Redskins Vs Eagles: Breaking Down Eagles Touchdown Passes

The weak link in the Washington Redskins defense last season was their secondary unit. Having added the likes of Bacarri Rambo and David Amerson, the Redskins remain hopeful that unit will improve in 2013. Eagles Head Coach didn't challenge them too often, preferring to run the ball for the most part. But the Eagles did throw two long touchdown passes. So what happened in the secondary?

Lets have a look at the first touchdown pass to DeSean Jackson.

The Eagles are running a concept that the Redskins have used themselves plenty of times. Jackson runs a deep post route while Riley Cooper runs a deep crossing route.

A lot of people thought that the Redskins secondary bought the play-action fake by Vick, but here you can see they didn't. As Vick reaches the top of his drop, the Redskins secondary drops back to their zone landmarks. They appear to be playing quarters coverage, where each defender is assigned a deep quarter of the field.

As Cooper begins to cross the field, Bacarri Rambo peels off and drops to his zone. Cooper crosses the face of EJ Biggers, playing strong safety. Biggers should be dropping deeper to account for Jackson running behind him.

But Biggers gets caught following Cooper, who's crossing route is entering DeAngelo Hall's zone. But Hall recognizes that Biggers has missed Jackson, so attempts to cover up Biggers error.

From this picture, you can see that rookies David Amerson and Bacarri Rambo are sitting in their zones watching the quarterback, with the play on the other side of the field. Biggers crashing on Cooper's crossing route opens up a huge hole behind him for Jackson.

A lot of people thought this play was on Rambo, but even after the play, you can see Hall turning and staring down Biggers for missing his assignment.

The second touchdown pass to tight end Brent Celek was a tough coverage job for Rambo.

Celek will run right down the heart of the defense. The Redskins have Cover 3 called, a coverage with three deep zones. Rambo is assigned with the deep middle third of the field, with Biggers and Hall taking the zones outside of him.

After the snap, Rambo has to drop to his landmark and stay deeper than the deepest Eagles receiver. Celek gets a free release right across the middle of the field, putting Rambo in a tough position.

Rambo breaks on the ball as early as he possibly could within the bounds of the scheme, but there is too much ground between him and Celek to make up.

Rambo can't close the gap in time, giving Celek the opportunity to shield the ball away from him. Rambo fails to wrap up the tackle, and Celek runs straight into the end zone for the touchdown.

It was a tough game for the Redskins defense. Overall I thought they coped pretty well against this up-tempo offense, but ultimately struggled to make tackles. The Eagles managed to catch the Redskins out of position a couple of times, but I think the coverage by the Redskins was solid for the most part (I'll wait to watch the All-22 footage to say for certain).