Pivotal Sack, Call Adjustments Helped Turn Around Defense

Eagles DC Jonathan Gannon made some adjustments, Josh Sweat had a pivotal sack and, suddenly, the New York was cooked

USA Today

Gardner Minshew stole the headlines last Sunday.

The Eagles backup quarterback didn’t just steal them but, seeing his intensity and passion up close against the Jets, probably chewed them into tiny little pieces, spit them into the air and began punching at the remnants as they fluttered to the ground.

Then there was the defense, an afterthought mostly in the feel-good-moment of a 33-18 Eagles win in their final game heading into this week’s bye.

All the horrors of the first couple of months from Jonathan Gannon’s group seemed to be back, as the Jets scored touchdowns on their first three possessions. The special teams get some blame there after allowing a 79-yard kickoff return to set New York up at Philly’s 21.

The two following drives were much more worrisome, with the Jets going 68 yards in 11 plays then 75 in nine.

New York was three-for-four on third down on those three drives.

Some of the things New York did caught Gannon off guard.

“The game started a little odd, them being where they were (at the 21),” said Gannon on Tuesday. “You'd like to keep them to a field goal there and we didn't. What they were – kind of how they attacked us early, they did a couple things that I didn't really, in my mind, thought that they were going to attack us. They attacked us a little bit differently than I thought, honestly.

“When we came off there, then we talked about it as a staff. It was, ‘Hey, we've got to make some adjustments here. What calls do we need to get to? How do we got to start playing to kind of stop the bleeding?’”

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Gannon said he was pleased with his team’s resilience, that he saw no panic as things could have quickly gotten out of control.

“We said, ‘Okay, what are we going to play? What are we going to run? Let’s start executing at a higher level. J.G., you do a better job, and we'll do a better job, and we'll get this thing turned around,’” said Gannon.

A pair of plays on the Jets’ fourth drive helped turn it around.

With the Eagles ahead 21-18 and the Jets taking over at the 25 with 4:30 to play in the second quarter, Fletcher Cox made a nice tackle of RB Tevin Coleman on second down after just two yards. On third-and-three, Josh Sweat, with an assist from Javon Hargrave, sacked Zach Wilson.

“Fletch made an excellent play,” said Gannon. “We get it to third down and went to one of our staples. What you saw is that was one of the plays the head coach showed to the team.

“When you stop the tape when Zach hits his back foot, Grave [Hargrave] won – they singled Grave and he pushed the guard right into the guy's lap and kind of bumped him out of the pocket. And Sweaty [Josh Sweat], with a second effort rush, turned the corner and sacked him and did a really good job.”

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Gannon gave Sweat credit for lowering his target and bracing himself when he sacked Wilson and not landing flush on him.

“You've seen that show up a couple times where we have really good violent, clean contact where the flag comes out because we land on a guy,” he said. “That was a violent, clean hit.”

Three-and-out, time to punt for the first time.

“It was good because that was our three and out there,” said Gannon. “They went down the field, went down the field, went down the field, and it was like, ‘All right. We kind of adjusted some calls, this is how we're going to go.’”

After those three opening drives, the Jets were shutout and were 0-for-5 on third down. They only had one third-quarter possession, because the Eagles controlled the clock, and that one possessions was a three-and-out.

“The time of possession thing, that goes over my head a little bit because, in the game you're not really thinking about, ‘Man, our offense is out there for a while,’ or vice versa,” said Gannon. “I do know that, when they went down at the beginning of the second half there, we talked about to our guys, if we could go three and out here, they're kind of rolling a little bit and time of possession is going to get out of hand in the third quarter because you looked up and it's whatever that drive was.

“We did. We went three and out and got the ball back and we didn't touch the field until the fourth quarter. The value of that, our guys resting and drinking Gatorade on the sideline and the score's going up for you, there's a lot of value to that.”

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Ed Kracz is the publisher of SI.com’s Eagle Maven and co-host of the Eagles Unfiltered Podcast. Check out the latest Eagles news at www.SI.com/NFL/Eagles or www.eaglemaven.com and please follow him on Twitter: @kracze.