How will the Eagles attack the Broncos secondary? How will Denver try to defense DeSean Jackson? Those are two major questions which will have a major affect on this football game.
Champ Bailey has made it a habit of single covering top wide receivers all throughout his career but will he try to do that with DeSean Jackson.
I doubt they’ll leave him alone on Jackson very long because Bailey can’t run with the 2nd year Eagles wide out. Bailey will try to use his superior size and strength to beat up Jackson and delay his release off the line.
Maybe they’ll ask their other corner Andre Goodman to shadow Jackson and give him help deep from the safety and ask Bailey to single cover Jeremy Maclin, Reggie Brown or Kevin Curtis by himself.
If the Birds catch Denver in a zone defense, they’ll probably try to attack Denver’s safeties.
The Eagles have been making life tough for safeties all season long and they will continue to do so.
This week they’ll be going against a guy they know very well in Brian Dawkins and the other starting Broncos safety is Renaldo Hill.
It’s become a very effective weapon in creating big plays. In both Giants games, the Birds isolated their safeties on DeSean Jackson and it wasn’t a contest after that.
In the Chicago Bears game, they again got Jackson isolated deep on a safety.
They’re becoming so effective at that teams may stop playing two deep zones against the Birds because it gives them too much of the field to cover with a speedster like Jackson running routes back there.
There haven’t been as many big plays but the Birds will also attack a safety by splitting tight end Brent Celek outside to a wide receiver position.
With Brian Westbrook back they can also walk him out to get the one-on-one matchup with the safety.
What all this means is that safeties are clearly a target of the Eagles passing game.
It also means they’ll have the chance to create some long-scoring plays because the safeties are many times the last line of defense.
The only thing that could derail the Birds going deep is NFL sack leader Elvis Dumervil. Dumervil has been a one man wrecking crew so far this season,
