Eagles offense ready to face blitz-heavy Cardinals defense

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The Cardinals see the blitz as an opportunity for their defense to make a big play. The Eagles see the Cardinals’ blitz as an opportunity for the Eagles’ offense to make a bigger play.

“They blitz a lot,” Eagles center Jason Kelce said. “They’re going to blitz. That’s a part of the way they run their defense. They want to put a lot of pressure on the quarterback.

“Whenever you blitz that much, you live and die by the sword. You’re going to get negative plays at times, but then also other times, you’re going to be open for some big plays. If we can pick it up and we can get it blocked right, hopefully they’ll be some things open down the field for us.”

The Eagles are in the middle of the pack in sacks allowed, allowing one every 5.94 pass plays – 15th-best in the league.

Interestingly, in the eight games in which left tackle Jason Peters has started and played most of the game, the Eagles have allowed eight sacks. In the five he’s either been inactive or left very early, they’ve allowed 21.

The Eagles should be at full strength up front when they face the Cards at 8:30 p.m. Sunday at the Linc.

“They lead the National Football League in blitzing,” head coach Chip Kelly said. “They blitz the most. I think they are right at about 50 percent. So one out of every two snaps, somebody is coming, and they bring them from all different areas.”

The Cards have been bringing extra pressure since Todd Bowles left Philly along with Andy Reid and most of the staff following the 2012 season and rejoined his college coach, Bruce Arians, in Arizona as defensive coordinator.

Bowles became Jets had coach this past offseason, but his successor, former Cards linebackers coach James Bettcher, has kept up the Cards’ tradition of blitzing.

“They’re actually doing it a little bit more,” Kelly said. “You always have to prepare for blitz, but these last two opponents, the Bills and the Cardinals, are teams that are really going to come after you.

“A big part of our preparation this week is trying to handle those blitzes and how we're going to be able to pick them up.”

The Eagles have been pretty good against the blitz. According to stats maintined by Pro Football Focus, Sam Bradford has three touchdowns and zero interceptions vs. the blitz, although he’s only completed 49 percent of his passes when blitzed.

When he’s not blitzed, Bradford has 11 touchdown passes and 11 interceptions but has completed 66 percent of his passes.

According to the site, Bradford has been blitzed on 17 percent of the Eagles’ pass plays.

“One of the unique things about their defense is they run a lot of different personnel groups with those blitzes, too, and I think the communication with Kelce, between our tackles and our running backs and making sure we have everyone properly identified, will be a real key to us protecting and blocking their blitzes,” Bradford said.

“I think you can get in trouble against this team when you start to misidentify people and you’re not sliding to the right guys.”

Here's an interesting stat: Since Week 3, the Eagles are 6-0 when Bradford is sacked three or fewer times. They're 0-3 when he's sacked more than three times.

“Usually, I feel like our offense handles blitzes well,” Kelce said. “Part of that is probably tempo, part of it is probably that we have a lot of different protections that make it more difficult for teams to scheme up. But we’ll have to be on our A game Sunday, because they’re as good as anybody in the league at finding ways to get pressure.

“There’ve been some injuries. I think Sam’s been pretty good against the blitz, does a good job of recognizing his hot, does a good job knowing when it’s picked up and when it’s not.”

The Cards don’t get a lot of sacks out of their blitz, but they do rush opposing quarterbacks into mistakes. They’re only 27th in the league in sacks per pass play, but they’re limiting quarterbacks to 58.8 percent accuacy, sixth-best in the league, and they’re third with 16 interceptions.

The Cards, 11-2, are looking for their eighth straight win Sunday against the 6-7 Eagles, who are looking for their third straight win.

All of Arizona’s defensive backs like to blitz, and Tyrann Mathieu might be the best of the bunch.

“I think our guys have done a good job (against it),” Kelly said. “They work extremely hard at it. (Opponents) haven't had many clean shots at the quarterback and there have not been any missed assignments when we thought somebody was supposed to be picked up.

“When you really look at it, there may have been one or two, but there were not very many when you thought someone was supposed to be picked up but he wasn’t picked up because we had a miscommunication.

“Sam and Kelce have done a good job of getting us in the right protections and putting us in those situations.

“It’s everybody. I think you’ve got to tie the offensive in there, tie the wide receivers in there, knowing when things are hot and when they aren’t hot, but I think Sam has done a really good job. I think he’s got a better feel, a better undestanding, in terms of what we’re doing from an attack standpoint.”

The two teams that have blitzed the Eagles the most are the Jets and the Bills, which isn’t surprising considering the Jets are coached by Todd Bowles, who designed this Cards defense, and the Bills are coached by Rex Ryan, whose father Buddy was a pioneer in designing blitzes.

But the Eagles won both games.

“This has been a team ever since Todd Bowles took over as defensive coordinator that loves to blitz,” Jason Peters said.

“They mug up the A gaps, they blitz from the outside, they blitz from the inside. A lot of funky looks. A lot like Buffalo.

“I think we’ve handled it pretty well. We’ve just got to get Sam time to get rid of the ball and the receivers have to catch the ball.”

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