February 24, 2026
Tork Mason/Imagn Images
Sean Mannion emerged as Nick Sirianni's right guy for OC after two interviews.
Sometimes, the answer reveals itself before the question even does.
Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni wasn't certain what he was looking for when he began his most recent hunt for a new offensive coordinator. It had only been days since he fired Kevin Patullo following a disappointing end to the team's season, a 23-19 home loss to the 49ers in an NFC Wild Card game.
Not until 17 candidates had met with Sirianni and team brass – some of whom came to Philly for a follow-up – did the light bulb come on for the man in charge.
"Just a long process," Sirianni said last week, meeting with reporters before the team headed west to Indianapolis for the annual Scouting Combine.
"And just going through that, and the process just kind of revealed itself, like, hey this is the right guy for this," he continued. "You go in, you have thoughts on what you might be looking for and different things like that. Some of the things that maybe I thought was important at the beginning didn't end up being that."
That right guy, of course, is Sean Mannion, a journeyman NFL quarterback who was still playing as recently as 2023, and who has just two years experience of NFL coaching.
Mannion, you probably know by now, has never called plays. His last job was QBs coach under Matt LaFleur, for one season in Green Bay.
The Eagles' offense will be the first that Mannion has ever presided over, a major stunner given that Sirianni has already fired two first-time play callers in his five seasons as Birds head coach.
Nobody in their right mind could've predicted that Sirianni, who will surely enter 2026 on the most scorching of hot seats, would pin the fate of the offense – and, by extension, his own job security – on a play-calling novice.
But that's just how blown away Sirianni recalled feeling after that in-person follow-up with Mannion, after hearing Mannion articulate his vision for sprucing up – no, actually refurbishing – an Eagles offense whose production over the past two years hasn't matched the level of talent or the price tag that owner Jeffrey Lurie is footing for it.
"I remember it was an interview, probably the third one of the day or whatever it was, and I was like, man, you could tell right away how sharp he was," Sirianni recalled. "And then we get him back in the building or get him here to the building and it was very obvious.
"When you do that, and when you cast a wide net and go through the process like that, it reveals itself to you who the right one is."
Sirianni gave few clues as to how the new offense will look with Mannion redesigning the playbook, and with another young, rising assistant – new pass game coordinator Josh Grizzard – by his side, along with other new assistants.
The former NFL quarterback's resume is bare, but his coaching influences – Sean McVay, LaFleur and others from the West Coast tree – portend an offense predicated on motion, a zone run scheme, under center and play action, the kind of innovation and fluidity that the Eagles have lacked in both the run and pass games, a years-long blemish that in 2025 couldn't be covered up by elite talent and was exposed by an injured offensive line.
Clear from last week's Sirianni TED talk is that the Eagles are still dead set on establishing the run, but aiming in 2026 to have a better marriage between the run and pass concepts by virtue of an effective play-action game.
For years, the Eagles have survived on an overpowering run game that laid the groundwork for a few kill shots downfield here and there, with everything else in between lacking sequence and rhythm.
It's on Mannion to do what others before him could not, find a way to custom fit an offense that's designed to use every blade of grass on the field for personnel that haven't yet played that way, quarterback included.
It's on Sirianni to make sure, when times get tough, which they always do, that the mission isn't aborted and the offense doesn't revert to its older iteration.
"There's obviously things, too, like I think we talked about this with Kellen [Moore] when he came here and it was like, 'Are we running Kellen's system?' Yeah, there's things, like, we'd be crazy not to run things we've been successful with in the past," Sirianni said.
"There's a lot of uniqueness to what we've done, that mixing it in and sprinkling that in to another type of system ... shoot you might end up saying, 'Hey, I wanted to be an outside zone team but it's looks like we're gonna be a little bit more of a gap team' or vice versa, and it could be the same with, 'Hey, I wanted to be a little bit more play action, but it looks like we're gonna be a little bit more nakeds and move the pocket and stuff like that.'
"So it's like you're going in with this idea, but I think that some of the things you can sprinkle in with some things that we've done, it'll just be a good mesh of different things. You want to have something you can put your hat on, which I think we've always had, but adapt it to different things your players do well."
It's the same tree that produced Klint Kubiak, who a few weeks ago helped the Seahawks hoist the Lombardi Trophy as their offensive coordinator before becoming head coach of the Raiders.
The same tree that produced three consecutive Super Bowl champions from 2022-2024, with McVay's Rams winning it all, followed by consecutive titles from Andy Reid's Chiefs before the Eagles snapped the streak.
It's the same offense that Sirianni watched humble his elite defense in January, as the short-handed Niners – who lost their best pass-catching weapon in the first quarter – still rolled up 361 yards and converted 55 percent of third downs behind a slew of backups while the NFL's most expensive offense on the opposite sideline produced another baffling display of three-and-outs.
Maybe at some point during that maddening yet predictable malaise of a defeat, perhaps when a curious four-verts play call came in at the game's most critical moment against a defensive look well-equipped to counter it, Sirianni was out of answers, and looking for something to reveal itself.
Then along came Sean Mannion.
"I think I went into it, too ... I would like for somebody to have some of the experience, that's done this, and you know what, obviously Sean has not had experience calling plays, but that to me was second," Sirianni said. "We got into it and that kind of changed. I'm like, no, this is the best guy for the job.
"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 ... like, ok, you haven't called plays but how do you go about thinking of calling plays in this particular area, like the vision for the offense, the vision and the conviction for how you would call it, and all those things throughout. As you go throughout, it became apparent that Sean was the guy for the job."
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