This was already a condensed week for the Eagles because of Thanksgiving.
Now they’re stuffing some more film study onto their plate.
After a pitiful offensive performance on Monday night, the Giants fired offensive coordinator Jason Garrett and will hand over play calling duties to senior offensive assistant Freddie Kitchens.
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“Yeah, you gotta go back and you gotta look at some things that Coach Kitchens did at Cleveland and some of those things like that,” Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni said on Wednesday afternoon. “You look for every advantage, every edge, tendency things. You go back and look at what they have. I’ve said this before here, it’s a different play caller so there’s going to be different looks, there’s going to be different things that he does that Coach Garrett didn’t do or vice versa.
“We just have to be ready for anything. And when you don’t know what you’re getting, you’ve got to play your rules and you’ve got to play your rules on each individual defense that you get.”
On a conference call with Philadelphia reporters Wednesday morning, Giants head coach Joe Judge was asked if the change at offensive coordinator was more about preparation during the week or play calling during games. He said it’s a little bit of both.
And if you thought he was going to divulge some new offensive identity, you were mistaken.
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“We’ll see how that evolves during the week,” Judge said.
The Giants this season are 25th in points scored and 23rd in yards gained. Against the Bucs on Monday night they managed to score a season-low 10 points and their only touchdown was a pass to their left tackle.
While the Giants have really struggled this season offensively — they’re the only team in the NFL that has failed to score 30 points in a game — there’s some inherent advantage to the unknown.
Although unknown doesn’t always mean better.
“In terms of Freddie, the lens he looks at it with is through the lens of the players,” Judge said. “I think that’s important when you talk about distributing the ball around the team. You gotta make sure you present opportunities for guys to make plays.
Kitchens, 46, was with the Browns before joining the Giants last year. He took over as Cleveland’s interim coach in 2018 after Hue Jackson and offensive coordinator Todd Haley were fired. Kitchens led the Browns to a 5-3 record down the stretch and was hired as the full-time head coach for the following season, but was fired after the year.
But at least there’s a solid season and a half of tape from Cleveland with Kitchens as the play caller. Obviously, the Giants have different personnel than the Browns, so there are still some unknowns, but it’ll help. And the Giants have a short week to implement any wrinkles before Sunday.
Still, Sirianni acknowledged that it’s a change and the Giants’ offense will look different, just like the Eagles’ offense would look different if someone other than him was calling the plays.
“When stuff like that happens, I think I’ve talked about this before, an unscouted look,” Sirianni said. “You’ve got to go back and you’ve got to play your rules on everything. So every defense, every offense has rules written into it if you get different looks. So that’s where our preparation in the offseason, our preparation throughout each week is going to really pay dividends.”
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