Wild stat shows how much Eagles offensive line misses Jason Kelce

The Philadelphia Eagles offensive line has had a solid start to its first year without Jason Kelce playing center. While overall the performance has been good, there’s one part of the run game where the unit has struggled: runs up the middle.

The Eagles stuff% has taken a sharp downturn this season without Kelce:

They have more stuffs (12) through 5 games than they did in the entirety of Jason Kelce’s last two seasons. Wild.

— Jake Rabadi (@JakeRabadiNFL) October 16, 2024

As the name suggests, stuff% is the rate at which an Eagles RB is stuffed at the line of scrimmage when attempting a run, in this case up the middle or inside right. I was initially shocked to see such a big jump, but looking back on the season so far I’m not entirely surprised.

What stands out to me the most is the Tampa Bay game. It just felt like every short yardage chance we tried to run it up the gut ended in Vita Vea completely blowing up whatever running back was on the field.

Nobody is more critical of analytics than me, but even I can’t ignore the stark difference here. Combine that with the fact that we have the best RB we’ve had in years in Saquon Barkley, and it shows just how critical Jason Kelce was to this team.

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