When we think of 11 personnel — three receivers, one tight end, and one running back — we generally think of teams that roll heavy on the passing side of things. Makes sense given the personnel, but right now, the NFL’s best team by record are throwing all kinds of wrenches at enemy defenses by deploying a complete, versatile, and devastating offense out of that specific personnel grouping.
The teams throwing most out of 11 this season — the Bengals, Buccaneers, Chargers — tend to lead with the pass, and the run game is an ancillary construct. Although, as our Laurie Fitzpatrick recently revealed, the Bengals are finding a dangerous balance these days.
That said, if you want dominant offensive balance out of 11 personnel, look no further than the 11-1 Philadelphia Eagles, who are killing opposing defenses with it, run or pass.
In Week 12 against the Packers, the Eagles had the 20th-most rushing yards in a single game in pro football history with 363. Green Bay came into that game ranked 30th in run defense DVOA, so it made sense that head coach Nick Sirianni, offensive coordinator Shane Steichen, and run game coordinator/offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland went that way.
But what was really interesting? How often they ran the ball out of that lighter package. The Eagles ran the ball 36 times out of 11 personnel against the Packers for 252 yards, 131 yards after contact, and two of their three rushing touchdowns. Hurts ran 15 times out of 11 for 116 yards, which made him the NFL’s most productive runner out of 11, regardless of position.
Then, in Week 13 against a Tennessee Titans defense that ranked first in run defense DVOA through Week 12, the Eagles completely flipped the script. But they did so almost entirely out 11 personnel. 34 of Hurts’ 39 passing attempts, 27 of his 29 completions, and all three of his passing touchdowns came out of 11.
Hurts won NFC Offensive Player of the Week after each of those games.
So, whatever you have to offer on defense, the Eagles have ways to nuke it, and it’s going to look very similar before the snap. This speaks to modern offensive trends, and it’s a huge problem for the defenses that have to deal with it.
(All advanced metrics courtesy of Sports Info Solutions, Pro Football Focus, and Football Outsiders unless otherwise indicated).
Use your illusion.
There are all kinds of ways to attack defenses with personnel groups and formations, of course, but for the purposes of this article, let’s break it down to two concepts: The illusion of complexity, and the illusion of simplicity. The illusion of complexity arises in the modern game from play-callers like San Francisco’s Kyle Shanahan and Green Bay’s Matt LaFleur. They will throw all kinds of formations at you, and run staple plays out of them.
“We want to have like plays, meaning, plays that start out looking the same that are different,” LaFleur said when the Packers hired him to be their head coach in January, 2019. “We also want to create what we call an ‘illusion of complexity,’ meaning we’re going to run the same concepts, but how many different ways can we run them?” LaFleur said. “Whether it’s out of 11 personnel, 12 personnel, 13 personnel, just to make it a little more difficult for the defense.”
Teams like the 49ers and Packers are more amorphous in their pre-snap looks. Sean McVay, since he became the Los Angeles Rams’ head coach in 2017, has directed a series of offenses in which one personnel grouping (11 personnel) rules the day, and you’ll see all kinds of stuff out of that.
“We might be running the same play, but the presentation of it looks different based on how we motion to it, how we create the final formation, what personnel grouping we’re doing it out of,” McVay said in 2021. “But it’s that illusion of complexity that I think you see a lot of the best offenses do year in and year out. And I think that’s one of the things we try to stay true to as well,”
It’s more the illusion of simplicity in McVay’s case, but you get the point.
In 2021, Sirianni’s first season as the Eagles’ head coach, his offense was more expansive from a personnel perspective. They ran 11 on 64% of their snaps (13th-most in the NFL), 12 personnel (one running back, two tight ends, three receivers) on 25% of their snaps (eighth-most in the league), and 13 personnel (one running back, three tight ends, and one receiver) on 9% of their snaps, second-most in the league.
This season, in a Nigel Tufnel sense, almost everything goes to 11. The Eagles have bumped their 11 personnel rate to 71% (10th), while their 12 personnel rate has dropped to 20% (15th), and their 13 personnel rate has dropped to 7% (seventh).
With Jalen Hurts developing as a pure quarterback beyond the need for RPO training wheels and required help from play-action, Sirianni and his staff have decided to embarrass defenses with the frequent and cunning use of 11 personnel. They have the personnel, and the concepts, to wax your butt all over the field, run or pass, out of their own version of the illusion of simplicity.
Like a lot of the best things in life, Philly’s offense looks simple, and is anything but.
Running power out of passing personnel.
Let’s go back to the Packers game, where the Eagles blew Joe Barry’s defense right out of Lincoln Financial Field with power running concepts in passing personnel. Running back Miles Sanders had 13 carries out of 11 against Green Bay, gaining 95 yards and scoring a touchdown. Here’s the touchdown, a 15-yarder with 9:08 left in the first quarter, and the Eagles’ offensive line just demolishing Green Bay’s five-man front. Linebacker Quay Walker (No. 7) was late to fill the gap, which allowed left guard Landon Dickerson (No. 69) to get to the second level and erase him. Meanwhile, right tackle Lane Johnson (No. 65) pulled across to take out defensive tackle Jarran Reed (No. 90), and center Jason Kelce (No. 62) did just enough to keep nose tackle Kenny Clark (No. 97) out of the way.
When you can eradicate a front out of passing personnel like this, it’s pretty neat.
