In the Philadelphia Eagles' playoff win over the Green Bay Packers, Nolan Smith had a breakout performance, collecting 7 tackles, 2 sacks, and making the signature physical play of the night. Let's look at some of his highlights, in chronological order:
1) Run stop. He's two-gapping Zach Tom, which is tough to do when you're 70 pounds lighter than the guy blocking you. But Smith attacks this play with more energy, gets low as Josh Jacobs tries to take this through the C gap, and makes the stop. Well done.
2) Pressure. Smith is in a wide-9 alignment, and he has a running start to slam into Tom and push him back into the pocket. Meanwhile, Milton Williams is busy beating Elgton Jenkins for a quick pressure, and when Jordan Love tries to escape, he runs into Tom. I don't know how Love escaped without being sacked here, but it's a negative play nevertheless on the throwaway.
3) The play of the game. Jenkins is pulling across the formation hunting for someone to bury, but the hunter becomes the hunted as Smith absolutely levels Jenkins with a violent pop. BANG. And then he lets Jenkins know about it. Jenkins left the game with a stinger and did not return.
So how is this the play of the game? Well, Jenkins' is arguably the Packers' best offensive lineman. As we noted earlier in the week in our Eagles-Packers preview, all five Packers starting offensive linemen played at least 960 snaps this season, which is nice in terms of continuity, but also means that their backups were untested. And holy crap did their backups suck.
The Packers tried sixth-round rookie Travis Glover initially, but eventually benched him for 2023 UDFA Kadeem Telfort. Glover and Telfort combined for four holding penalties. They were both bad in pass protection and run blocking.
4) Sack. Tom oversets to the outside, so Smith dips inside, bends back to the outside, chases down Love, and gets the sack.
Smith absolutely crushed the NFL Combine:
He ran a 4.39, vertical jumped 41.5 inches, and ran a ridiculous 1.52 10-yard split at 238 pounds. Above is where you see that athleticism translate to the field.
5) Oh, he made a special teams tackle, too.
I mean, that might've been a trip, but whatever.
6) Setting the edge. This won't make a highlight reel (well, I guess it did here 🤷♂️), but Smith does a lot of the dirty work on the edge. Again, he is outweighed by Tom by about 70 pounds, but he sets a strong edge and forces the run inside where his teammates can clean up.
There are others, but that is just one example that I pulled of Smith's team defense.
7) Bull rush. Smith puts Tom on roller skates initially, though Tom does eventually recover and anchor. But Love has already felt that outside edge pressure, so he flees the pocket and throws it away.
8) And finally, Smith's second sack. Love kinda runs into Smith here, so it's a little gift'y, but credit Smith for not tossing Love to the ground after the whistle and getting himself flagged for unnecessary roughness.
Smith had a rocky rookie season and an unimpressive summer, but the light has gone on for him and the Eagles may have themselves a starting edge for the foreseeable future.
MORE: Snap count analysis from Eagles' win over Packers
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