Eight Eagles Thoughts: Saquon Barkley’s touches, offense’s 3-and-out rate, and more – The Athletic

So, this is what a loss feels like in Philadelphia. The Eagles had gone a full year between losing games that Jalen Hurts started and finished. And even when including the game that Hurts was knocked out with a concussion, this was only the Eagles’ second loss since Sept. 29 last season. The sun still came up on Monday morning. (And on Tuesday morning, too, but those long faces in the Wawa lines were probably because of the Phillies.) 

There’s little time to lament. In the postgame locker room, players already started preparing their bodies for the New York Giants on Thursday. There’s a quick turnaround for The Athletic’s coverage, too, so let’s get these eight Eagles thoughts out while transitioning from the Broncos loss to the Giants game this week:

1. In Week 4, the Eagles didn’t get the ball to the star wide receivers enough. In Week 5, they didn’t get the ball to the star running back enough. They can’t seem to win — unless they win. Saquon Barkley had six rushes and nine offensive touches. He had one rush in the second half, even though the Eagles held a two-touchdown lead. The six carries were his fewest in a game since 2023.

“I don’t really know what you want,” Barkley said. “If I touch the ball too much sometimes, we’re not throwing enough. If we throw it too much and I only have nine touches — I’m not in the business of, what are we doing enough? I’m in the business of winning football games. We didn’t win the football game. With nine touches, we had the opportunity to win the football game still. We weren’t detailed enough. Too many mistakes, too many penalties.”

I’ve never been in the “Run the ball!” crowd, although I think there’s room to hand the ball to Barkley more than one time with a two-touchdown lead. After Barkley caught a 47-yard touchdown on the opening drive of the second half to take a 17-3 lead, the Eagles punted on three consecutive drives. Barkley had a first-down run on one of those three drives that was negated by a holding penalty. So Barkley technically did not carry the ball during that offensive lull. On two of those drives, the Eagles had first-down penalties that put them behind the sticks — first-and-15 and first-and-20, respectively. That was Nick Sirianni’s explanation for the lack of a run game, pointing to “self-inflicted things” and blaming himself.

“Obviously, we want to run the ball more than we were able to today, or pardon me, what we did today,” Sirianni said. “You always want to come out of that game with Saquon getting enough touches for the type of player he is. So again, we’ll look for solutions.”

The running game has not been effective this season. It showed promise in the first half against Denver with a 17-yard rush that was Barkley’s longest of the season. And with the way they were effectively passing the ball downfield, one could think there would be opportunities to run. (Then again, Landon Dickerson’s injury didn’t help.) That’s been the discussion point in the locker room throughout the year — if the focus is on stopping the run, the receivers must take advantage. When that shifts, the running game must come alive.

It’s the beauty of what the offense could be — they should, in theory, have a solution for anything. The objective should not necessarily be “balance,” which can be a football trope. It should be to do whatever it takes to exploit the defense. So far this season, the Eagles haven’t been consistent in either. Barkley is too talented to be limited to nine offensive touches, but the same could have been said about A.J. Brown’s touches or DeVonta Smith’s touches in recent weeks. You can also add Hurts’ running plays into the mix, too. It’s incumbent upon the coaches and the quarterbacks to maintain offensive momentum (and avoid those three-and-outs) so there are enough plays for everybody to be involved.

“I really don’t get caught up. ‘Are we throwing the ball enough?’ ‘Are we running the ball enough?’” Barkley said. “It’s, ‘Can we win the football game?’ It’s going to look different every game. So far we’re 4-1.”

The offensive line is part of the inconsistencies. The penalties are costly. But fixing the one issue affecting the Eagles would allow everyone to get their touches. That issue is…

2. …Three-and-outs have occurred at a historically bad rate for the Eagles — a league-high 47.2 percent. It’s a small sample size of five games, but it’s the worst rate a team has had in a season in 20 years. You have to go back to San Francisco in 2005 — a team that finished 4-12 — for a worse rate. An offense that has nine Pro Bowl-caliber starters should not be this inefficient. The next two teams on the list are Tennessee and Cincinnati.

There’s some nuance in this statistic. It’s defined as drives with no first down or touchdowns, so kneeldowns are included. There are two kneeldowns among those drives. In a five-game sample size, that makes a difference of about four percent, but that could be applied to other teams, too.

The other part: The Eagles are 4-1 with 22.4 offensive points per game, so if nearly half of their drives have neither a first down nor a touchdown, consider how effective they must be on the other half of those drives. They average five three-and-outs per game. Extend two of those drives each week, and think about how many more plays they can run. That’s the solution for getting more opportunities for these playmakers.

