Even with all the injuries and ineffectiveness through six games, Sean Mannion is still a believer in the Eagles’ offense, saying the problems are “totally fixable.” The Inquirer’s Jeff McLane and Marcus Hayes have some thoughts on the state of Mannion’s group, as well as a defensive unit that’s also been underwhelming this season.
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Jeff McLane:When it comes to the game plan, the play- calling, what do you think will [need to] happen for Nick Sirianni to kick-start this offense?
Marcus Hayes: The reality is that this was never a great offense, no matter who ran it. It was a great offensive line. And I’ve been preaching that for what, 12 years now, 13 years. Jeff Stoutland and Lane Johnson came in together and essentially went out together. And we’re seeing the worst offensive line play in that interval right now.
Nobody likes to talk about the offensive line. Rather talk about the coach and the quarterback, but the coach and the quarterback only go as far as the offensive line goes. Now, that’s sort of part A. Part B, and the listeners and viewers probably aren’t gonna want to hear this, is there is not a lot you can do in the middle of a season to fix something that is this broken, and was never that good to begin with.
I mean, we saw Saquon Barkley running three and four yards without being contacted routinely in 2024. And I want to say in 2022, the offensive line was probably the best it ever has been. It’s probably the best offensive line in the history of Philadelphia Eagles. So that’s the issue. And, you know, benching Sean Mannion, diminishing Sean Mannion, elevating Nick Sirianni, None of that in my in my opinion will matter much, especially when you’ve got a third-string left guard and a third-string center playing for you, and starting for you.
The conversation before the season, Jeff, was OK, it’s gonna take four to six games before this offense jells. And that was best-case scenario. That was without Lane Johnson retiring. That was without Landon Dickerson getting hurt, precipitating the move of Cam Jurgens to left guard, precipitating Cam Jurgens’ trade.
We know the offense isn’t working and they have tons of issues surrounding it that aren’t coincidental. I don’t know that you can judge this offense when you’re saying, well if Drew Kendall was there, it would be way better.
McLane: Yeah. I think things are more schematic, because these problems existed before all the injuries. It was there from the get-go. I know you’re saying in terms of like it being early in the season…
Hayes: Landon Dickerson was injured in the first game and he was the worst player on both teams. They won that game [against the Commanders] and he almost cost them the game. I mean the injuries and Lane Johnson didn’t play after [Week 3] … my point being we don’t know. We just don’t know.
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McLane: I’m not saying we know. I’m just telling you what I think, that the problems are schematic and Nick’s inability to fix them are like the number one problems offensively. There’s just, like, little things they can do, that may be more realistic of what happens here in terms of the scheme.
Stop doing stuff from under center, because defenses know you’re either gonna run the ball there or you’re gonna run a play-action and they’re just gonna blitz you every time. I mean, we saw this in this [Panthers] game. Tanner McKee under center, drops, run fake, they blitz, zero completions, two sacks, guys unblocked. To me, that is like the number one tell that Mannion and offensive line coach Chris Kuper are kind of in over their heads, because this is very simple football.
Yes, I understand that there’s some new guys up front, but you can’t have four guys blocking two guys. You can’t have three guys blocking one guy. It’s like that. Like that is some very simple stuff. And then we’re now six weeks into this, and the same thing is happening over and over again.
So what I think they can do is change it more to go back [to shotgun] more, because if you look at the [expected points added] numbers under center versus shotgun, way better under shotgun. This is what Nick’s offense has been essentially with Jalen Hurts at quarterback. And I think to some extent it plays to Tanner McKee’s strengths, in terms of being stronger pre-snap than post-snap, you want your quarterback in the shotgun so that he can see the defense and execute it and you could run the inside-zone stuff. You can do more RPOs, you can get more up-tempo on the ball.
It simplifies things for the players and essentially for the play-caller. And I think that may be more what Nick can do to kind of change things here midseason. We’ll see if there’s more to it. We may never even know. You know, as I found out in 2023, like for weeks they had the third-down [defensive play-calling] taken away from [then-coordinator] Sean Desai, which basically foretold his inevitable fate.
There are serious flaws in in this offense. And a lot of it has to do with the fact that that Sean Mannion is new, a first-time guy, and maybe you understood that going in. You can go back to the very origin of hiring a first-time guy and why they’re in this predicament in the first place, and how that happened. But it’ll be interesting to see what happens.
I’d be interested to hear what your take is about Nick’s role in all this and why they’ve now in year six and can’t figure out the offensive coordinator conundrum. I think at some point like to save himself, he may have to take control over play-calling or just take authorship over it.
Even with all the injuries and ineffectiveness through six games, Sean Mannion is still a believer in the Eagles’ offense, saying the problems are “totally fixable.” The Inquirer’s Jeff McLane and Marcus Hayes have some thoughts on the state of Mannion’s group, as well as a defensive unit that’s also been underwhelming this season. Listen here.
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