Saquon Barkley gets the yards and the headlines and the praise — and he’s deserving of all of it.
But a lot more goes into the Eagles’ big runs.
In Sunday’s 28-22 win over the Rams, Barkley ran for touchdowns of 62 and 78 yards and Jalen Hurts had a 44-yarder to get the Eagles into the NFC Championship Game. Those are three of the five longest runs in Eagles’ postseason history.
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A day after those big plays, head coach Nick Sirianni went into great detail about all the important elements of hitting a run like that.
It starts with Jalen Hurts getting the Eagles in the right play. On both of Barkley’s long touchdowns, Hurts made a check at the line.
“I think he’s been phenomenal at that part of the game, being able to get us in and out of plays vs. different looks,” Sirianni said. “That’s obviously super important for your quarterback to be able to do that and Jalen really does a great job of thinking and doing the things he needs to do to get us in and out of plays at the line of scrimmage. And so it starts with him and Cam (Jurgens) kind of putting everybody on the same page and then it goes down to the efforts of everybody else to make those long runs happen.”
After that, it’s about execution — the blocks need to be there.
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The Eagles’ offensive line is the best in the NFL and they’re obviously a huge reason for the rushing success this year. Barkley rushed for 2,000 yards this year and the O-line led the way.
But on these long runs, it’s about more than just getting blocks from the O-line.
“I think what you saw on those was excellent blocking up front and displacement up front by our offensive line,” Sirianni said. “But also you got really good efforts on those two long runs also from receivers blocking.”
On the zone-read run that Hurts took for a touchdown, Sirianni pointed out blocks from both A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith and went really far to praise Smith’s "textbook stalk block."
“If you were in Receiver School 101, you would use that clip of Smitty on the stalk block for the touchdown,” said Sirianni, a former receivers coach. “What I mean by that, stalk blocking, there’s an art and a technique to it. You have to kind of break down and not get locked up with the defensive back too soon. If you get locked up with the defensive back too soon, he’ll shed you. But Smitty kept space and when he felt the ball getting up on him, he locked on and made the play.”
Brown had a nice block on the Rams’ nickel defender on that Hurts touchdown and he had another big block on the outside cornerback later in the game on the 78-yarder by Barkley in the fourth quarter.
Despite having just 2 catches for 14 yards on 7 targets Sunday, Brown was justifiably proud of those two blocks.
“The stats wasn’t there but I made some huge blocks,” Brown said. “I had two touchdown blocks. So I’m excited.”
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