September 02, 2026
Colleen Claggett/For PhillyVoice
Offensive coordinator Sean Mannion talks with Dallas Goedert #88 of the Philadelphia Eagles during training camp at the Jefferson Health Training Complex on August 4, 2026 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
This summer, the Eagles integrated an entirely new system into their offense at training camp.
When the Eagles hired young Sean Mannion as their offensive coordinator in February, they took a big risk. Mannion, a former NFL journeyman backup quarterback, had only coached for two seasons. He had never called plays or designed an offense for an NFL team.
But Mannion played for Sean McVay, coached under Matt LaFleur and also played for other coaches schooled in the Kyle Shanahan/McVay offensive concepts that have become all the rave in the NFL.
Those coaches are known for heavy usage of pre-snap motion, going under center and marrying the play-action pass game to the under-center zone run scheme – principles that the Eagles have barely used during the Nick Sirianni/Jalen Hurts era.
The Eagles were looking to refurbish an offense that had gradually regressed since 2022, and they interviewed several candidates who had pedigrees in the modern West Coast offense.
At training camp this summer, we charted every first-team rep to see how frequently the Eagles used these concepts in comparison to how infrequently they were part of past Eagles offenses under Sirianni.
PhillyVoice staff members Geoff Mosher, Evan Macy and Nick Tricome combined to attend every single practice at the Jefferson Health Training Complex and created a spreadsheet to track the data. We did not track stats for the two joint practices against the Patriots.
Here is what the data revealed:
For years, the Eagles have featured one of the NFL's most shotgun-dominant offenses. Last year, they introduced some under center concepts looking to enliven a laboring offense, and there was some success, but they remained near the bottom of the league in under center usage.
| Year | Under center snaps | Total Snaps | % | NFL rank |
| 2026 training camp | 136 | 385 | 35.3% | – |
| 2025 regular season | 221 | 1,010 | 21.8% | 29th |
| 2024 regular season | 174 | 1,114 | 15.6% | 27th |
Important to remember: The "tush push" is an under center play, and the Eagles have used it a lot in the past few years. If you removed that play from their total snap count, the percentage of true under center would be even lower in 2025 and 2024, and they could potentially have ranked dead last.
The Eagles were under center on about 35 percent of training camp snaps. Last year, a 35-percent clip would have ranked around top 15.
The Rams, who play the Eagles in Week 4, were under center an NFL-high 624 times last year (57%), followed by the Seahawks (534) and Lions (507). The Packers, where Mannion coached the past two seasons, went under at a 36-percent clip. I suspect the Eagles will be closer to that percentage this season.
Pre-snap motion is a core principle of the Shanahan/McVay offense, but it has also grown around the league in the past decade and has been integrated by other offensive minds outside the West Coast tree.
Per PFF, the rate of pre-snap motion in 2025 increased to an all-time high of 63.9 percent, up from 61.5% in 2024 and way up from 38 percent in 2015. The Eagles, however, were near the bottom of this category.
| Year | Snaps using motion | Total snaps | % | Rank |
| 2026 training camp | 194 | 385 | 50.3% | – |
| 2025 regular season | 526 | 1,010 | 52.0% | 31st |
| 2024 regular season | 626 | 1,114 | 56.2% | 18th |
When Makai Lemon was drafted by the Eagles in the first round, he was widely viewed as the ideal motion wideout for a modern West Coast offensive scheme. DeVonta Smith is another move receiver who can function off motion to avoid press coverage.
Lemon and Smith each missed around three weeks of training camp with hamstring injuries, so not surprisingly, the rate of motion lowered during the time both were sidelined and picked up after they returned Aug. 24. On Aug. 25, when the Eagles had a camp-high 53 reps, they used motion on 29 snaps, a rate of nearly 55 percent.
The assumption here is that they will intend to be closer to 60 percent. The Packers used motion on 63 percent of their snaps last season. The Bills led the NFL in 2025 with an 80-percent rate of motion. The Rams, Bears and Lions were all above 60 percent.
One of the main objectives of the Shanahan/McVay scheme is to marry the under center run game with the play action pass, using misdirections, bootlegs and other QB-movement plays that start off looking like an under center run.
The Eagles, again, did not feature this style of play action in their playbook very often. Even when they went under center last year, their pass game didn't lean heavily on roll-outs, nakeds, and rarely if ever did Jalen Hurts turn his entire back to the defense or roll far outside the pocket.
Here's an example of the Eagles going under center to work play action with Hurts staying inside the pocket:
Air it out 🎯 pic.twitter.com/9WrT6h8brA
— Philadelphia Eagles (@Eagles) October 19, 2025
Here's how training camp compared to the past two regular seasons
| Year | Snaps of play action | Total snaps | % | Rank |
| 2026 training camp | 45 | 385 | 11.5% | – |
| 2025 regular season | 99 | 1,010 | 9.8% | 27th |
| 2024 regular season | 97 | 1,114 | 8.1% | 25th |
It was difficult to find any obvious pattern based on personnel for why the Eagles on some days ran a higher percentage of play action than others. There were some practices where the run was emphasized more than the pass, and some where shotgun snaps outnumbered under center snaps. Either way, their play action rate on a per-snap basis was still higher in camp than in either of the past two seasons.
If you calculate percentage of play action on total pass attempts instead of total snaps, the Eagles used play action last year on about 20 percent of their pass attempts. The Rams led the NFL in play action on a per-pass attempt basis at 35 percent, followed by the Bears (33%). The Packers came in top five at 29 percent. The hunch here is the Eagles are closer to using play action on a per-pass basis at around the 25-percent mark.
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