Folks keep trying to compare little-known Sean Mannion with previous Eagles hires. In fact, the best comp was in Dallas.
It’s true that Mannion, the new offensive coordinator, shares some characteristics with former Eagles OC Jon Gruden, a former wide receivers coach whom Jeffrey Lurie and the Eagles hired at the age of 31. Similarly, when the Eagles hired 40-year-old Packers quarterbacks coach Andy Reid to be their head coach in 1999, Reid had never called plays, established a scheme, or formulated a game plan.
But by 1999 Reid had been a coach for 17 years, and by 1995 Gruden had been a coach for nine years. Mannion, by contrast, has been a coach for just two years, both with the Packers, one of them as Matt LaFleur’s “offensive assistant,” the NFL’s equivalent of an unpaid internship.
That doesn’t mean Mannion can’t do the job.
After all, Mannion is no bigger risk for the Eagles than Kellen Moore was for the Cowboys in 2019.
When Jerry Jones named Moore the offensive coordinator in Dallas, Moore was a short-term, insignificant NFL backup with only one year of coaching experience, as the Cowboys’ quarterbacks coach. He was 29.
Mannion is a short-term, insignificant NFL backup with one year of experience as a position coach. He is 33.
He also is a consolation prize.
The Eagles wanted a Josh McDaniels-type OC like Mike McDaniel or Brian Daboll, former head coaches and accomplished coordinators. McDaniel chose the Chargers. Daboll went to Tennessee.
The Birds got Mannion. He’s not nothing.
This might sound like a desperate attempt to cope with what legitimately should be cast as a repudiation of the Eagles by the best and the brightest. This also might sound like an attempt to diminish the injury concerns the Eagles have at offensive line, the commitment concerns they have with A.J. Brown, and the performance concerns they have with Jalen Hurts.
Maybe it is, a little bit.
Sometimes, though, as anyone who’s been married can tell you, your first choice isn’t your best choice.
Sometimes, you don’t get what you want. You get what you need.
A grudging admiration
Few owners keep their ear to the ground the way Lurie does. Over his three decades of ownership he routinely has attended the Senior Bowl, which serves as the NFL’s de facto job fair, where aspiring young coaches gather to distribute resumés and a place where executives meet to gossip about hot new coaching prospects.
As soon as Moore quit playing in 2017, his sixth season in the NFL and his third with Dallas, including practice squads, he was identified as a comer. In 2018, as QB coach, he corrected Dak Prescott’s slump. In 2019, when Wade Wilson retired, Jones controversially promoted Moore, who wasn’t even 30 and looked like he wasn’t even 20.
According to an Eagles executive at the time, no one was more impressed by Jones hiring such an outside-the-box candidate than the NFL owner who spends most of his time thinking outside of the box: Jeffrey Lurie.
Jones’ gamble paid off.
In 2019, as OC, Moore pushed Dallas’ offense from 22nd to No. 1. That didn’t save the job of head coach Jason Garrett, but it did convince Jones to ask incoming head coach Mike McCarthy keep Moore as the OC. Sure enough, after a dip in 2020, Dallas was No. 1 in 2021, too.
All along, Lurie was watching Moore’s success and acknowledging the wisdom of Jones, his archrival, with grudging admiration.
The Cowboys offense then ranked No. 4 in 2022, but by the end of that season McCarthy had so badly mismanaged the Cowboys that he needed a scapegoat. He chose Moore to be his fall guy, and so fired him. (Two years later, Moore was interviewing for McCarthy’s job.)
Later that winter the Eagles lost OC Shane Steichen, who became the head coach in Indianapolis. Why didn’t Lurie pounce on Moore then?
Because the Eagles were coming off a Super Bowl appearance, and, according to league sources, head coach Nick Sirianni, having gained even more authority over his staff, wanted to promote from within. Hurts, in line for a huge contract extension, had earned a seat at the hiring table, too. Quarterbacks coach Brian Johnson had been hired in 2021 in part because of Johnson’s preexisting relationship with Hurts. With Hurts’ blessing, Sirianni promoted Johnson.
