Full disclaimer: I have no idea what the Philadelphia Eagles’ offense will look like in 2026. New offensive coordinator Sean Mannion has never called plays over a full NFL season. New pass game coordinator Josh Grizzard has only done it once. There is no finished product to evaluate yet, no Eagles film to diagnose, no certainty to lean on. However, we can formulate some ideas based on past evidence. There is Mannion’s background inside the McVay–LaFleur–Shanahan ecosystem. There is his one public
play-calling sample at the Shrine Bowl, where he installed an offense under time constraints. There are also years of league-wide data on how this coaching tree builds offenses.
The goal of this short series is not to guess which plays the Eagles will call, but to understand how this staff is likely to think about offense and what we might see from the Eagles next year. With free agency and the NFL Draft just around the corner, I figured it’s a good time to get into it, as there may be some key takeaways regarding the type of player the Eagles may target.
Part 1: Basic Principles
For the last few years, the Eagles’ offense has lived on “hero ball.” When things broke down, Jalen Hurts used his legs or made a wild throw to save the day. Saquon Barkley would make a defender miss and take it to the house. A.J. Brown would win a one-on-one vertical shot and score a touchdown. It’s exciting when it works, but it’s a hard way to live, especially when these players have an off game. When you rely on improvisation, rhythm can disappear quickly, easy throws get missed, and suddenly every third down feels like a life-or-death situation.
Hiring Sean Mannion is a sign that the Eagles are moving in the opposite direction. It’s more about the scheme rather than just about having the best players. Mannion is a fast riser who spent the last two seasons in Green Bay, specifically helping Jordan Love and Malik Willis master a system built on timing and design. He comes from the Matt LaFleur and Sean McVay tree, where the goal isn’t for the quarterback to save the system, but for the system to make everything easier on the quarterback.
The core philosophy is about “clarity.” You want an offense that looks complicated to the defense, by using motion and heavy formations to disguise intent, but feels simple and calm for the guy under center because he already has the answers. I went back and watched 5 full Green Bay games from last year, and a few things kept standing out.
Against Pittsburgh, the Packers align under center, with the tight end serving as a fullback-like presence in the backfield. The play-action fake holds the second level just long enough to hollow out the intermediate middle of the field, and the throw that follows is routine by design. Hurts is going to have to get used to hitting his back foot and hitting this shot. The Packers do not throw these middle-of-the-field throws anywhere near enough as the Rams and Packers do, so I think some of the worry about Hurts translating is overblown. Trust me, they don’t run this stuff as much as you expect. This is not the Rams and Matthew Stafford. However, Hurts will have to get used to hitting his back foot and getting the ball out. We’ll cover play-action in a separate article, but it’s a big deal in this offense!
Nothing about the play is dramatic, and that is precisely the point. It shows up as easy. It’s a routine completion! The Eagles didn’t have many of these last year. The same principle appears moments later from an entirely different picture. This time, it’s a standard shotgun RPO, and the ball leaves quickly for the tight end in the flat. Again, it’s easy for the quarterback to be right.
Personally, I think Hurts will get used to this offense pretty quickly. A lot of the principles will suit his game. Here, we see a comeback route along the boundary, where the quarterback is trusting his eyes. The Packers’ offense has a few basic principles, such as stretching a defense horizontally and vertically as frequently as possible, which was missing from the Eagles’ offense last year. In the 3 clips I’ve shown so far, you can see a middle of the field shot, an RPO to the flat, and a deep comeback route. They are testing a defense in multiple ways.
This is the perfect play to showcase what makes this coaching tree so successful. The little subtle shifts make things easier for the players. None of this is particularly complicated, which is what makes it successful! A subtle 2×2 switch release alters the defensive leverage just enough to free the quick slant inside. I imagine this is an option route, as that’s a big part of this offense, too. Once again, this is easy on the QB.
Hurts’ career has already proven he can be extraordinary when plays stretch beyond their original design. What remains unanswered is whether the structure around him can become consistently supportive enough that his heroism becomes rare rather than frequently required.
A great game to watch to see this offense make things easy for the quarterback is the game against Baltimore, as Malik Willis is starting. There’s a ton of cool stuff to take away, which I will get into in further articles. Early on, we saw Jumbo personnel, which dictated a predictable single-high shell, and the offense immediately attacked the outside one-on-one created by that structure.
The design didn’t drastically change, but the scheme gave Malik Willis more opportunities to run. However, they still made things easy for Willis through formation and motion. Lining up with a nub TE vs zone coverage forces the cornerback into the run fit.
The snaps that follow deepen that theme, but we will get into that next time! The more Packers film I watch, the more I see the philosophical shift in offensive creation that the Eagles want to move toward. This is not about removing Hurts’ playmaking. It is about surrounding it with enough pre-snap certainty that brilliance becomes a luxury rather than a necessity, and that things become easier for him and his playmakers around him. The quarterback is still required to execute and is still responsible for the throw, the read, and the decision. No scheme can take that away. But you can do things that make it easier for them…
Play design at the highest level is about sequencing easy reads inside the quarterback’s natural field of vision, marrying route timing to receiver releases, and having a counter if the defense does something you aren’t expecting. Too often, the Eagles’ passing attack felt confined to a single approach against defenses. The result was an offense that lived on deep shots, improvisation, or talent alone.
Green Bay, by contrast, generated explosive plays not only through downfield aggression but also through design that created yards after the catch and schemed receivers into open space. This is something I expect to see next year. More route concepts will ask the defense to cover the entire width and depth of the field. Even against tight coverage looks, their structure consistently produced early separation and viable checkdowns.
Any meaningful evolution under the new staff, then, is unlikely to be defined solely by the playbook or by formation diversity. It will be defined by whether the passing game finally becomes modernised, where successful plays come from structure and design, and not from individual talent.
Thank you for reading! I’d love to hear your thoughts, so feel free to comment below and ask any questions. If you enjoyed this piece, you can find more of my work and podcast here. If you would like to support me further, please check out my Patreon here!
