Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni admitted during Wednesday’s end-of-the-year press conference that the Eagles’ offense got stale during the 2023 season.
And that is spurring some major change.
Not only did the Eagles fire offensive coordinator Brian Johnson, but Sirianni wants the next OC to bring fresh ideas, a new scheme and to be in charge on that side of the ball.
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“It's our scheme. It will be our scheme of what we're doing,” Sirianni said. “And so, again, I don't know exactly what that will look like yet, right? We're bringing in a guy to bring in new ideas, to do the things that he's done in the past. We're going through an extensive search to get that right person, but it'd be crazy not to add some of the things that we've done in the past here as well. I don't know if it's gonna be 95% this, we're not there yet.
“We're working on getting the best guy in here for the job and a guy who has a vision, a guy who's going to call the plays, a guy who's going to be able to coach a quarterback in the same sense there. So it's just about getting the right guy and then we'll decide where that goes. But I'm hiring him to do a job and to be in charge of the offense.”
Sirianni, 42, has been the Eagles’ head coach for the last three seasons and will return for a fourth in 2024. But he is clearly ceding control on that side of the football to the next OC after the Eagles have run his offense for the last three seasons.
But if the Eagles’ new offensive coordinator is going to run the offense, the new defensive coordinator is going to run the defense and special teams coordinator Michael Clay is going to run special teams … then what is Sirianni going to do?
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“My job is to be the head coach of the team,” Sirianni said. “Not the head coach of the offense, not the head coach of the defense, not the head coach of the special teams, but be the head coach of the football team. And so that's building the culture, that's making sure the culture's working with our five core values.”
While the Eagles aren’t going to throw away some of the offensive concepts that have helped them be an effective offense in recent seasons, it does appear that Sirianni is transitioning to more of a CEO-head coach role.
In 2023, the Eagles’ offense was still seventh in the NFL in points scored and eighth in total yards. But no one is throwing a parade for them, not after a 1-6 finish in the regular season. And especially not after the Eagles returned 9 of 11 starters on offense in 2023 only to regress considerably.
A top-10 offense is nothing to celebrate. And in 2023, the Eagles didn’t seem to adapt or adjust after having an elite offense during the Super Bowl season in 2022.
The Eagles’ search for a new offensive coordinator is already underway. The first two known candidates for this job are former Cardinals head coach Kliff Kingsbury and Texans quarterbacks coach Jerrod Johnson but there are expected to be many other candidates to follow.
“There's been some things that we've done really well on offense too in the past that you'll mesh in some of that together as well,” Sirianni said. “I think with some of the success that we've had these last three years and the things that our guys do well. And so I'm excited about that. The new ideas, meshing with some of the old ideas, we'll see how that continues to go as we go through our offseason process and where we land with that.
“But yeah, I mean, obviously, when you get, to me, we got a little bit stale on offense at the end of the year. And these ideas and this new person coming in is meant to, you know, take away the staleness and add the value of what they're adding to the offense.”
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