Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni says his new offensive coordinator, Sean Mannion, has proven himself before calling a single play.
Sirianni says the work ethic Mannion has displayed this offseason is showing how hard he’s going to try to improve the Eagles’ offense.
“This dude loves football and he loves to work,” Sirianni said, via Dave Zangaro of NBCPhiladelphia.com. “I mean I’ve really enjoyed being around him and just his desire. Sometimes we think ‘man he’s talented’ about everybody, ‘man he’s just got it.’ But it doesn’t happen without, whether it’s a player, whether it’s Sean, it doesn’t happen without just this obsession to get better. And Sean has this obsession to get better, this obsession with his craft, which is why he’s excelled in this profession. And I’m really looking forward to continuing to work with him.”
The 34-year-old Mannion is one of the least experienced coaches ever to be hired as an NFL offensive coordinator: He has just two seasons of coaching experience, in 2024 with the title of offensive assistant in Green Bay, and then in 2025 as the Packers’ quarterbacks coach. He spent nine years in the NFL as a quarterback, but started only three games in that time. He has never called plays.
“I’m not at all concerned there as far as his inexperience on that because he’s worked his ass off,” Sirianni said. “And I know that he’ll work his ass off to be as ready as he possibly can that day. And he’s got people there and coaches there with him, like Coach [Josh] Grizzard, Parks [Frazier], myself, that have done this and have been in this situation. He’s got a lot of people to help bounce ideas off of.”
Sirianni says he’s constantly quizzing Mannion about which plays he’d call in certain situations.
“My job is to make sure I put him in as many scenarios as I possibly can to help him go through that,” Sirianni said. “And you can change how training camp goes. I’ve done some different things in OTAs, as far as putting him in these scenarios of some situations that maybe I would have told Kellen [Moore] about, or maybe I would have told Shane [Steichen] about. ‘Hey, Shane, we’re going to do 3rd-and-12 from the minus-3 today. Make sure you’re ready.’ And sometimes you tell him, and sometimes what we’ve been doing is kind of a pop quiz. So he has to have a call sheet ready and go from there.”
Sirianni won’t know for sure what kind of play caller Mannion is until he sees him in those situations in real games. But six months after hiring him, Sirianni sounds confident he made the right choice.
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