Quarterbacks are people, too. Sometimes, like everyone else, they have tough days at work. They need support from a willing ear. Sean Clifford, the former Green Bay Packers backup quarterback, is no different.
For Clifford, the former Penn State QB now with the Cincinnati Bengals, that willing ear was once Sean Mannion, the former quarterbacks coach with the Packers who was named Eagles offensive coordinator on Jan. 29.
When Mannion took on the role with the Packers quarterbacks last summer, he had only one year of coaching experience. He had served as an offensive assistant in 2024 under Tom Clements, the legendary quarterbacks coach who worked with Brett Favre, Aaron Rodgers, and Jordan Love over a span of 14 seasons.
Still, Mannion’s wealth of playing experience — nine years as an NFL backup — helped him relate to and resonate with his quarterbacks, according to Clifford.
“I think it’s the little moments when he had to turn off the coach lens and talk to you, man to man or player to player,” said Clifford, a fifth-round pick by the Packers in 2023. “Whether it’s a great situation or a bad one, I felt like I could always go to him and get some feedback. Always felt like I could go to him and vent to him if I needed to, which is like any other job. Sometimes it just gets tough, and you have to be able to have somebody who you can lean on.
“He’s been through it. He knows what this league’s all about. He knows it’s not easy, and he was able to switch that on, switch that off well in a way that then allows a guy like me or any of the quarterbacks to see him as one of us. Because it’s really easy, as you climb the coaching carousel … I feel like you get farther and farther away from the locker room. But I feel like Sean was always able to come back down and understand what we’re going through.”
Mannion, 33, could come back down to his players’ level because he recently stood in their cleats. After stints with the St. Louis Rams, the Minnesota Vikings, and the Seattle Seahawks, he retired from playing at the conclusion of the 2023 season. Within weeks, he joined the Packers coaching staff.
Even as he played, Mannion kept his eye on his anticipated future as a coach. He said in a news conference in May that he was “attacking his playing career” with his eventual transition to coaching in mind, absorbing as much knowledge as he could from his litany of coaches, from Sean McVay to Matt LaFleur to Klint Kubiak and beyond.
But taking the jump from offensive assistant to offensive coordinator in just two years? Who could have predicted this rapid rise?
“From the outside looking in, it’s probably the most surprising thing ever,” Clifford said. “But if you work with the guy, you know why he’s risen as fast as he’s risen. From a day-to-day perspective, it’s [a] constant commitment to excellence. It’s a never-ending pursuit to get better.”
Growth in Green Bay
That commitment to excellence was reflected in the collective growth of the quarterback corps last season, according to Clifford, who was cut at the end of training camp. Clifford said he never lost his connection with his former Packers teammates, especially Malik Willis, Love’s backup last season and one of Clifford’s close friends.
Willis, 26, worked his way into becoming a more-than-capable backup behind Love in his fourth NFL season. Clifford watched from afar as Willis completed 85.7% of his passes on 35 attempts in his four games (one start) for the Packers in 2025.
“I don’t want to speak for Malik, but I know that he would probably attribute some of that to how Sean Mannion prepared him,” Clifford said.
Preparation is Mannion’s forte. He spent the 2024 season assisting Clements with the quarterbacks, “doing all the stuff that nobody wants to do,” Clifford said. That included running the scout team, drawing up play cards for the scout team, making film cutups, and doing plenty of other odd jobs required of young coaches.
He drew on all of his experiences, no matter how small, as he blossomed into his role as quarterbacks coach. Mannion had a database of film compiled throughout his playing career that he referenced with his quarterbacks, including his own practice film dating back to 2015, the year the Rams drafted him in the third round out of Oregon State.
He was invested in the overall improvement of the room, not just the starter, Clifford said. Mannion was constantly in the quarterbacks’ ears, asking them about aspects of the offense that they liked and didn’t like. In the meeting room, Mannion held open-ended discussions with his quarterbacks about the offense, ensuring that every member was engaged. On the field, he could give real-time feedback as if he were in the quarterback’s shoes, because he had been.
