The Sean Mannion era got off to a rocky start on Saturday.
Sure, the Eagles may have held out every projected starter on offense in their preseason opener, but their output was still concerning as they converted just two first downs over their first eight drives and were outgained 440-159 in the 24-7 loss to the Ravens.
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Of the three quarterbacks who played — Andy Dalton, Tanner McKee and Cole Payton — it was the rookie Payton who led the Eagles in passing yards with 37.
Heading into what could be a telling set of joint practices and a game against the New England Patriots, Mannion decided to change his approach. The first-year offensive coordinator announced Monday that he will call plays from the coaches’ box at Foxboro, not the sideline where he worked vs. the Ravens.
“Yeah, I’m planning on calling the next game from the booth,” Mannion said before Monday’s practice. “I think it’s an opportunity to get a feel for both. And then go from there. But it was, you know, that’s been the plan all along. I think it’ll be an interesting perspective, but, you know, I think for this preseason, an opportunity to kind of experience.”
This doesn’t mean Mannion is making sweeping changes to his offensive philosophy. Nor should he. The former Packers quarterback coach was hired to implement a wide-zone scheme with concepts that look similar to those of Sean McVay and Kyle Shanahan, thus modernizing the Eagles offense.
The offense has mostly looked sharp through three weeks of training camp too, so the trueresults won’t be revealed until they open regular season play vs. the Commanders on Sept. 13.
But it’s clear Mannion — who “works his butt off,” according to coach Nick Sirianni — is striving for better output, no matter who’s playing. He took responsibility for the sloppy performance — namely the Eagles’ 0-for-9 third-down conversion rate — ahead of Monday’s practice.
“Obviously, we want to have a better performance offensively than we put on tape the other night, [and] we’ve got things that obviously we need to correct,” Mannion said.
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“I thought the biggest thing that stood out in the game is we just weren’t staying on schedule. We had a lot of first-and-longs, second-and-longs. Penalties led to a lot of that. A couple negative runs. So I think if we were able to be better on schedule and kind of eliminate some of those miscues on early downs, we’ll keep ourselves in more manageable third-down situations and hopefully lead to a better result.”
There was one positive takeaway Mannion was able to find from Saturday’s mess. The 34-year-old ex-quarterback said communication among the coaching staff was strong, with clock management and substitutions both running smoothly.
“We didn’t have any play calls get jacked up where we got caught with them substituting late or anything like that,” he said. “I thought the lines of communication were clear. I was happy with how the quarterbacks were able to get us in and out of the huddle. We weren’t really up against the play clock at all, so I was happy with that.”
Now comes the hard part: Mixing those positives with better execution of the playbook. He’ll have another crack at it Saturday night at Gillette Stadium.
“I think it’s just carrying the fundamental work that we’ve done in practice to the game setting. I think that was the biggest takeaway,” Mannion said. “We want to see these guys go out, play, execute their assignment and play with good fundamentals.”
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