Jalen Hurts had only given the ball away twice across the other 13 weeks of the 2025 season before the Philadelphia Eagles came to SoFi Stadium for the final game of Week 14, Monday Night Football. That is where Hurts, and the rest of Kevin Patullo’s offensive players, faced Jesse Minter’s Rolodex of coverage options which worked beautifully in tandem to force the former Superbowl MVP to turn the ball over 5 times, including twice in one play!

How Jesse Minter’s Michigan scheme can expose the lacklustre Eagles’ offense

I detailed out my game plan for how I think the Chargers would handle the Eagles’ offense in the article above. The idea was to prioritize the following strategies to negate the type of conflicts that Hurts thrives on:

1. Use Split-field pattern match principles to give the apex players clean keys
2. Deploy Derwin James to bring pressure from the edge against condensed splits
3. Play run fits with a 6+ man spacing principle

It seems like Jesse Minter largely landed on the same ideas as I did however the reasons for that method of defense did not materialize as I anticipated, at least not early in the game. I saw the Eagles’ RPO as their most dangerous threat even if their reliance upon that conflict concept had dipped this season. Instead, Minter and his staff were faced with an 11 Personnel based spread attack that lived in 3 x 1 formations with 2 x 2 and Empty as change-ups.

Yet, the defense was in complete control of what they were seeing and Jesse Minter had all the right calls to stay ahead of the scheme changes they saw from Patullo. I decided to fully chart the first drive to illustrate how tricky this defense can be to break down and to work out the mechanics which forced five turnovers out of a quarterback who is usually focused on ball security.

Let’s get into it!

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The Opening drive: Play-by-play Charting

Snap #1

The benefits of running pattern match is that every secondary player get to read their keys post-snap which makes late motion like this a lot easier to handle. Stump worked exactly like I hoped it would here, watch #88 and #6 try to put Daiyan Henley in conflict thinking he would carry the Y up the seam but instead he sticks on Devonta’s Sit route to force Hurts into creation mode.

That is precisely where the Bolts wanted him to be; Hurts has a tendency to drop his eyes after his first scan so he can see escape lanes. This means if you can muddy his conflict reads, force him to take his eyes off routes, the opportunities for turnovers increases.

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Snap #2

The Chargers are in a two-high shell which would normally mean that they are going to be a man short of 7-man spacing and would therefore have to play with a Minus Fit. This is especially problematic against Nub formations as I highlighted in my analysis following the loss to the Commanders in Week 5. They were struggling to fit the run from Nub 3×1 looks without the required body count however here Minter have found a way to address it by being aggressive.

The Chargers sent Daiyan Henley on a run blitz to the C-gap from his Will position but it was how Minter paired this with the front which puts him in the elite tier of play designers. On the snap the Heads Front (6/2i/2i/5) shifts into an Odd front as Da’Shawn Hand and Tuli slice inside on what is referred to as a Sting. As effective as this was, it still left the Bolts a gap short in the fit but as he combined this front with Stuff coverage, a Split-field concept which gets the Weakside safety (RJ Mickens here) to buzz down into the Hook/Curl zone. This downfield post-snap rotation means he can carry that momentum into the Weak side B-gap to complete the neutral spacing run fit puzzle.

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#Snap 3

I coudn’t find the proper term for this coverage call because, to be honest, I am not sure I anyone has ever labeled this before due to its scarcity. I’ve seen plenty of 3-High formations that protect the hashes like this but they always have a center-field free safety protecting the corners from post routes. This to me plays like a 4-High version of Invert 2-Read (hence the name). But instead a single middle-hole player, Minter sent two defenders designated to stop Dig routes on 3rd and long as these are always hard to account for.

However the design was let down as Henley drifted too far inside and opened up in transition instead of attacking the throwing window which he could have done knowing he had over the top help.

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Snap #4

When you’re playing inside a 2-high structure, looks like the Double Stacks are going to force you into Minus run fits. The Eagles want to play bully ball and rely on their talent to beat your talent even when the scheme matchup is even. Patullo pulls away all the apex players with this wide split formation in order to get their 5 offensive lineman taking on your 5 box players. This may seem like an even matchup but there are 6 gaps making this a Minus run fit. The Eagles got what they wanted but this is where coaching and execution fills the gaps that scheme can’t.

Watch the tandem job of Khalil Mack and Da’Shawn Hand on the endzone angle, those two put on a clinic to fit this iso matchup to an elite standard. Mack plays with a Heavy technique to squeeze down the B-gap and Hand gets skinny through the double team to own the frontside A-gap. Hand’s strength here is outstanding, his return to full health has been critical for the Chargers over the last few weeks. Within a second, the two big men eviscerated the numbers disadvantage which the Eagles were banking on.

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Snap #5

This is the first bit of fight back to the Split-field looks that we saw from the Eagles. They saw both corners sit off in their deep Quarters assignment and decided to attack this to see how their elite wide out pairing could do. Hurts did well to quick trigger on the #1 (Jahan Dotson) as soon as he looked up from his punch footwork out of the Zone Read dressing. The Eagles once again bet on their talent but Donte Jackson is more than a match for this and flies downhill to make the stop for minimal gain.

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Snap #6

3-Site was an interesting split-field choice vs 3 x 2 Empty, it effectively puts one side of the field in man coverage with the other running Cover 3. The funny thing is, it comes directly from the opposite sideline as it’s a component of Vic Fangio’s scheme and it was something we saw regularly under Brandon Staley. Tarheeb Still and Cam Hart were in the right place straight out of the huddle which tells me that Minter clearly had a call for this in place whenever A.J. Brown and Devonta Smith were together on the weak side of formation.