With 11:23 left in the third quarter, the Eagles had second-and-2 from their own 43-yard line, and the score 27-20 in their favor. This seems like a run situation, but with more 11 personnel, and a fairly stock pre-snap alignment, Philly was able to keep Green Bay guessing. This time, the Packers ran a four-man front in a nickel defense. Johnson missed the second-level block on Walker, but everyone else on the line got their man, and Kelce’s second-level block on linebacker Krys Barnes (No. 51) was especially relevant here.
The result? Sanders slipping through the gap for a 28-yard gain.
As revealed in the intro, Hurts ran 15 times out of 11 for 116 yards against the Packers, which made him the NFL’s most productive runner out of 11 that week, regardless of position. I would count just four of those runs as quarterback scrambles; the Eagles have a nice package of designed run concepts for their young quarterback.
On this 28-yard Hurts run with 12:09 left in the first quarter, and the Eagles with third-and-6 at the Green Bay 34-yard line, Philly got a bit trickier with their pre-snap look. This time, it was a 2×2 set with running back Kenneth Gainwell motioning from the backfield to the flat, and the Packers showing Cover-1 (single-high man) with their response. Gainwell’s motion took Barnes out of the middle of the formation, and against a light box, Hurts knew what was up.
This season, Hurts has 11 runs out of 11 personnel and an empty backfield for 95 yards. So, one more thing your beleaguered defensive coordinator has to keep in mind.
Setting defenses up for the haymaker.
Moving to the Titans game last Sunday, and a completely different approach. Now, the Eagles had to design a game plan against the NFL’s best run defense, and a vulnerable secondary. Hurts had unleashed the deep ball before this season…
…but he really went to work against the Titans. Hurts passed for a season-high 380 yards and totaled four touchdowns (three passing, one rushing) with no interceptions for a 130.3 rating in Philadelphia’s 35-10 win over Tennessee. It marked the most passing yards and highest passer rating of any quarterback in Week 13.
The numbers out of 11 personnel were similarly scary: As we mentioned in the intro, 34 of Hurts’ 39 passing attempts, 27 of his 29 completions, and all three of his passing touchdowns came out of 11.
This time, it was about matchups. And this did NOT favor Tennessee’s defensive backs.
The Eagles seem to be using a bit more pre-snap motion as the season goes along, and Hurts’ 34-yard touchdown pass to DeVonta Smith with 12:11 left in the first quarter once again showed the positive effect. Sanders’ motion from left to right spread Tennessee’s Cover-4 defense, tight end Tyree Jackson’s crossing route just past the sticks brought safety Andrew Adams (No. 47) down from two-high, and Smith had a one-on-one on the deep post against cornerback Roger McCreary. As safety Kevin Byard (No. 31) had to stay to the defensive left side to deal with the passing strength of the formation, this was pitch-and-catch.
Hurts’ second of two touchdown passes to receiver A.J. Brown on the day showed what even the slightest hint of a run play can do to a defense when facing this offense at this point in the season. It was second-and-3 from the Tennessee 29-yard line with 12:14 left in the third quarter. The Titans were in Cover-0 (man across with no deep safeties), so they clearly expected run. When Hurts gave a small fake to Sanders, that brought linebacker Dylan Cole (No. 53) up in the box, and you can see the defense trying to get set pre-snap against an Eagles formation that had three receivers to the left, and the possibility of Sanders as a fourth receiver to that side.
This is how you put a defense in vapor-lock. Cornerback Tre Avery (No. 30) tried to align with Brown, but that’s a challenge on any contested catch — much less a contested catch combined with a perfect throw.
The Giants have next.
This Sunday, the Eagles have a pivotal NFC East matchup with the 7-4-1 New York Giants; it’s the first of two times these teams will face off in the next five weeks (there’s also the regular-season finale on Sunday, January 8), and Giants defensive coordinator Wink Martindale is all too aware what he’s about to face.
“I think it’s the power and balance he has coming out of his cuts,” Martindale said this week, when asked why Hurts is so challenging as a runner. “So, he can get you running and when he sits down and makes a cut, he comes out of it with power, compared to a lot of guys. The thing that makes him so tough to go against, he’s still looking to get the ball downfield until that last second where he says, ‘No, I’m going to go’. It’s going to be a tough challenge for us.”
As for defending A.J. Brown, Martindale was even more gobsmacked.
“Whew, got any ideas? It’s like they’ve got T.O. [receiver Terrell Owens] back there playing again. He’s a problem. We went against him when he was in Tennessee and he’s a big physical receiver that you’d have to fight every play. I told [defensive backs coach] Jerome Henderson if [Brown] was a defensive player, he’d be an outside backer that’s how physical he plays at wide receiver.”
The Giants have blitzed more than any other NFL team this season with a 40.8% rate. This plays completely to type — when Martindale was the Baltimore Ravens’ defensive coordinator, the Ravens were at or near the top of the league in blitz percentage every year.
Against six or more pass-rushers this season out of 11 personnel, Hurts has completed nine of 18 passes for 151 yards, 85 air yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 115.7.
This season, the Giants have also played by far the most snaps of dollar personnel, with seven defensive backs. They have 54 snaps of dollar against the pass (the Las Vegas Raiders rank second with 28), and they have seven snaps of dollar against the run — where they’ve allowed 46 yards, and 42 yards after contact, on those seven carries.
So Martindale might be in a position to trim off everything about his defense that makes it different. Which is what the Eagles do to their opponents every week, with that all-too-dangerous illusion of simplicity.
What’s coming next after the snap? We’ll have to wait until Sunday to find out. Most likely, it will be bad news for Big Blue.