3. This is my 14th year covering the Eagles, so I know the gloom in the city after a bad loss. (The Phillies’ loss didn’t help, either.) I’m not in the sky-is-falling camp. In fact, I left the stadium thinking they should have won that game. (It has a way of evening out, of course. The Rams game could have gone in the other direction.) They committed two penalties on offense in the fourth quarter that took first downs off the board, and neither penalty had a material effect on the play. They committed a personal foul on defense that gave the Broncos a fresh set of downs when time and timeouts were at a premium. I’d be more concerned if I felt Denver outclassed them. There was a point in that game in which I thought, Jalen Hurts looks like an MVP and this defense is like a dental exam for opposing offenses. It needs to be more consistent. I thought they’d be 4-1 through five games. The loss was going to come at some point. I thought it would happen in Kansas City and not at home against Denver. I also figured the offense would play better and the defense would play worse, but I still think the Eagles’ fastball puts them in the category of Super Bowl contender. Want to see panic? Look down I-95 in Baltimore. I imagine the Ravens would take the Eagles’ problems right now. 

4. Behind the scenes in recent weeks, there’s been discussion about the need to get to the line of scrimmage faster. Jordan Mailata discussed it on his radio show last week. This became a clear issue on Sunday with the illegal shift penalty in the fourth quarter that took a big play off the board and contributed to the Eagles’ loss. It occurred, in part, because the Eagles were late in the play clock.

“I can’t tell you what the issue is,” Hurts said. “Ultimately, I can take accountability for everything and take responsibility for it all. The lack of execution and maybe lack of sense of urgency in how our operation is. And so I take the responsibility for all of it because I’m just trying to find solutions for it. Just trying to grow and learn from it and I look at this as an opportunity in itself. You play the game to win and when you don’t, you learn from it.”

When asked if he’s getting the plays quick enough from offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo, Hurts said: “Yeah, I think that’s relative. I get the play, I go make the play happen, so I can’t point the finger at anything else. So the calls getting in on time or anything like that, it is just about making it work.”

That’s not exactly a firm endorsement of the process.

The Eagles have an NFL-high 160 plays this year with the play clock at five seconds or under, per TruMedia. When excluding no-huddle plays, the Eagles’ average time on the play clock when they snap the ball is 5.3 seconds — lowest in the NFL. For context: they were at 7.8 seconds last season, which ranked No. 31 in the NFL. Even after discussions in recent weeks, it was an issue against Denver. In the first three quarters against Denver — time-neutral situations — the Eagles snapped the ball with five or fewer seconds on the play clock at a higher rate than any team in the NFL during the last three seasons. As Deniz Selman, a Penn economics professor and contributor to the PHLY Eagles Podcast charted, they are not an outlier in this area: 

The #Eagles snapped the ball with 5 or fewer seconds on the play clock (Quarters 1-3 only and excluding no huddle plays) against Denver at a higher than any team in any NFL game in the last 3 seasons.
And it wasn’t even an outlier for them: 4 of their 5 games have been similar. pic.twitter.com/sz6RTeBLvC

— Deniz Selman (@denizselman33) October 6, 2025

There was a key sack and a penalty because the Eagles snapped the ball late. It allows defenses to get a jump on the pass rush. Reaching the line quicker allows the Eagles to make more adjustments and incorporate pre-snap movement. 

The Eagles have consistently been among the latest to snap the ball under Nick Sirianni and they’ve had considerable success, so I try not to overstate it. The reason why I’m buying this is that it’s been a player-driven point. That would indicate there’s something with the operation of getting the play in that must be assessed. Also, the one game in which the Eagles have snapped the ball the quickest was against the Rams, when the offense needed to play with urgency in the second half. Perhaps there’s something to their hurry-up operation that can be channeled.

“This isn’t tennis where you can assign the blame to one person,”  Sirianni said.” This is football and there’s multiple different things that go into each and every one of these things. We stress and we will detail out our communication from just all the things that from coach to quarterback. Then from sideline to huddle, you can ask (wide receivers coach) Aaron Morehead when we talk to him. He’s got a tough job there and anytime that transition is slow, obviously, he gets let know about it and same with the players there. Then it’s knowing what to do and through your preparation, through the game plan and then getting up to the line of scrimmage and working that process in practice. Then there’s the motion, there’s the identifying things again, football is the ultimate team game.”