Minter paired this with a Pirate stunt which requires Hand and Mack to knive inside and Tuli jamming the B Gap before looping all the way over to play contain. This leaves Odafe Oweh isolation with Jordan Mailata in a situation where he can bide his time, he uses his length incredibly well to bench Mailata off of him with enough space to slip under his reach for the sack.

However this result was certainly earned by the coverage as Hurts wanted Dotson but Molden locked him down. Then his eyes went to the conflict point between A.J. Brown Devonta Smith on the Squire concept (In/Turn routes) but Hart and Still played through the mesh point beautifully.

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Summary

Games are rarely even won on the first drive of the game but If I had the football brain to process the above information in real-time, I think I would have been confident to say that Minter had Patullo’s number once the Eagles made their first punt of the game. That confidence would have been down to fact that the Eagles had already hit a lot of the concepts that the Chargers have struggled against this season.

They tried Spacing and Dig concepts to put the Apex in conflict, Zone Reads out of Stacks to challenge coverage rules and Zone Runs out of 3 x 1 Nub to probe the run fits. Yet, despite all of that they only gave up one successful play and even that was due to a slight positional error. From this point onward it was largely the same, in fact Minter’s defense were able to give their offense in position to do enough to win a much needed game. They took the ball away on four drives, and those interceptions proved the turning point in the game. So let’s take a look at how each of them played out.

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Interceptions

I thought it would also be useful to see how the interceptions were earned because as much as I see a lot of fault from Jalen Hurts, the scheme utilization forced the Eagles into places they didn’t want to be in. You don’t go from throwing two picks all season, to four in one game without being fooled a few times. The main takeaway here is that everything Minter did pivoted around his split-field coverages, the change-ups worked because the main game plan was spot on.

1st – 8:30 left in Q2

As he has done all season, Minter paired Cover 0 with two players dropping off from the mugged front to play between the hashes with zone eyes. This worked to perfection because Minter made it look exactly like Palms or 77 Clamp pre-snap. Hurts thought the middle hook zone would be free to get the ball in front of the Pivot route.

Da’Shawn Hand did an outstanding job to engage the pass protection, climb for depth and get his hands high to grab this ball above his head. He earned this pick even if it was gifted to him.

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2nd – 4:45 left in Q2

Jalen Hurts throws this ball late which is the primary reason for the turnover but Donte Jackson is brave to plays this so confidently as the safety so far inside he wouldn’t be able to cap any outward breaking deep route. Kudos to D-Jax because this is something he and the staff have clearly worked on; the Jacksonville Jaguars manipulated Nail open using the Spacing concept to attack the seams. Donte recognized that and drove so early he had to slow himself down.

Credit should also got to Khalil Mack because for a 34 year old, 270lbs Edge rusher to cover that much ground on an interior loop from a 9t alignment outside of a double wing is incredible.

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3rd – 11:12 left in Q4

The coverage details which you can build into Split-field concepts made the difference once again on the third interception of the day. Perryman does a really nice job to follow Hurts’ eyes to climb up into the front side throwing window. Cam Hart squeezes on Brown’s Dig route which means Hurts can’t throw this back shoulder as he normally would. This means he can’t protect Brown from Perryman and that’s what caused the drop and pick.

What makes this interesting schematically is that they ran this coverage on the 2nd play of the game the Bolts ran the same coverage but because it was against a Nub formation, the corner used a Tight 1/3 technique to play the deep third but here, the Chargers called it with a MOD tag to make sure Brown didn’t have a free release if he pushed vertically. Cam played this in a Motor technique. These adjustments certainly contributed to the interception.

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4th – 2:35 left in OT

For such an incredible ending to an incredible defensive performance, the final play was simply a great bit of individual play to elevate an ordinary coverage call. Palms (or 77 Clamp in Cover 7 language) is a solid strategy vs 2×2 in the redzone. The safety can play with their heels on the goal-line and his corner can carry the #1 to the back pylon if he needs to. Both the landmarks and the keys are clean for your secondary players meaning you can quick trigger on lateral movement like Cam does here.

It was just a brilliant bit of athleticism by Hart to be able to stay true to his responsibility within the coverage and still get to the interior window of this line-drive ball. He sees the whole way and pounces on the ball the moment he locates it in the air. Of course we can’t overlook the incredible catch Tony Jefferson makes. When you see a safety who has hands like this it’s so hard to believe that was only his eighth career interception, and half of those have come this season!

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Gameflow

I wanted to pay a quick homage to how Jesse Minter stayed ahead of any adjustments Patullo could make to the coverages the Bolts were showing:

1. The Bolts started out in Split-field Cover 7 to answer the Eagles 3×1 sets
2. So the Eagles countered with Empty which was swiftly punished by Cover 0 (INT #1)
3. The Eagles pulled up their isolation routes to the outside but the Chargers used another pivot of 2-high; Cover 2-man to bracket them.
4. Next came mesh to take advantage of the lack of pressure but Minter had deployed variations of Cover 3 before they could even get going.
5. Then they went back to matching the Eagles spread formations with their Split-field Cover 7 as they protected a lead in the 4th quarter.

A comprehensive play calling display like this unfortunately means that Jesse Minter is firmly at the top of head coaching candidates for the upcoming cycle. Jesse forced the Eagles off of their best concepts before they could even get them onto the field and blanketed every counter punch with ease. To know a non-divisional opponent who you have never called a game against, to the degree which I have broken down here, is simply outstanding.