Philadelphia Eagles: No Jason Garrett, no problem in Week 12

Did you happen to catch the New York Giants’ appearance versus the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Monday Night Football, maybe as some Week 12 scouting, maybe just out of morbid curiosity? The Giants’ offense was sort of… bad, right?

Yeah, you could say that.

Now granted, the chances of the G-Men pulling out a W against the Bucs felt incredibly unlikely. As Philadelphia Eagles fans can attest first hand, Tom Brady very much still has it, and Bruce Arians remains among the better coaches around, even in his 28th year coaching in the NFL, but what stood out most was the sheer ineptness New York put on the national stage.

How bad are we talking? Try 167 yards through the air – to go with two interceptions – 66 yards on the ground on only 13 attempts, and some genuinely bizarre plays that even had Payton and Eli Manning scratching their heads.

Surely if Nick Sirianni’s squad faced off against a similar offense in Week 12, they’d be in line for an easy win and an opportunity to gloat over a division win, but much like the New York Giants drafting DeVonta Smith, it wasn’t meant to be. The Giants officially fired their offensive coordinator and long-time Dallas Cowboys head coach, Jason Garrett, and will surely field a different look when they take the field versus the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 12.

The good news? Their new offensive coordinator is Freddie Kitchens, which might actually be worse.

The Philadelphia Eagles should be able to stifle the Giants’ offense in Week 12.

Freddie Kitchens has coordinated an offense twice in his NFL career, once in 2018 as the Browns’ interim offensive coordinator and again in 2019 when he was promoted to Cleveland’s head coach.

As a midseason replacement offensive coordinator, Kitchens’ offense ranked 13th in yards and 20th in points, but once he was allowed to fully implement his scheme over a full season, those numbers dropped to 22nd and 22nd, respectively, while leading the Browns to a 6-10 record and yet another head coaching search the following spring.

Since then, Kitchens was hired by the Giants as a tight ends coach – which is admittedly pretty weird, considering he’s mostly coached running backs – but actually called one game as an OC in 2020, when Jason Garrett was out on the COVID List a la Pat Shurmur in Week 10, losing to his former team 20-6.

So, what can fans expect to see from the Giants’ offense in Week 12? Will Kitchens magically right the team’s ship and prevent the Eagles from hitting the .500 mark? I sort of doubt it.

For one, before being handed the interim offensive coordinator title, Kitchens was the team’s senior offensive assistant, a role he was “promoted” to during the offseason. While Kitchens may have different tendencies than Garrett as a playcaller, he will likely continue to use the same playbook he helped to craft over the offseason and thus will be a split-second decision away from putting something like this on tape yet again.

Sidebar: Yes, I know the Giants technically scored a touchdown by throwing a pass to their left tackle, but when a team only scores one touchdown and has to call a super-duper trick play to get it done, you surely have quite a few problems.

In Cleveland, Kitchens liked to run the ball. His top rusher, Nick Chubb, averaged 1,000-plus yards over his two-year tenure calling plays for the Browns, and that commitment to moving the chains on the ground made life easier for first/second-year quarterback Baker Mayfield.

With Saquon Barkley not quite at full strength, could the Giants switch up their style and try to commit themselves to a ground-and-pound offense a la Nick Sirianni’s midseason switcheroo? Sure, but over the past few weeks, the Eagles have actually become a pretty good run defense, especially with T.J. Edwards in the middle of the defense.

Factor in the Giants’ undermanned receiving corps and Darius Slay playing like an All-Pro, and something tells me the Eagles won’t have to worry too hard about Kitchens’ elevation magically transforming the Giants into the ’99 Rams.

Teams don’t just change their offensive coordinators in the middle of the season on a whim. No, they do so because things really aren’t going well, and the head coach wants to take a big swing at saving the season and likely his job. While Freddie Kitchens may throw a few plays at the Philadelphia Eagles that they, and the Manning Brothers, haven’t seen before, it likely won’t be enough to slow down the hottest rushing offense in the NFL, let alone soon-to-be 1,000-yard receiver DeVonta Smith.