The Eagles Need To Run The Ball More!

The Philadelphia Eagles under Andy Reid has always been a pass happy team, but that has to change for the Eagles to be successful this year.  Not only do they have three running backs that they really like, but they also have an offensive line that loves to run block and a quarterback who they need to keep clean.  The Eagles have one of the best backs in league, LeSean McCoy who I believe is the best player on their offense besides Michael Vick.  The Eagles have DeSean Jackson and Jeremy Maclin, but I believe that McCoy is a better overall player then both of them.  In his second year last year he proved how important he is to this team and the offense needs to start revolving around him.  The Eagles need to run the ball a lot more and here are the reasons why.

The Eagles have three reliable running backs on their roster right now third year man LeSean McCoy, veteran Ronnie Brown and rookie Dion Lewis.  All three players have a lot of trust by the Eagles coaches and now its time for them to be the feature of this offense.  Last year and early on this year McCoy has proven that he is arguably the best player on the offense, the one problem is he doesn't get the ball enough.  McCoy has rushed for 217 yards on 33 carries and 3 touchdowns.  In my eyes 33 carries is not enough for a player who is averaging 6.6 yards a carry.  He has proven to be elite and the Eagles need to realize that and get him the ball a lot more.  Some may say they don't want to give him a lot of carries to keep him fresh, but if that is the case give some carries to your second and third running backs who are also capable of putting up good numbers.  Ronnie Brown has shown that he can be a factor when a touches the ball the problem is the Eagles don't run the ball enough to get their backups any carries.  These three especially McCoy who is ready for a Pro Bowl season need to get the ball more in the run game, bottom line.

We saw it last year finally and this year we have seen glimpses of this, but the Eagles offensive line loves to run block.  Not only do they love to do it, they are good at it as well.  Late in the Rams game with the box packed because everyone knew the Eagles were going to run the ball, they were able to run it successfully.  This line is very good at run blocking and we need to use their strength more often and let them go out and hit people.  We need to use the lines strength to make their weakness pass blocking a lot easier.

The Eagles running backs are good and so is the offensive line, but another reason why they need to run more is to keep Vick clean.  Vick has been taking punishing hits this year and last year already and the Eagles need to keep him as clean as possible.  One way to do that is to run the ball more.  If they run it more Vick will not be asked to pass as much, which means less hits on his body.  Vick's weakness has been against the blitz, so what do teams do; they blitz him a lot and get a lot of hits.  One way to stop the blitz is running the ball more.  If you can run the ball against the blitz, the defense will have to back off of the pressure which will allow Vick more time passing and less hits on his body.  Many have said the Eagles season relies on keeping Vick clean and if that is the case running the ball more will definitely help that.

My last reason why the Eagles need to run more is that their defense has given up a good amount of points.  part of the defense is good and the other part is awful.  The one area where the Eagles struggle is against the run and if the Eagles run the ball more it will help their defense out.  Teams are not only trying to run the ball to keep the Eagles high powered offense off the field, but they also have a huge weakness against the run.  One way to slow that down is using more time on the offensive side of the ball.  Running the ball a lot keeps drives going a lot longer and that is what they need to do.  The less amount of time the Eagles defense is on the field the better they will start to play.  In the Atlanta game they seemed to wear down in the fourth quarter because they were on the field for so much of the game.  If the Eagles run the ball more they won't have to be on the field for as long.

The bottom line is the Eagles need to start running the ball more.  As you have read my points on why it makes a lot of sense.  Not only are they good at running, it helps out other areas as well.  It is time for Andy Reid to be a lot more balanced with the play calling.