The Philadelphia Eagles and the Dallas Cowboys are duking it out for the early lead in the NFC East, a division that has surprisingly emerged into one of the best in football. The winner of Sunday’s matchup will take the lead and the tiebreaker, and the loser will still have no losses outside of the division.
This should be a better primetime game than the Broncos-Chargers Monday Night Football contest, and the classic offense-defense matchup should make for some exciting football. This should set the standard for the division race unless the Giants can keep up their seemingly unsustainable pace in the coming weeks.
The Dallas Cowboys Pass Rush Will Be a Unit To Watch Against the Eagles
On paper, the Eagles are a far better team, but their offense matches up poorly against what the Cowboys do well. The Cowboys lead the league in pressure rate and blitz strategically, often letting their front four do the work until key moments in the game.
Jalen Hurts, like any other quarterback, sees his performance drop off significantly when pressured. That drops much more when that pressure comes from a blitz, and it’s one of the few weak spots in the Eagles’ offense.
The key is to make sure that Hurts doesn’t scramble; he averages 7.4 yards per carry when scrambling. He scrambles much more often against four-person pressures than against blitzes, in many cases because his alternative rush lanes are clogged up by those blitzers.
| Hurts YPA | Blitzed | Not Blitzed | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pressured | 3.18 | 6.95 | 5.26 |
| Clean | 7.70 | 10.20 | 9.58 |
| Total | 6.06 | 9.59 | 8.55 |
The difficulty will be in bringing pressure. Hurts is good at navigating the pocket and getting rid of the ball before pressure arrives. He takes advantage of the fact that he has an elite offensive line — even though he holds on to the ball longer than most quarterbacks (2.89 seconds, seventh-longest), the pressure rate he sees is only 29.8 percent, 12th-best in the league.
In this way, we get to see strong-on-strong, with players like Dorance Armstrong Jr., Demarcus Lawrence, and Micah Parsons performing as a top-tier pressure unit as some of the top players at their respective positions. But this will be a new test – their previous opponents include the Rams, Giants, Bengals, Buccaneers, and Commanders, all of whom rank 24th or worse in ESPN’s pass block win rate.
The Eagles rank seventh.
Further complicating matters is the fact that both Parsons and Lawrence are on the injury report. Both were visibly hampered by injuries in last week’s game, and Lawrence had to leave the game.
The Eagles Pass Rush Could Provide Problems for Dallas
On the other side of the ball, the Cowboys will be under heavy duress. The Eagles rank sixth in pass rush win rate when on defense, while the Dallas offensive line ranks last in pass block win rate on offense.
Because Dallas has been defense-dominant in wins, they haven’t had to rely on Cooper Rush and the offense to get things done, and that may be difficult to sustain when they’re forced to keep up with a high-powered offense.
That situation could turn the Cowboys’ offense from a nonentity into a liability and could be how the Eagles end up winning. Rush hasn’t thrown an interception yet this season but has thrown a number of passes liable to be picked. He’s simply ended up lucky on these opportunities. That will come back to bite him, especially if Dallas can’t move the ball into the red zone.
In particular, the Cowboys offense has had difficulty producing first downs. Cooper Rush has been a caretaker quarterback, and Dallas won’t have Dak Prescott back for this game. The team instead anticipates having him back for a Week 7 matchup against the Detroit Lions.
Moving the chains update through week 5.
Bills and Chiefs lap the field through the classic three downs.
Eagles and Browns make up a lot of ground by embracing the ground game and going for it on fourth down. pic.twitter.com/byRnttARyt
— Timo Riske (@PFF_Moo) October 11, 2022
Rush will be facing a secondary featuring Darius Slay and the deepest defensive line in the league, a unit that includes Josh Sweat, Brandon Graham, Fletcher Cox, Javon Hargrave, Jordan Davis, and Milton Williams.
The Eagles’ defensive line has the ability to stop the run and rush the passer while players like T.J. Edwards supplement the run defense and Nakobe Dean helps in coverage. Haason Reddick can moonlight as either but excels as a blitzer.
How Will Philadelphia’s Offense Fare in This Matchup?
The Eagles’ offense, by contrast, has done an excellent job moving the ball forward, and they have a much more competent offense than the Cowboys are used to facing. While pressure will be the primary method by which Dallas will attempt to win, Trevon Diggs, Anthony Brown, and the rest of the secondary have done well.
Dallas has kept good receivers down; Cooper Kupp, Ja’Marr Chase, Terry McLaurin, and Mike Evans averaged 66.3 yards per game against them. Secondary receivers Chris Godwin, Tee Higgins, Jahan Dotson, and Allen Robinson averaged 40.2 yards per game. Those two groups of receivers averaged 85.9 and 45.6 yards per game against other teams.
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A.J. Brown and Devonta Smith will present a similar challenge, but the evidence tells us Dallas might be up to the task unless their secondary really is reliant on that pass rush. To that end, the Cowboys have forced the fifth-fastest time to throw from opponents, and that might be a big part of the reason they’ve been limiting opposing receivers.
There are a lot of stars on both sides of the ball, but the biggest matchup might be what the Cowboys’ edge rushers do against the Eagles’ tackles. The biggest tactical development might be how Dan Quinn dials up blitzes against Hurts. Time to throw, performance under pressure, and performance against the blitz all seem to have a bigger impact on the game than any other matchup this primetime contest could feature.