Jordan Howard and Miles Sanders finally get on same page with Eagles offensive line

GREEN BAY, Wis. – The plan from the outset Thursday night was to run the ball.

A lot.

The Eagles had spent a good chunk of the short week leading up to the game watching film of the Packers defense. While Green Bay defensive coordinator Mike Pettine’s unit was very good against the pass, particularly when in third-and-long, it wasn’t nearly as fearsome against the run, as evidenced by the 4.9 yards per carry the Packers had given up in their first three games.

Davin Cook and the Vikings had rushed for 198 yards against them. Phillip Lindsay and the Broncos had put up 149.

“When it comes to running the ball, the more opportunities we get, the more successful we’re going to be," said Brandon Brooks, the Eagles’ Pro Bowl right guard.

“We went out there and kind of imposed our will on them and wore them down. We got a glimpse of the team we could be.’’

An Eagles ground game that had run hot and cold the first three weeks of the season ran scalding hot from beginning to end in Thursday night’s 34-27 win.

They rushed for a season-high 176 yards and averaged 5.3 yards per carry. Jordan Howard, who missed several holes in the Eagles’ Week 3 loss to the Lions, didn’t miss any Thursday as he put together his best game as an Eagle.

He rushed for 87 yards on 15 carries. Howard had two rushing TDs and another one on a 20-yard catch-and-run. He had four runs of 10-plus yards and six of his team’s 10 rushing first downs.

Rookie Miles Sanders, who fumbled twice in the Lions loss, protected the ball much better against the Packers and finished with 72 yards on 11 carries, including a 30-yard burst up the middle late in the third quarter that kick-started the Eagles’ game-winning touchdown drive.

“He’s very explosive,’’ Howard said of Sanders. “I wish I could move the way he does. Most of the time, I’ve got to run through people to get my yards. I’ve got to get them the tough way. But I feel we feed off each other very well.

“We’re a great one-two punch. When one of us got tired, the other one would come in. We’d be fresh and the defense would be worn down. We were just hitting them left and right.’’

Brooks and the rest of the offensive line, including tight ends Dallas Goedert, Zach Ertz, and Alex Ellis, put on a blocking clinic against the Packers.

Ellis’ wham block on linebacker Blake Martinez allowed Howard to get to the hole for his first touchdown run. And Goedert’s wham block on defensive end Dean Lowry opened the door for Sanders’ 30-yard run.

“You’ve got to give credit to the offensive line,’’ Sanders said. “Those guys were blocking well the whole game. We knew going in [that the Packers] struggled against the run. So we were going to pound the ball the whole game. They couldn’t stop us. We were getting 5-6 yards a pop.’’

The Eagles used the run game to stay out of the third-and-longs the Packers defense thrives on. In their first three games, 30 of the Eagles’ 48 third downs were 6 yards or more. The only team in the league with more was the Arizona Cardinals.

Against the Packers, the Eagles had a season-low nine third downs and just three of them were more than 6 yards. Howard and Sanders averaged an impressive 6.5 yards per carry on first down. In the first three games, they had averaged just 3.4.

Running backs have to be in sync with their offensive line, kind of a football version of finishing each other’s sentences. That wasn’t happening enough in the first three games as Howard and Sanders struggled to get on the same page with the people up front.

So, Brooks and the other offensive linemen spent the short practice week changing that.

“We got with them and explained what we’re seeing and how we’re blocking it,’’ Brooks said. “We talked about how they want us to block and how we want them to run.

“I think we just held each other accountable to a different degree this week. In practice, if we didn’t like something, we’d start over. If we didn’t like the execution of a play, we’d start over. If we didn’t like how the running back was running the ball or how we were blocking it for him, we would just do it over until we were all on the same page and understood.’’

Said center Jason Kelce: “We have great players on the offensive line. But execution breeds confidence. Execution breeds momentum. We can be as good as we want on paper, but until we go out there and really dominate and really show how we can do as a unit, it doesn’t mean anything.

"This was a great performance across the board for everybody.’’

Goedert, one of the league’s better blocking tight ends, missed the Falcons game with a calf injury and played just nine snaps against the Lions last week.

His absence in those two games prevented the Eagles from playing much “12’’ personnel. With him all the way back Thursday night — he played 43 of the 62 snaps against the Packers — coach Doug Pederson used “12’’ personnel nearly 50 percent of the time in the first half and nearly as much in the second half. That made it difficult for Pettine to use a lot of the defensive back-heavy packages that he favors.

The Eagles also took their run-pass option game -- which was such a big part of their offensive success during their Super Bowl run but not so much last year -- out of mothballs Thursday. It kept the Packers on their heels against both the run and the pass.

“We did" use them more, Kelce said of the RPOs. “We felt we had kind of gotten away from some of the successful things we had done in 2017. I think [it helped us] use the backs a little better and play to their strengths. Jordan is such a dynamic downhill player. And Miles, when you get him out in the open, he’s dynamic as well.’’

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