Through the Nick Sirianni era, the Philadelphia Eagles have demonstrated an odd, though now predictable, story arc.
- Get to the Super Bowl with a great offensive play-caller.
- Promote the replacement from within with iffy to icky results when said great offensive play-caller gets a head coaching gig, and
- Subsequently run back to the idea that a constructive offensive identity actually does matter in the NFL.
After Sirianni’s 2022 Eagles barely lost Super Bowl LVII to the Kansas City Chiefs with Shane Steichen as the offensive mastermind, Steichen got the Indianapolis Colts’ head job, and Sirianni promoted quarterbacks coach Brian Johnson to be Steichen’s replacement.
It didn’t work, and Sirianni then tapped former Los Angeles Chargers OC Kellen Moore to get the job done. Moore got the job done enough
for the Eagles’ second Super Bowl win at the end of the 2024 season, and of course, Sirianni replaced Moore with pass game coordinator and associate head coach Kevin Patullo when Moore became the New Orleans Saints’ head coach.
Now, with former Green Bay Packers quarterbacks coach Sean Mannion as the new OC, there are a lot of questions to answer. How will the passing game work without A.J. Brown, and how will the run game work without the legend that is Jeff Stoutland? Remarkably for a guy who has done what he’s done, Jalen Hurts still has a lot of uncertainty to his name, and Mannion’s offense — based more on the Sean McVay/Kyle Shanahan tree than anything Hurts has run before — makes that uncertainty valid, at least in a short-term sense.
If Mannion turns what was a disaster of an offense around, it’s all good. Sirianni surely has enough underqualified acolytes to promote when Mannion becomes a head coach in 2027. If not, for as much as Sirianni has accomplished in half a decade, the questions will land firmly on his head.
The Eagles will need more than the right kind of coaching to reach their Super Bowl dreams in 2026; they’ll also need big-time performances not only from Hurts and all the other players of whom such things are expected; but there is also a need for lesser-known guys to step up into new and bigger roles.
To that end, I’ve identified three Hidden Gems for the 2026 Eagles — one underrated veteran, one underrated free agent or traded player, and one underrated draft pick.
Underrated veteran: EDGE Jalyx Hunt
With all the offensive agita, there are very few questions about the Eagles’ defense coming into the 2026 season; Vic Fangio had all that on lock as usual. Losing edge-rusher Jaelan Phillips to the Carolina Panthers on a four-year, $120 million contract with $80 million guaranteed was less than ideal, but the Eagles were not going to pay that kind of money for that kind of player. Not over that length of time. Instead, they traded with the Minnesota Vikings for Jonathan Greenard, and signed him to a two-year, $60 million contract with $50 million guaranteed. Greenard can bring a lot when he’s healthy, but the real crucible when it comes to the success of the team’s edge disruption in 2026 falls on third-year man Jalyx Hunt.
Hunt converted from safety to EDGE at Cornell, and then showed enough at Houston Christian in the 2022 and 2023 seasons for the Eagles to take him with the 95th pick in the third round of the 2024 draft. Hunt was an athletic project at first, which is one reason he had just 343 defensive snaps in his rookie season. Still, he managed four sacks and 19 pressures, showed up with force in Super Bowl LIX, and displayed enough game-readiness to be more of a factor in 2025 with 722 snaps, seven sacks, and 60 pressures.
Hunt reminds me of a young Danielle Hunter in some ways. When Hunter came out of LSU in the 2015 draft, he was far more of an athlete than he was a nuanced football player. But when he matched football acumen with general athleticism, all bets were off. Hunt has filled out his palette of pass-rush moves, and we may see how high his ceiling really is in the new season.
“Just keep doing what he’s doing,” Fangio said in May when asked how Hunt can up his game even further. “He’s had a nice progression. I see him growing his game in all aspects. I think he can and will rush better. He’ll play the run better. It’s just the natural progression. He’s had a good progression. In his rookie year, he didn’t play a lot early. Then when BG [EDGE Brandon Graham] went down, he started playing more, and I thought for a guy with his background, it was kind of a perfect year for him. He ended up playing a good bit if you remember in the playoffs, et cetera. Then last year, [he] played a lot, did good.
“Yeah, I think he’s just ready to keep getting better and better.”
Underrated traded player: WR Dontayvion Wicks
Can the Eagles’ offense function without a true X iso receiver? The guy who can beat the opponents’ best cornerback alone to one side of the field?
