Pro Football

For football fans of a certain vintage (in other words, old guys like me), great NFL running backs were once the object of devotion, even worship. Backyard football games featured us kids attempting to replicate the moves of our idols — Walter Payton’s loaf-of-bread ball-carrying style, Marcus Allen’s uncanny ability to find seams, Tony Dorsett’s open-field agility. To this day, my favorite football player of all time remains Earl Campbell. To me, the Tyler Rose was the perfect running back — the rarest combination of power, speed and bull-headed determination. Do yourself a favor and go down a Campbell rabbit hole on YouTube. One play, he’s beating a speedy defensive end to the corner and taking it to the house; the next, he’s seeking out contact head-first and pancaking a…

In a season that culminated with a Super Bowl win, the Philadelphia Eagles’ most memorable highlight of 2024 came in a run-of-the-mill Week 9 contest against Jacksonville. In the midst of an All-Pro campaign that would produce a league-leading 2,005 rushing yards, Eagles running back Saquon Barkley provided the most dazzling play (and photo sequence) of the year with his improbable, acrobatic reverse hurdle over Jaguars defender Jarrian Jones. And by the way, in case you didn’t see it, Barkley absolutely stuck the landing.…

1 CAN THE EAGLES REPEAT? After coming up just short of the ultimate prize at the hands of the Chiefs two years prior, the Eagles finished the job this time around with a dominant revenge win in Super Bowl LIX. Now the question becomes: Can they follow in Kansas City’s footsteps and get to the top of the mountain again this season? They’ll have to overcome the exodus of multiple key players on defense, as end Josh Sweat, tackle Milton Williams and cornerback Darius Slay Jr. all left in free agency, and safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson was traded to the Texans. Philly will miss the leadership of end Brandon Graham following his retirement after a memorable 15-year career with the Eagles. The offense returns intact, though, with many of the most…

Throughout the history of pro football, a schematic revolution on one side of the ball has forced a schematic revolution on the other. The T-formation on offense had defenses moving from seven-and sixman fronts to five-man fronts. Then, more complex passing games in the late 1940s and early ’50s (think of the Los Angeles Rams’ “Point-Per-Minute” offenses from 1949-53) fostered the development of the Umbrella defenses of the mid-1950s, which were the first defenses we could call truly modern. The even more advanced passing games of the early 1960s, especially in the American Football League, brought about zone defenses and the advent of nickel and dime coverages, with five and six defensive backs. On and on it has gone. The West Coast offense had defensive coordinators putting forth new blitz…

Two years after several of the NFL’s top running backs convened to discuss the dreary financial outlook of their shared profession, things are starting to look up for the league’s most undervalued position. Saquon Barkley’s resurgent 2024 season with the Philadelphia Eagles helped bring the running back position back to prominence — 2,005 rushing yards, Offensive Player of the Year honors and a Lombardi Trophy to top it all off will do that. Barkley’s all-time campaign was almost overshadowed by what Derrick Henry accomplished with the Ravens. Henry continues to defy Father Time, putting together a 1,900-yard season at 30 that helped propel Baltimore to the playoffs. Teams in the 2025 NFL Draft took notice after two of the league’s most analytically minded franchises bucked recent trends by investing in…

In Super Bowl LIX, the Philadelphia Eagles trounced the Kansas City Chiefs 40-221, and they throttled Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs’ passing game with six sacks and 16 total pressures. When pressured, Mahomes completed only four passes on nine attempts for 48 yards, one touchdown, one interception and a 58.8 passer rating. Perhaps most remarkably, the Eagles got all that pressure on Mahomes without a single blitz in the entire game — they never brought more than four rushers a single time. This was a testimony to the brilliance of defensive coordinator Vic Fangio, but it was also a major insight into the importance of interior pressure with the Eagles’ defense. In that game, three of Philadelphia’s sacks and 10 of their pressures came from their interior defensive linemen —…