Every Philadelphia Eagles fan thought the team was going to go with an offensive coordinator who has experience calling plays, but when head coach Nick Sirianni shifted gears with Sean Mannion, it threw everyone off.
The big issue with last year's Eagles team was that former offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo struggled with play-calling, which set the offense back, finishing in the bottom 15 in passing, rushing, total offense, and scoring. Sirianni sat down with local media before the NFL Combine, where he was asked about the play-calling and his lack of experience with Mannion.
“I went into it too (with that thought): I’m like, I’d like for somebody to have some of the experience that’s done this,” Sirianni said via The Athletic's Zach Berman. “And you know what? Obviously, Sean (Mannion) has not had experience calling the plays, but that, to me, was second. We got into it, and that kind of changed. I’m like, ‘No, this is the best guy for the job.’ I was really looking for — regardless of what system or experience or whatever you’re saying — what I was really looking for was, hey, the detail in which everything was explained to me, because the detail is so, so critical. Conviction on what they believed and why they believed in it, and the vision and conviction of that, how they went about it. OK, you haven’t called plays, but how do you go about thinking about calling plays in this particular area? The vision for the offense, the vision and the conviction for how you would call it, and all those things as you go through, throughout it, became relevant that (it was) apparent Sean was the guy for the job.”
Nick Sirianni isn't worried about Sean Mannion's lack of play-calling experience
To be fair to Mannion, he technically has experience with calling plays, as he did in the East-West Shrine game last month. Pushing that aside, there is legitimate concern about Mannion, given that he was an assistant coach for two years in the NFL and spent last year as the Green Bay Packers' quarterbacks coach before landing the offensive coordinator job.
There was something about Mannion that led Sirianni to believe he was the right guy. Sirianni told reporters that he could “tell right away how sharp he (Mannion) was,” which was a big reason for bringing him in.
Mannion has more of a Sean McVay/Kyle Shanahan background and wants to implement that kind of offense into Philadelphia. That will be a much better approach, as the Eagles have been more basic with their system and have leaned more on the running game to get the job done.
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Eagles fans won't really know what's going to happen with the offense until they hit the field, but there will be some nervous people this offseason as the unknown is scarier than it was last offseason with Patullo coming in as the offensive coordinator.