The Eagles offense had a hard time finding its footing while scoring three points in the first half of Thursday night’s game, but they were able to put 15 points on the board after halftime.
Fourteen of those points came via runs by Jay Ajayi, who saw a lot more time in the second half than he did in the first 30 minutes. Ajayi played nine snaps in the first half before seeing 19 on his way to two touchdowns and a two-point conversion.
On Friday, head coach Doug Pederson explained why Ajayi wasn’t used much early in the game and said that he’ll get more work in the weeks to come.
“I wanted to make sure because Jay was nursing a little bit of a lower body injury for a couple weeks, and just wanted to make sure he was good and get him into the flow of the game,” Pederson said, via a transcript provided by the team. “And then of course we were sort of struggling in the run game and just trying to get a rhythm and a feel and putting different guys in there in the second half. Just kind of stuck to our adjustments at halftime, and he was the back, the featured back in the second half. He did a nice job. Obviously the two touchdown rushes and then the two-point conversion. It was encouraging to see. I think not only going forward, but him, health-wise, coming out of the game was really good. Moving forward, we’ll see him more.”
A Week Two date with the Buccaneers will be Pederson’s first chance to up Ajayi’s workload.