June 10, 2026
Bill Streicher/Imagn Images
Lane Johnson and the Eagles are moving on from their old offense and into a new era.
Lane Johnson is 36. He's entering his 14th season, all with the Eagles. The idea of retirement has crossed his mind.
And yet, the six-time Pro Bowl right tackle feels like he's starting over again, which is admittedly a strange concept for someone who knows he has far fewer games remaining in his NFL career than games ahead.
Johnson had just finished up his first mandatory minicamp practice Wednesday under new offensive coordinator Sean Mannion, when he took the podium and explained that Mannion's brand of West Coast offense is a scheme he's always envied from afar.
Now, after playing more than 180 career games, he will finally have the chance to execute.
"Here I am after all these years getting a chance," he said. "Not to say we’re going to be better, there’s a lot to learn. But I think we have the ability to be more than what we were last year, be a lot more than what we were in the run game. That's going to open a lot in the pass game, too."
And that's the whole point of the Eagles hitting the reset button this offseason on an offense that had become stale, or as Johnson called it, "stagnant."
The Eagles had become predictable over the years, and their lack of a run game in 2025 combined with a lack of explosion in the pass game to make them an average offensive team just one year after winning the Super Bowl.
But even in 2024, before they erupted for 55 points in the NFC Championship and 40 more in Super Bowl, the offense – the pass offense, specifically – had endured pitfalls and lulls along the way.
The team finally decided to reverse course this offseason, hiring a novice play caller in Mannion because of the former NFL quarterback's pedigree in the modern West Coast offense, as a player for Sean McVay and as a coach for the past two years under Matt LaFleur.
With the hiring of Mannion came an almost entirely new offensive staff familiar with that style of offense, including offensive line coach Chris Kuper, pass game coordinator Josh Grizzard, and run game designer/tight ends coach Ryan Mahaffey.
These changes also led to the departure of former offensive line coach and run game designer Jeff Stoutland, the only position coach Johnson has played for since being the organization's fourth overall draft pick in 2013, someone uniquely iconic in Eagles history.
"It was a shocking ordeal for me, but after being in the league all these years, you kind of see when things aren't going the way that we want to," Johnson said. "For me, it's just I'm trying to learn a new offense and do the best I can with that. But as far as replacing Stout, it’s gonna be hard to replace that kind of guy in my life, being my mentor, and just my coach all these years.
"With how our system is now, there’s a lot to learn. I really like Coach Kuper a lot. And so I think hopefully our offense won’t be as stagnant as it was last year. We'll be able to evolve some."
Like Saquon Barkley did in his OTA press conference, Johnson shed light on some changes in the new offense, which will include more under center formations, more stretch-zone run blocking, and more play action passing.
Some of these schemes will ask offensive linemen to move horizontally as opposed to the north-south blocking movement from the offense the Eagles had run for years under Stoutland and different head coaches.
But there are benefits to the new scheme, Johnson noted. Working off play action, he said, should actually give Johnson some rare guard help in pass protection. The stretch runs, if effective, will help the Eagles wear down defenses, making defenders run side to side instead of directly to the point of attack.
"It's just different points of emphasis," Johnson said. "Run game, you have the ability to stretch the front side but also the running back has the ability to read the backside blocks more than maybe what we did in previous years. I just think, for us, it really does a good job of allowing us to run. We have a lot of athletic guys up front, so being able to stretch the field — make the d-tackles run, make the linebackers run, cover all this ground – and then I think setting it with play action is gonna make it a whole lot tougher to distinguish what we’re doing, a whole lot harder to catch on tells with stuff that we’re doing."
Johnson didn't say if 2026 would be his last season, but he mentioned his parents' aging and concern about not spending enough time with them. But he refused to exit the game on injury terms, as he missed the final seven games of 2025 and the first-round playoff loss to the 49ers because of a Lisfranc foot injury that didn't fully heal until closer to March.
Johnson, considered one of the game's elite offensive tackles and a potential Hall of Famer, thought he was having "a really good season" before the injury and thinks he'll remain among the elite.
"A lot of guys trend down in their 30s. I feel like my career has been the opposite, where my career started to blossom in my 30s," he said. "Last year, me being out of the game was kind of, hey, if you don't stay healthy this could be a glimpse of what it could become. But like I said, I wanted to come back and finish on a strong note and really say I got everything out of myself."
As the Eagles were making major overhauls to their offense and staff this offseason, Johnson was also in the lab, making sure the scheme changes and staff additions were ones with which he could get on board.
He dialed up Vikings right tackle Brian O'Neill and others from Minnesota, where Kuper had previously coached the offensive line, to get a scouting report on his first new position coach in 14 seasons.
He spoke to former Eagles linemate Isaac Seumalo, who played alongside Mannion at Oregon State before being drafted by the Eagles in 2016, to learn more about his new play caller.
More recently, he returned to the field to see firsthand his fit into the new offense and what the job is like without Stoutland in his ear every other second.
"It was a game changer, me coming out there and getting used to that, not having Stout out there," Johnson said. "So yeah, it's been a different year. But I've had time to process it. I've had time to talk to Stout, obviously with all the new guys in.
"Yeah, change is what the NFL is all about. I’m just embracing it as I go and thankful that I'm here, man — 36, feels weird to say that's my age. But, yeah, I'm hoping that this will be a great year for us, a great year for me, and hopefully we can right a lot of the wrong from last year."
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