Coming off their 24-22 Week 1 win over the Washington Commanders, the Philadelphia Eagles will travel south for a rare matchup in Nashville against the Tennessee Titans. Here are our five things to watch.

1) Jeffrey Simmons vs. Drew Kendall and the interior of the Eagles' offensive line

Jeffery Simmons had a monster season in 2025, despite playing for a bad Titans defense. From old friend Turron Davenport: 

Simmons posted a career-high 11 sacks last season, breaking Jurrell Casey's franchise record for most sacks (10.5) in a season by a defensive tackle. Along with his 11 sacks, Simmons led all NFL interior defensive linemen in solo tackles (39), tackles for loss (17), sacks (11), sack yards (79.0), quarterback pressures (60), pressure rate (14.5) and forced fumbles (tied 3). He was named first-team All Pro and was selected to the Pro Bowl for the fourth time in his seven-year career.

Simmons is the best interior defensive lineman in the NFL, and the Eagles will have to face him at a time when they are having issues along the interior of their offensive line.

As you all saw on Sunday, Landon Dickerson had his worst game as a pro, and was subsequently placed on IR with a knee injury. He will almost certainly be replaced in the lineup by Drew Kendall, who will likely fill in at LG directly for Dickerson, unless the Eagles instead opt for some shuffling along the O-line, with Kendall filling in at center and Cam Jurgens moving to guard. 

This offseason, we published a film breakdown of Kendall's limited action in 2025. Cliff's Notes: He was promising in that game. And then in training camp and the preseason games, Kendall played well. For example, here he helps Fred Johnson get to his reach block, then gets to the second level & blocks a LB:

Nice second-level block here: 

Here he is doubling a Pats defender into oblivion with Willie Lampkin: 

Kendall is healthy. He should be an immediate upgrade over what Dickerson showed on Sunday (low bar). Still, although Kendall has experience playing against great interior defensive linemen in practice, he has never played against anyone as good as Simmons in a real game. Huge test.

2) Otherwise, this is not a good Titans defense

The Titans' team defense stats in 2025: 

The one area where the Titans were decent was their run defense. However, this offseason they traded one of the NFL's best space-eating run stoppers in 362-pound T'Vondre Sweat to the Jets for edge defender Jermaine Johnson. In Week 1, the Jets ran for 152 yards and 2 TDs against the Titans defense.

As we noted in our Eagles-Commanders preview last week, the success of the Eagles' offense in 2026 is going to be dependent on their rushing attack. If they can't get that going, it could be a long, frustrating season on offense, like it was in 2025. 

The Commanders defense offered an outstanding opportunity to get the run game going right out of the gate, and Saquon Barkley did average 5.5 yards per carry, mainly because he ripped off a 42-yard run. But otherwise, he had nowhere to run all day.

3) Can the Eagles' offense be more consistent?

The Eagles had their share of big plays Week 1 against the Commanders.

1. Saquon Barkley had a 42-yard run.
2. Jalen Hurts connected with Dontayvion Wicks on a 64-yard bomb.
3. Hurts connected in the face of pressure on a fadeaway TD throw to Wicks.
4. Hurts connected with Dallas Goedert on a 3rd and Goal from the 17 for a TD.
5. Hurts connected with Goedert again on sort of a wonky play for a long TD.
6. Hurts had a 22-yard scramble on 3rd and 18.
7. DeVonta Smith made a spectacular catch along the sideline.

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However, they didn't consistently compile smaller positive plays. They had five 3-and-outs, and only had 10 first downs on the day. The rest of the league averaged 19.8 first downs Week 1. That is unacceptable against a defense as bad as the one they faced last week.

Relying on Hurts to make off-schedule plays and the defense to shut down professional offenses all season is not going to be sustainable. The offense must show more consistency.

4) Cam Ward's game is misunderstood, and he could use better weapons

The Titans are an uncommon Eagles opponent and they aren't often on primetime TV, so Cam Ward isn't a quarterback that fans have seen all that often.

At 6'2, 219, Ward has similar height/weight dimensions as Jalen Hurts. He also has some athleticism, but often gets mislabeled as a dual threat quarterback. He is mainly a pocket passer who rarely runs with the football. As a rookie in 2025, Ward had just 39 rushing attempts for 159 yards (4.1 YPC) and 2 TDs. He only had 15 rushing first downs. On a per game basis, that's 2.3 rushes for 9.4 yards, and 0.9 first downs. Those were especially low numbers considering that rookies with athleticism often over-rely on their legs to make plays. He probably doesn't use his running ability enough.

Ward has a strong arm, and will throw from a variety of arm angles. He'll occasionally rip sidearm throws with an unusually quick release, and he gets high velocity on them. Some quarterbacks, like Nick Foles, would go sidearm on occasion to throw around oncoming pass rushers. Ward will go sidearm as a means to get the ball to his target as quickly as possible when he has clear windows to throw, like here:

I imagine the Eagles' linebackers and defensive backs will be alerted to that particular quirk.

Ward had a tough rookie season. He had a 3-14 record, a sub-60 percent completion percentage, he was sacked 55 times, and he had 11 fumbles. Those 55 sacks and 11 fumbles both tied for the league lead. He also had an average time to throw of 3.0 seconds, sixth-longest in the NFL. That is a particularly high number for a quarterback who wasn't much of a scrambler. On the bright side, he only had 7 INTs.

Of course, the Titans didn't have star receivers, which is why they selected Carnell Tate fourth overall in the 2026 draft. Tate joins Wan'Dale Robinson, Elic Ayomanor, Chimere Dike, and Calvin Ridley. There's some potential there, but for now that's not a group that is going to keep opposing defensive coordinators up at night.

5) Where might the Eagles go #Feastin'?

The Titans' offensive line looks like this: 

Let's review each spot:

• LT Dan Moore: Moore is a replacement level LT who PFF had down for 8 sacks in 2025. We cut those up.

Moore also gave up a bad sack Week 1 against the Jets: 

• LG Peter Skoronski: Skoronski was the 11th overall pick in the 2023 draft. He had a good third NFL season in 2025.

• C Austin Schlottmann: Schlottmann has been in the league since 2018, but he has been a career backup. 86 games played, only 19 career starts. He is now starting at center for the Titans.

• RG Fernando Carmona: Carmona is a fifth-round rookie. There's some obvious opportunity here.

• RT JC Latham: Latham was the seventh overall pick in the 2024 draft. He has not panned out so far. In 2025, he led the NFL with 14 penalties, and per PFF he gave up 8 sacks. We cut up some of those sacks allowed: 

So to recap, the Titans have a pair of offensive tackles who give up a lot of sacks, a career backup at center, and a fifth-round rookie at RG. 

Of course, the Titans' offensive line isn't helped out much by Ward, who as noted above is slow to get the ball out.

Last week we had the #FeastinMeter at 9/10 turkey legs, on the premise that the Commanders' offensive line might be the worst in the NFL. The Eagles' pass rush did not capitalize.

"I thought our pass rush overall, when our guys that mainly rushed the passer, was inconsistent and really wasn't good enough," Vic Fangio said on Tuesday. "There's a lot of reasons here and there. Mobile quarterback plays into that. We just didn't win enough of our one-on-ones across the board."

Did I learn my lesson? Nope. I'm going big again this week against another very bad offensive line.

#FeastinMeter: 8/10 turkey legs 🍗🍗🍗🍗🍗🍗🍗🍗

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