Believe it or not, Sunday's win over the Dolphins could help the Eagles offense prepare for this Sunday's clash with the New York Jets.
"It's very similar schools of thought," guard Evan Mathis said comparing the two defenses. "So transitioning from playing the Dolphins to the Jets, there will be some things that we can carry over."
Both teams run a 3-4 base defense. Both defenses utilize a lot of different personnel groupings to keep offenses off-balance. As center Jason Kelce put it, Jets head coach Rex Ryan and defensive coordinator Mike Pettine do "a good job of keeping you on your toes."
"You're not going to get the same people in nickel or same people in dime. It's just not going to be repetitive," Kelce said. "He's going to have different guys in there, different jersey numbers, different players in there. One time he might have seven DBs on the field and one down lineman. Another time they'll have five down linemen with one linebacker. He does a really good job of mixing it up."
The Jets have allowed 20.8 points per game this season, good for 12th in the league. They have one of the best pass defenses in the league (200.8 yards per game, sixth in NFL) and the second-best third-down defense. Up front, the Jets have a very good nose tackle in Sione Pouha. Kelce said that Pouha is in fact better than the nose tackle he battled last week in Miami's Paul Soliai. New York has amassed 29 sacks on the year led by Buffalo castoff Aaron Maybin, who has been rejuvenated in New York. Maybin has 6.0 sacks as a situational edge rusher and outside linebacker Calvin Pace is second with 4.5 sacks.
The secondary boasts one of the league's elite cornerbacks in Darrelle Revis, who leads the team with four interceptions. The question is who will Revis shadow this week. Typically, the Jets have placed Antonio Cromartie on the quicker receivers, which would indicate that he will battle DeSean Jackson. The one position to watch is safety where Jim Leonhard suffered a season-ending knee injury last Sunday against the Chiefs. Leonhard is considered the quarterback of the defense and will be replaced in the lineup by veteran Brodney Pool, who has starting experience.
Tight end Brent Celek acknowledges the key to battling a defense that offers as many looks as the Jets do is to focus on your own responsibility.
"They do it a lot, they're good at (disguising)," Celek said. "It's the same thing that Rex used to do when he was in Baltimore. You just have to be ready to block spots and not get caught up in who's going to be there because somebody will be there."
The Eagles do have to figure out what happened in the second half against Miami when they scored no points. Kelce indicated that the offensive line wants to improve the run blocking.
"That's the biggest thing that myself and the rest of the offensive linemen is upset with," Kelce said. "We've got arguably the best running back in the league (in LeSean McCoy) and he had a 1.4 (yards per carry) average. We've got to fix that. That's our main goal this week as an offensive line is to fix that."
Mathis said a lot of the negative run plays last Sunday were close to being positive gains.
"We'd have one mistake. It would seem like it was a different guy on each play. We can't have one person on each play make a mistake. It's a formula for failure for you," Mathis said. "If you have your 11 guys make a mistake on one play, it's one bad play. If you have a guy making a mistake on 11 different plays, then you have 11 bad plays."
In just a few days, we'll see if the Eagles learned from Sunday's missed opportunities against the Dolphins.
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