The Philadelphia Eagles offense has hit a serious speedbump since the bye week, ranking 14th in offensive EPA/play after being fourth before it, per RBSDM. 

Although they were able to put up 37 against the rising Buffalo Bills in Week 12, the Eagles have scored 21 against the Kansas City Chiefs and has now lost back to back games while scoring less than 20 points in each of the losses. 

Now granted, they've faced some of the best defenses in the NFL and there's no reason to hit the panic button just yet. However, it's only fair to look under the hood and try to figure out what's going wrong with the Eagles offense.

The Eagles refuse to use motion

One of the hot topics of the week has been the Eagles' obvious lack of motion. Per analyst Brett Kollman, they have used the second fewest motion plays and are third-lowest in motion percentage. 

Head coach Nick Sirianni insisted on Thursday that isn't a problem for his team at all.

"Yeah, I think I feel like I’ve answered this question about five times in this setting," a frustrated Sirianni told reporters when faced with a question of the pros and cons of motion. "That’s fine, I’ll continue to. And I get it, there’s going to be scrutiny when we’re not playing and coaching well enough because that’s the case right now. We're not playing well enough."

The Eagles head coach then proceeded to explain how he views motion and how the offense utilizes it, strongly focusing on information gathering. 

It's true that motions are largely used to provide clues as to whether the defense is playing zone or man coverage. In turn, that can give a very important pre-snap read to the quarterback.

"There are many different ways you would motion," Sirianni explained. Sometimes it’s to gather information. Sometimes it’s to set up an advantage, whatever it could be. There are other ways to gather information besides motion that teams do all the time. That’s something that we do. It could be by formation. Just because a guy moves, doesn’t necessarily give you the answer. It could be if a guy is removed from the core, it can give you the answer. If a guy is tight to the core, it gives you an answer. This formation can give you an answer."

The Eagles head coach admitted the Eagles rarely use the tool and that it was a fair question while also noting that they've turned to motion in several instances to find the answers.

"Now, sometimes the answer is to motion, and so there are some games where we motion more than we don’t," the Eagles HC concluded. "It’s a fair question because we do it less than everybody in the NFL. (…) But I guess what I’m saying, at the whole scheme of this, is you can get answers without movement." 

But there's a big problem with Sirianni's thoughts on motion

It's easy to buy the pitch the Eagles head coach is selling. Sure, there are dozens upon dozens of ways you can ID the defense's coverage. But when discussing his philosophy on motion, Sirianni completely missed the mark in one big way.

Offenses don't use motion just to ID a coverage. Some of the best passing offenses in the league like the 49ers, Cowboys, Dolphins and, in previous years, the Chiefs, use motion at a very high rate to set up leverage advantages in the passing game.

This is a lesson Sirianni should've learned in the Eagles' Super Bowl loss in February! Three of the Chiefs' touchdowns came in plays with motion where they messed up the Eagles' leverage on defense.

The Cowboys were very conservative with their use of motion before their bye week. Since then, they've ramped it up significantly and have reaped off the rewards from it.

Meanwhile, the Eagles are 14th in passing EPA/play while they rank a mediocre 22nd in success rate (a sign of how much their deep passing game hides the lack of a solid intermediate and short attack). 

For Sirianni to seem this stubborn about potentially adding motion to the offense is frustrating. Sure, the Eagles are still one of the top contenders in the NFC. But at some point, this coaching staff must come up with answers when things aren't going right. Maybe that starts with figuring out motion is about much more than just IDing the coverage.

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