Dan Orlovsky reveals what makes Eagles’ offense ‘predictable’ after ugly ‘TNF’ loss to Giants

The Eagles have a bigger tell than Teddy KGB and its sinking their “predictable” offense.

ESPN analyst and ex-NFL quarterback Dan Orlovsky slammed Philadelphia’s offense during Thursday night’s 34-17 beatdown loss to the Giants, noting that the Birds give away their play and it’s a big reason why a championship-caliber unit is sputtering.

“They’re in the Gun every snap,” Orlovsky tweeted Thursday night.

“Where Saquon aligns is giving away run or pass. Predictable.”

Eagles star right tackle Lane Johnson agreed with that assessment, saying the team gets “very predictable” at times, after Philadelphia lost its second straight game and both within the last five days.

“In this league, if you become one-dimensional, if you’re not making guys think, things can happen like that,” Johnson said. “We’re just not very good right now.”

He added: “At the end of the day we have to keep the defense guessing, not be predictable.”

The Eagles’ offense has been one of the NFL’s best under Jalen Hurts, but something has been amiss this year as they defend their Super Bowl title.

A unit featuring stars like Saquon Barkley, A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith and a stout offensive line has been rather pedestrian, seemingly doing barely enough to scrape by during this 4-2 start.

There has been reports of growing consternation among the receivers, who have combined for 595 receiving yards this season and have been phased out of games at times.

For comparison, Rams star receiver Puka Nacua has 588 receiving yards by himself.

Even Barkley, after last year’s historic season, is averaging roughly 71 rushing yards less per game (125.31 to 54.16) year over year.

This season marks the first with Kevin Patullo serving as offensive coordinator after Kellen Moore left for New Orleans, and it’s certainly possible he runs a much more vanilla offense.

And if Orlovsky’s theory is correct, it would go a long way toward explaining why teams have slowed down Philadelphia’s unit more than they have in years past.

The Eagles rank 17th with their 23.7 points per game.

Philadelphia coach Nick Sirianni pushed back against the narrative that the offense is too predictable, particularly in the running game.

“Obviously, any time, I think there were some good moments in the run game today,” Sirianni said. “Got ourselves behind the sticks a little bit in the second half on some of the runs there. We’ll look at everything right there. We know we have the guys up front to be able to do that, obviously we got to do a good job putting them in positions to succeed and then we have to go execute. We’ll look at everything.

“Running a bunch of different types of schemes, but we’ll look at everything to see what we’re doing well and treat this like a bye week here this weekend.”

In Thursday’s game, the Eagles had stretches where they moved the ball at will yet they still only scored 17 points.

Barkley had 67 total yards against his former team, Brown hauled in six balls for 80 yards and Smith added four catches for 49 yards.

Jalen Hurts missed potential opportunities to connect with the pair for touchdowns, including when Brown ran free in the end zone on the devastating interception by Cordale Flott.

Barkley too disagreed with the Eagles’ offense being easy to predict.

“Can’t say that,” Barkley said. “I come from the school of thought that the majority of times or not, you’re going to have an opportunity on a play. Just gotta be in the right spot, somebody misses, they make a play, that’s just football. Last year, do you think we were predictable? Everyone knew we were running the football and everyone knew we were running the ball and we still got it off.

“I think we also gotta get back to that attitude too, to that mindset of not really giving a f–k of what people trying to do and that’s something that I’m definitely gonna.”

Philadelphia will now have 10 days to prepare for its Week 7 road game against the Vikings before welcoming the Giants to Lincoln Financial Field for a rematch on Oct. 26.