5. I’m not a defensive coordinator, but it would seem that defenses will play zone against the Eagles until they can prove to be effective against those coverages. The Eagles have an EPA/play of -0.13 against zone coverage this season and an EPA/play of 0.34 against man-to-man coverage. As chronicled last week, the Broncos were among the league leaders in man-to-man coverage. In the first half against the Eagles, they played zone coverage on 58.1 percent of the defensive plays. That’s when the Eagles had their most passing success. In the second half, they shifted to a more zone-heavy approach (75 percent) and played man coverage on a season-low 12.5 percent of the snaps. The offense was not nearly as effective. The Broncos played a season-high snaps in cover-three. Hurts’ EPA/dropback against man coverage is 0.49 and against zone coverage is -0.15. The Eagles’ receivers can thrive against man coverage, but they’re going to see it less than they’d like until they show they can zone.

One potential solution? They must be able to run the ball effectively if this is how teams are playing them. Saquon Barkley has an EPA/rush of -0.09 against zone defenses this year. That was 0.17 last year.  

Landon Dickerson has dealt with back, ankle, and knee injuries this season. (Bill Streicher / Imagn Images)

6. Landon Dickerson exited Sunday’s game with an ankle injury, and he would not have practiced on Monday had the Eagles practiced. Dickerson has been laboring through injuries this season ever since his fast return from an August knee surgery. He’s missed time in two of five games. He’s now been affected by back, ankle, and knee injuries this season. Teammates laud his toughness, but it’s worth wondering whether he needs to take time to get his body right.

“Always, always, always going to do what we feel is best for the player,” Sirianni said. “If we didn’t, and we just made everything selfishly about ourselves as the team, that’s not good business. …I just love how Landon always battles, but we always are going to do what’s best for the player. Their health is more important than any game, always.”

Sometimes, there’s no in-season solution for these injuries. But Dickerson’s injuries have affected the Eagles — and they’ve appeared to affect him, too.

7. Azeez Ojulari impressed in his first game with the Eagles. He had a tackle for a loss and a quarterback hit. Ojulari played 46 percent of the defensive snaps, tied with Za’Darius Smith for the most among edge rushers and more than Josh Uche and Patrick Johnson. Both Uche and Johnson played ahead of Ojulari this season. Special teams was a factor with Ojulari remaining a healthy scratch for the first four weeks. Ojulari represented the Eagles’ biggest offseason investment in edge rusher. The Eagles need more from this group — especially while Nolan Smith is absent — and it’s glaring that Za’Darius Smith is the only edge rusher with a sack. Ojulari will be in the spotlight with two of his three games against his former team. Don’t be surprised if he finds his way in the sack column. The Giants have allowed 14 sacks this season, including eight by edge rushers. Tuli Tuipulotu had four sacks against the Giants in Week 4.

8. Top-of-the-roster players have the most effect on the Eagles’ success, but the moves on the margin are fascinating to monitor. Take Cameron Latu. He led the team with three special teams tackles against the Broncos while playing 22 special teams snaps. He has a blocked punt that was returned for a touchdown. You can see the value he’s creating on that unit. He’s also the team’s fullback – a role seldom used — and a depth tight end who can move up the depth chart if Grant Calcaterra does not play this week.

Latu, 25, was San Francisco’s third-round pick out of Alabama in 2023. He tore his meniscus in the preseason as a rookie and was waived the following season. He spent last year on Cleveland’s practice squad. The Eagles signed him to a futures contract — essentially an offseason deal — on Jan. 21 while they were on their Super Bowl run. He was with the team throughout the spring and the summer, did not make the 53-man roster, and was quickly added to the practice squad. After Ben VanSumeren’s injury, Latu was elevated from the practice squad. He was signed to the 53-man roster on Sept. 24. Now, he’s a core special teams player for the Eagles with a bit offensive role. 

“He’s brought a physical presence, obviously some athleticism, and a lot of energy,” Michael Clay said. “You see it on the sideline; you see it after some plays with the special teams unit. They’re getting up, they’re celebrating, and it’s not just Cam. …It’s a heck of a story kind of bouncing around the league last couple of years to find a niche, whether it’s a fullback or tight end, but also playing special teams. He’s helping out the unit in any way he can, and obviously, he started with the tone against Tampa Bay with that huge block.”

Latu hadn’t played in an NFL game in two seasons, so the team made the evaluation based on college scouting reports and pro scouting reports in preseason games. And he was a roster hopeful this summer, not someone who leads the daily practice observations. It’s a good reminder that on a roster of 53 players (and 70 players when including the practice squad), there’s more to winning than the front-line players.