The Philadelphia Eagles will be taking on more than the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday (4:25 p.m. ET on FOX and the FOX Sports app). They’ll also have to deal with an Arrowhead Stadium environment widely considered to be the toughest place in the NFL to play at, helping the Chiefs hold a 42-10 record at home over the last five seasons.
So, how can the Eagles overcome such an environment? Well, Tom Brady, who went 2-2 in his career at Arrowhead Stadium, thinks that they have the right personnel in order to succeed and overcome hostile crowd noise.
“Philly’s gotta do what they did all last year,” Brady said in his debut episode of “Story Time with Tom.” “They’ve got to control the line of scrimmage. They can do that with that big offensive line. I think that dual-threat ability that Jalen Hurts has [will really help].”
Tom Brady, ‘NFL on FOX’ crew break down how Eagles’ defense can bother Chiefs
The “NFL on FOX” crew broke down how the Philadelphia Eagles’ defense can bother the Kansas City Chiefs.
Of course, the Eagles were able to dominate in the trenches the last time these two teams played in Super Bowl LIX. Hurts was only sacked twice, while Patrick Mahomes was sacked six times and the Eagles pressured him on 16 of his 42 dropbacks. With Hurts being able to operate out of a clean pocket for much of that game, he completed 17 of 22 passes for 221 yards, two touchdowns and an interception.
In the Eagles’ season-opening win over the Cowboys, Hurts wasn’t as stellar from the pocket. Even though he completed 19 of 23 passes, Hurts finished with just 152 passing yards, although he had 62 rushing yards and two rushing scores.
Part of the reason why Hurts wasn’t able to have a strong passing day was that the Cowboys took away his top target, A.J. Brown. Brady wants to see Hurts and the Eagles get Brown more involved on Sunday.
“When he can finally get a one-on-one matchup, he didn’t really get many last week against the Cowboys, but look for your man, A.J. Brown,” Brady said. “He’s a pretty good guy to throw the ball to.”
Brown only had one target in the Eagles’ 24-20 win over the Cowboys, which came with just under two minutes remaining as he made an eight-yard grab. Hurts largely relied on tight end Dallas Goedert (seven receptions, 44 yards) and running back Saquon Barkley (four receptions, 24 yards) in the passing game as he was mostly relegated to check-downs.
Beyond opening up the passing game, Brady believes that communication will be key for the Eagles at Arrowhead on Sunday.
“So much communication is involved on every single play, certainly on offense,” Brady said. “When you have a lack of communication because you can’t communicate verbally, there’s so many little things that never get communicated that there’s a play that gets screwed up because you didn’t get a call right, or your partner didn’t get a call or a certain person couldn’t hear something in the huddle.
“Communication is the name of the game. When you go on the road and a team is really into it every single game and you have 75,000 people screaming from the time you break the huddle, to the time you walk to the line of scrimmage to the end of the play, it’s pretty intimidating.”
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