We’re about to find out, because last season, A.J. Brown was that guy. In 2025, Brown lined up as the X iso receiver on 148 snaps, more than twice as often as any other Eagles receiver — DeVonta Smith ranked second with 77 X-iso targets, and then, the whole thing kind of fell off a cliff.
Now, with Mannion in charge of the passing game, that might not be as much of an issue. Last season, the Packers ranked sixth in the NFL with a 50% rate of condensed formations, in which no receiver was acting as the X iso receiver, and the Packers have long insisted — for better or worse — that their passing game can function at a high level more through scheme than having that dominant outside guy.
(First-round pick Makai Lemon, by the way, lined up outside just 28% of the time in the 2025 season for USC. Just saying).
Which is where the trade for former Packers receiver Dontayvion Wicks comes in. Last season, the 6’1”, 206-pound Wicks caught 30 passes on 44 targets for 332 yards and two touchdowns. Calf and ankle injuries, as well as concussion issues, limited his time on the field in 2025, which is why he wasn’t able to replicate his 2024 production, when he caught 41 passes on 80 targets for 454 yards and five touchdowns.
Still, when your yards per catch stays exactly the same from one season to the next (11.1), and your catch rate increases from 51.3% to 68.2%, that’s a good thing.
“Me and Sean built a relationship, just like [with] Coach Mahaffey,” Wicks said of his new home with Mannion and former Green Bay receivers coach Ryan Mahaffey. “Relationships play a big part in things, so I felt like that was a big part of the reason [for] the trust for me to be here and for them to bank on me.”
Howie Roseman explained why Wicks was a consideration before the Brown trade even happened, and why the Eagles gave him a one-year, $10.5 million contract extension with a max value of $12.5 million.
“You see his skill set,” Roseman said of Wicks. “He is a physical, explosive player at the top of routes. He can play inside or out, so he is a guy we had our eye on.”
Sirianni has admired Wicks’ abilities to a similar degree.
So, maybe Wicks isn’t the ideal A.J. Brown replacement, as he lined up as the Packers’ X iso receiver just 15 times last season. But given the interest from coaches who have worked with him before to bring him into the fold, and what the new passing game may look like, that may not be the liability it could have been in previous seasons.
Underrated draft pick: Guard Micah Morris
Howie Roseman’s love of big guys from Georgia in any draft is a story that passed meme status a long time ago with Jordan Davis and Jalen Carter, but Howie was back on it in 2026, when the Eagles took offensive guard Micah Morris with the 207th pick in the sixth round.
The lateness of Morris’ pick surprised me, as I thought he had late second-day potential. Last season, the 6’4”, 330-pound Morris allowed no sacks, two quarterback hits, and two quarterback hurries in 426 pass-blocking snaps. In fact, Morris never allowed a sack in five seasons with the Bulldogs, including the last three as a starter.
And when Morris eyes you with the right leverage, you’d better have aspirin at the ready.
Now, the Georgia reunion can continue with Davis and Carter showing Morris the nuances of pass pro in practice.
“Well for starters, it was not fun, I’ll tell you that much,” Morris said after he was drafted on facing Davis and Carter back in the Bulldogs days. “It was not fun at first. But it prepared me for this moment. It just provided me with the chance to learn from the best, and develop. Obviously I’m just giving them a look, just being scout team, but I’m also perfecting my craft and working against first-round draft picks, elite NFL players, All-Pro players. Just being able to do that at a young age, at that point, [against] All-American college players, just being able to give my best against them and try to hold my own against them so whenever it is my time, I’ve been through the hardest that there is to offer.”
Of course Roseman appreciated Morris’ potential; Morris is a big dude from Georgia!
“There’s a lot to like about him,” Roseman said. “He’s got great size. All of his testing is through the roof. He started every game for Georgia this year. He’s got incredible experience playing in the SEC. He’s got all the ability, and now he’s got to apply that as he gets an opportunity to come here. Another guy just, as we were going through it, stood out on our board for where we were and obviously an important position, so we took him.”
Right now, the Eagles are projecting Landon Dickerson (great when he’s healthy) as their left guard, and Tyler Steen (meh) as the right guard. Which means that Morris may have to wait for a Dickerson injury or a really bad game from Steen to get any meaningful regular-season reps, but the preseason should tell you a lot as to how he fits in the post-Stoutland era.
