. The Eagles added some talented players to the roster. Nick Sirianni has never lost to an NFC North team. All that said, this game makes me nervous. The Packers got embarrassed last week. That will have them fired up. They lost to the Eagles twice last year and that left them pissed off. I think they’ll play with a real edge in this game.

I’m curious to see what the Eagles look like coming off the bye. A strong showing by them would start to fill up the bandwagon and generate a lot of postseason talk.

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Scheme vs Execution

Posted November 7th, 2025 | 3 Comments »

More than a few people have been critical of Eagles offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo. They say the Eagles offense is too plain. Too predictable. Why can’t Eagles coaches be more creative?

There is a flip side to this. Sometimes coaches can fall too in love with X’s and O’s. They can focus too much on scheme and not enough on execution. Check out these comments from Dan Orlovsky.

Is Green Bay too reliant on scheme?

I will let Packers fans and the media who cover the team debate that subject. I do think it is interesting that Orlovsky even brings up the idea. While you want creativity in an offense, you don’t want to rely on it too much. At some point, you need your guy to be able to beat the guy across from him. Jimmys and Joes are more important than X’s and O’s, as the old saying goes.

Patullo has shown the ability to be creative in the red zone, where the Eagles are ranked first in the NFL. GB is 11th in the league in the red zone. They went 0 for 4 in last week’s loss to Carolina.

The Eagles win over the Giants was Patullo’s best game of the year. He was creative with the run and pass game, but also relied on basic plays as well. He knew the Eagles were more talented. That’s a game where you shouldn’t have to be too exotic. When he did mix things in, they worked pretty well.

I love that play.

Green Bay has a much better defense than the Giants. This game will be a good test for Patullo and the Eagles offense. Can the run game have another good outing? Can the Eagles have another good passing game?

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Vic Fangio had the #1 defense in the league last year because his guys covered so well and could also rush the passer. The pass defense has mostly been good this year, but has been erratic at times. That’s what happens when you have a rookie safety in Drew Mukuba and a revolving door at CB2. It does feel like the coverage has gotten better as the season has gone along.

The Eagles traded for a pair of defensive backs, which means Fangio now can be more creative with who he plays and how he uses them. It will be interesting to see what he does. Maybe they give Jaire Alexander a shot at CB2. They could stick with Kelee Ringo, who is coming off his best game of the year. Or maybe they slide Cooper DeJean outside and play Michael Carter as the nickel.

DeJean is a key piece as Fangio makes his plans.

DeJean is great in the slot, but also can be a good outside corner. Fangio has to figure out the right combination of players for this game. The Packers love to throw deep so he needs to make sure he’s got CBs who can run and play the deep ball well.

It is tough to judge Alexander from his time with the Ravens.

Some of those plays aren’t bad coverage at all. I don’t think Alexander looked completely healthy on some of them. His movement wasn’t fluid. He did tackle, which is important.

Alexander says he feels healthy now, but players can’t be trusted. They want to play. The coaches got a look at him in practice and will be able to judge if he’s ready to play or not.

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