It is the sixth installment of the Philly Sports Stat of the Week. I decided to finally mention the Philadelphia Eagles in this article series of mine. The Philadelphia Eagles sit atop the rushing touchdowns list for the entire NFL. The Eagles have rushed for 21 touchdowns thus far this season. 

The high-flying Eagles are using their dual threat quarterback Jalen Hurts and his receivers to maximize the run. The Eagles, for most of the season, have had a healthy receiving core in AJ Brown, Devonta Smith, Dallas Goedert, and Quez Watkins running routes for Jalen Hurts. The threatening nature of this fearsome foursome has forced defenses to account for the passing game. 

I mentioned the passing game above for two reasons. The first being that the NFL is a passing league so teams will respect another team’s passing options and Hurts’ running ways are optimized due to the defense worrying about the big play receivers. The Eagles offense has been engineered by the running game. The Eagles league-leading rushing touchdowns of 21 is three ahead of the closest team. On top of that, Philadelphia is top ten in the three other traditional rushing categories. 

The Eagles rank 3rd in the NFL for rushing attempts at 378, 4th in rushing yards with 1,788 yards, and 10th in yards per carry at 4.7 yards. MVP candidate Jalen Hurts and starting running back Miles Sanders are the laborers pulling this Eagles rushing bandwagon. Sanders has rushed for 900 yards and 8 touchdowns on 177 carries. Sanders has seemingly has risen back to 2020 form, maybe even better now. 

Jalen Hurts has a similar rushing stat line to Sanders. Hurts has rushed for 597 yards and 8 touchdowns on 127 carries. Hurts combination of designed runs and improvisational scrambles have built up the rushing attack along with Miles Sanders. As long as Hurts, Sanders, and the offensive line continue to be healthy it looks like the Eagles will hold their position in the team rushing touchdown category.