Former calculations showed that atomic N incident at energies of a few eV on N-covered Ag(111) forms N2 molecules by the Eley–Rideal (ER) mechanism, i.e. by direct pick-up of adsorbates. Here, we calculate the azimuthal angle distributions and the rovibrational energies of those ER products. We observe a non-trivial angle dependence that may result in very low in-plane ER yield for some given incident azimuthal angles. We find that most of the energy released upon NN bond formation, about 7eV, is stored in the rovibrational degrees of freedom independently of the incidence energy considered.