Moore instead went west in 2023 as the offensive coordinator for Justin Herbert and the Chargers. A year later, as part of a purge by new head coach Jim Harbaugh, Moore was available again. Johnson had struggled in 2023, and was fired. Lurie pounced. Moore became the Eagles’ OC. The Birds won the Super Bowl after the 2024 season. Moore then got the head coaching job in New Orleans.
He remains the only offensive coordinator in Eagles history to win a Super Bowl calling his own plays — thereby, arguably, the greatest offensive coordinator in Eagles history.
Those are big shoes for Mannion to fill.
Déjà vu and Nick Foles
Moore declined to comment for this column, which is unfortunate, because, in 2019, he nearly was in Mannion’s exact position as an unproven coordinator in a high-pressure market. He also inherited an offensive roster full of pedigreed players, such as running back Ezekiel Elliott, offensive linemen Tyron Smith and Zack Martin, wideout Amari Cooper, and of course, Prescott, who was an overachieving, second-tier draftee who had not completely polished his game.
The same can be said of Hurts, who is surrounded by a similarly pedigreed cast: four Pro Bowl offensive linemen, two 1,000-yard receivers, and a running back halfway to the Hall of Fame.
There are differences, of course. Upon becoming OC, Moore had spent four seasons in Dallas as either a player or coach, and so was familiar with the players, coaches, and the unique culture inside The Star, the Cowboys’ training compound.
Also, Mannion won’t inherit as stable a situation as Moore, who followed Scott Linehan, who had the job for four years. Mannion will be succeeding Kevin Patullo, Sirianni’s longtime right-hand man who was removed from the job on Jan. 13 following a disastrous one-year run.
On the other hand, Mannion has more connections than Moore. Between playing and coaching, Mannion has been around accomplished offensive minds such as Packers head coach Matt LaFleur, for whom Mannion worked the last two seasons, and Rams head coach Sean McVay, for whom Mannion played in 2017 and 2018.
It’s also worth noting that, when Mannion was a rookie in the 2015, the Rams’ starting quarterback was a former Pro Bowl MVP named Nicholas Edward Foles.
Endorsements
In 2019, immediately after promoting Moore, Jones defended the move by citing Moore’s ability to communicate clearly, Moore’s high football IQ, and Moore’s strength of character.
Immediately before the promotion, Moore’s candidacy received a major endorsement from Prescott, who not only had been coached by Moore but also had been Moore’s teammate. On a Dallas radio station, Prescott called Moore a “genius phenom. … He’s special. He knows a lot about the game. Just the way he sees the game, the way he’s ahead of the game. He can bring a lot to us, a lot of creativity.”
Lurie likely won’t offer comments regarding Mannion until he speaks with the press at the owners’ meetings at the end of March in Phoenix.
Packers quarterback Jordan Love, in his third season as a starter, cut his interception total from 11 in 2023 and 2024 to six in 2025. Backup Malik Willis got better, too. Neither has called Mannion a “genius phenom.”
Neither has Sirianni, who has issued the only statement from the Eagles, who have not scheduled a media availability with Mannion and his bosses.
In a statement that defined banality, Sirianni called Mannion “a bright young coach with a tremendous future ahead of him in this league. I was impressed by his systematic views on offensive football and his strategic approach.”
The franchise’s excitement paled in comparison to the region’s fascination with this hire.
Over the last three weeks or so, the process of replacing Patullo received unprecedented media attention, considering it was the hiring of an assistant coach. That’s partly due to intensified media coverage of everything NFL, but also because the Eagles are in a window to win right now. Fairly or not, no one bore as much blame for the 2025 one-and-done playoff run as Patullo. No one will face as much pressure for 2026 as Mannion.
This is similar to the situation Moore inherited in Dallas in 2019, and he shined.
That doesn’t mean Mannion will, too, but, in Lurie, Eagles fans can take heart.
With Gruden and Reid in his history, Lurie has a wonderful track record when over-hiring position coaches from Green Bay.
