Dallas City News

When the Cowboys take the field this week and host their bitter rival, the Eagles, in AT&T Stadium, they’ll be welcoming in a familiar face. On the opposite sideline will be Kellen Moore, longtime Cowboys coach and current Eagles offensive coordinator.

Moore’s matriculation to Philadelphia came by way of a de facto vote of no confidence in Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni. While Sirianni was not fired last year after his team lost five of their final six games and was bounced from the playoffs, there was a general assessment that his preferred offensive scheme was a poor fit for quarterback Jalen Hurts. That mismatch also contributed to a not-so-quiet rift between the quarterback and head coach. As a result, offensive coordinator Brian Johnson (who was Dak Prescott’s quarterback coach in college) was fired and replaced with Moore, who also used to coach Prescott.

While Moore wasn’t expected to completely scrap every bit of the Eagles’ offensive identity from the last three years, he was reportedly given full autonomy over the offense, thus minimizing Sirianni’s involvement on that side of the ball.

Halfway through the year, though, and the Eagles offense hasn’t looked all that much like a Kellen Moore offense. If anything, it looks like a Nick Sirianni offense that runs plays you’d find in a Kellen Moore offense. The two biggest structural complaints about the offense last year was a stubborn lack of motion and an overreliance on shotgun formations. Moore’s hiring was expected to solve both, as he’s generally made heavy use of motion and frequently puts his quarterback under center, mostly to build his play-action packages from it.

So far, the Eagles are remaining stagnant before the snap, ranking just 19th in pre-snap motion. They’re also putting Hurts in the shotgun nearly five times as much as they’re placing him under center, one of the largest disparities in the NFL. Unsurprisingly, the Eagles are also 20th in play-action rate.

The constraints placed on Moore haven’t seemed to hurt the offense, though. The Eagles rank 10th in yards per play, 11th in points per game, eighth in EPA/play, and 13th in offensive DVOA. It’s nothing that jumps out at you, but the offense has been solid. Hurts is also playing at a fringe top 10 level too, ranking between 8 and 12 in completion rate, yards per attempt, air yards per attempt, and EPA per dropback. He also leads the league in completion percentage over expected.

Where the team really shines, though, is their run game. That shouldn’t be a big surprise, given the offensive line and free agent signee Saquon Barkley. Only the Ravens are averaging more rushing yards per game and the Eagles are also second in EPA/rush. They’re also fourth in rush DVOA. Though in true Moore fashion, the Eagles primarily run up the middle and have one of the league’s highest rates of running into a heavy box.

One interesting trend for this run game is the fact that they’re fourth in yards before contact per attempt but 24th in yards after contact per attempt; in other words, the offensive line is keeping Barkley clean quite often but he’s not making much happen once he gets past them.

Barkley is surely salivating this week, though, as the Cowboys have the worst run defense in the league by far. Not only are they giving up the most EPA/rush, but they’re allowing the sixth-most yards after contact per rush and are fifth in missed tackles per game.

The Eagles may be caught in a bit of an identity crisis between Sirianni and Moore, but they’ve been largely capable of putting up points despite that. And the thing they do best – running the football – is something almost everyone does well against this Dallas defense. To that point, Moore should be able to enjoy a nice homecoming to the team that began his coaching career and notch a win against his former boss.