Middle Men?

Eagles offensive coordinator Kellen Moore, in his first year with the team, is considered one of the NFL’s better offensive football minds.

He’s known for putting his best players in position to exploit defenses.

Whether his strategies include using space or creating mismatches, Moore has excelled at generating offense. In five years as an offensive coordinator – four with Dallas, one with the Chargers – he has presided over a top-ranked and second-ranked offense.

One of his primary methods of using space and creating mismatches is using his most threatening receiver in the slot.

In fact, here’s a chart showing all the passing yards generated during Kellen Moore’s coordinator career and the percentage of production that came from the slot.

For comparison, here’s a look at the slot production of the Eagles’ offense since Nick Sirianni became head coach in 2021.

(Remember, the Eagles promoted Brian Johnson to offensive coordinator in 2023 to replace Shane Steichen.)

 

In 2022, under Steichen, the Eagles’ offense didn’t get a truck full of production from the slot despite appearing in the Super Bowl.

Surprisingly, they generated much more slot production during Brian Johnson’s tenure in 2023, the highest percentage of the Sirianni era.

Moore, by contrast, has generated significantly more production from the slot during his career as an offensive coordinator.

It’s an important component of his offensive philosophy and it’s clear that he puts his best player in the slot, as the addition of first-round receiver Ceedee Lamb to the Cowboys in 2020 resulted in a 6% increase in slot production.

Here is the NFL average for slot production since the start of 2020:

Overall, Moore’s offense has a higher average slot production rate than the league average while the Sirianni-led Eagles have yielded a lower average slot production.

And while the Eagles interestingly produced yardage from the slot at a higher rate than the league average in 2023, Moore’s offenses have always been comfortably higher than the four-year league average in generating yards from the slot.

Here’s a look at the two most productive slot receivers for the Eagles and Cowboys in 2022: 

In 2022, the Eagles generated 18.75% of their production from the slot. Despite this low rate, it’s worth noting that AJ Brown and CeeDee Lamb both generated the same number of slot touchdowns despite AJ Brown seeing just 25.78% of his snaps from the slot compared to CeeDee Lamb’s 62.88%. 

But in total, the Cowboys – namely, Lamb – out-produced the Eagles in virtually every statistic (both total and slot).

This next chart helps illustrate the breakdown of yards generated:

The top color shows the amount of yards generated in the slot, the bottom shows yards generated from the outside.

In 2022, most of AJ Brown’s and Devonta Smith’s yardage came from wider splits. Yet they were also the team’s two most productive slot receivers (in terms of yards).

This eventually proved problematic, even with the Eagles appearing in the Super Bowl that season, as the limited slot production continued in 2023, when Steichen left to become Colts head coach, leading to Johnson’s promotion to coordinator from quarterbacks coach.

In 2023, Moore also was on a new team, as offensive coordinator of the Chargers.

Here’s a chart that compares the two most productive slot receivers from the Eagles and the Chargers during the 2023 campaign:

In 2023, the Eagles increased their slot production percentage from 18.75% to 23.56%. Devonta Smith saw his slot snaps rise while Brown’s dropped.

Despite the Eagles’ increase in slot production, this chart looks eerily similar to the 2022 chart.

By comparison, Moore’s offense with the Chargers utilized its top receiver in the slot – Keenan Allen. And although Allen isn’t a carbon copy of Lamb, he was still incredibly productive, especially at 31 years old. 

Here’s what the slot-outside production among both teams’ top-two receivers looks like:

It shows more slot yards for Brown – and less for Smith – compared to 2022, but the Eagles’ pass offense still sunk to 16th in the NFL last season after a top-10 finish in 2022.

What’s it Mean?

The data shows the Eagles haven’t optimized their use of A.J. Brown, a player who can create a significant advantage with his yards-after-catch acumen.

He’s a player who should be fed the ball and shouldn’t be limited to the outside.

It would be curious if Moore didn’t use Brown similarly to how he used Lamb in Dallas and Allen in Los Angeles, especially given Brown’s ability to be a difference-maker from any alignment.

DeVonta Smith should also receive more slot snaps, although it’s been discussed on the Inside The Birds podcast that the Eagles are leery of using Smith there given his slight size and frame and the traffic that comes with playing inside.

But the Eagles could surely benefit from using the entire field and moving pieces to create mismatches in their attack strategy.

If they can bring in a legitimate third receiver – which at the moment, they don’t have – their utilization of the top two weapons would become even more dangerous and easier to implement.

The movement and shift of receivers that accompany Moore’s scheme should help limit the stagnation that the offense faced in their collapse last season.

– Sam Finkel is a staff writer for InsideTheBirds.com whose focus is on analytics.