“You throw a pick and some coaches might be just [ticked] because you just didn’t see [the defender] or something,” Clifford said. “But there’s a guy in your lap and you’re trying to make a play, and Sean would never get too hot about anything. Never too high, never too low. Would just pretty much be the same guy. And it’s good to have consistency at the coaching position. In my personal opinion, I feel like that’s the best way to coach.”
Projecting the new-look Eagles offense
Over the next 200-plus days, Mannion will be tasked with revamping an Eagles offense that floundered under ex-offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo in 2025.
But what will a revamp look like? And how much influence will Nick Sirianni have on the scheme?
Mannion’s past could be the best indicator of what lies ahead for the Eagles offense. He spent large chunks of his playing career with offshoots of the Mike and Kyle Shanahan tree, beginning with McVay when he became the Rams’ head coach in 2016. LaFleur, another branch on that tree, served as Mannion’s offensive coordinator with the Rams in 2017 before they worked together for the last two seasons with the Packers.
“I would be shocked if [the Eagles offense] came out and it was completely different than a Shanahan-style offense,” Clifford said. “But I do think that with the communication that I know he’ll have with Jalen [Hurts], it’ll be a nice blend. You’ll see things from what Jalen has ran the past, what he’s been able to do athletically, physically, with his arm talent, all of it.”
When LaFleur arrived in Green Bay in 2019, he emphasized the importance of the marriage between the run and the pass, a philosophy that harkens back to Mike Shanahan’s days with the Denver Broncos. The scheme attempts to achieve that marriage in part through the incorporation of play-action passes, especially from under center.
Other hallmarks of the McVay and Shanahan offense include the use of pre-snap motion and outside zone runs. Like most of those offenses, Clifford said the majority of passing plays in Green Bay included a “pure progression,” in which a quarterback goes through his reads in a fixed order instead of attempting to diagnose a defense pre-snap and determine which side of the field the ball ought to go. Clifford explained that the pure progression reads can help the quarterback get the ball out of his hands faster.
“Defenses are getting really, really good at being able to disguise,” Clifford said. “[It] used to be so easy to see certain things, like if [an edge rusher] was standing up, versus in a three-point [stance], you knew what was coming. They are super dialed in on all of that. So there’s really not those same tells. So you have to be able to just feel zones.
“I like to compare it a little bit more to basketball nowadays. It’s like you’re running motion instead of just plays. But if you’re able to adjust and just play football, you can have a lot of success. And that’s where I think Jalen will have a tremendous amount of success within this offense, because he’s a gamer. He wins. And if you have a winning quarterback, a guy who’s just going to go out there and play, I think you can have a lot of team success as well.”
The offensive scheme is just one uncertainty surrounding Mannion’s future in Philadelphia. How will he fare in an offensive play-caller role for the first time in his career? Again, given his familiarity with Mannion’s preparation, Clifford said he is ready for the undertaking.
“I feel like Sean will put himself into the game before it happens a lot throughout the week, and then, similar to how Matt does it, watch tape and just call games based on what a defense is giving them on that tape,” Clifford said. “Are they giving more one-high [safety]? Are they getting more two[-high]? Are they blitzing? … And I feel like Sean will go into his first game and it will be his, like, 100th game, because he’s probably called it so many times. And that’s [what] I think that Philly fans should feel pretty, pretty good about, even though it’s a young hire.”
While the big picture of the Eagles offense will remain a mystery until the season begins, the finer details and fundamentals that Mannion has always preached at the quarterback position likely won’t change.
According to Clifford, Mannion was big on a quarterback’s “base and balance.” Clifford worked with Mannion to improve those facets of his footwork, as they were often the keys to moving the sticks in the passing game and avoiding “GBOT” (get back on track) situations after losing yardage on early downs, something the Eagles struggled with last season.
The person behind the coach won’t change, either, Clifford said. Mannion made Clifford feel welcomed, whether he was inviting the quarterbacks to dinner at his house or balancing the preparation in the meeting room with non-football talk. Mannion may be young, Clifford said, but he knows how to connect with his players.
“I think Sean makes everybody around him better,” Clifford said. “And I think it’s not surprising in the slightest that now a team is willing to take that chance to bring him up to the OC level.”
