January 29, 2024
The Eagles' new coordinators are locked in.
Not long after hiring Vic Fangio as the next defensive coordinator – and the one they probably wanted this entire time after Jonathan Gannon left – the team made its call on Kellen Moore as the offensive coordinator over the weekend.
Moore was in charge of a high-powered Cowboys offense before getting let go after the 2022 season, then spent 2023 as the Chargers' OC, but that didn't go nearly as well.
Now he's on his way here to help fix a Philadelphia unit that inexplicably lost any sense over how to move the ball in the last month and a half of the season.
Can he fix it?
Here's what they're saying about Kellen Moore and the Eagles...
Nick Sirianni's staff really couldn't afford to go the unproven route this time around.
They played it safe going straight for Vic Fangio on defense, and on offense, Kellen Moore qualifies as pretty safe as well, but may have also fallen into a happy middle-ground that splits between the that and more forward-thinking scheming.
It's two birds with one stone, writes Dave Zangaro, which is a tough thing to do with a coordinator hire:
And on offense, the hiring of Moore really satisfied two needs. On one hand, the Eagles wanted an offensive coordinator who would bring fresh and innovative ideas. On the other hand, this job requires calling plays and an experienced play-caller would really help after watching Johnson call plays for the first time in his career in 2023.
The problem with trying to land both of those requirements is that there’s a limited intersection on that Venn diagram. With Moore they got a guy who can do both. He has called plays for several years in the league and he’ll bring some fresh ideas to an offense that was clearly stale in 2023.
I kind of expected the Eagles to go through a long and exhaustive search for an offensive coordinator. Talk to a bunch of candidates. Gather a bunch of ideas. But going through that long interview process wasn't worth the possibility of losing Moore because he is a really strong candidate. I can't fault them for pouncing to get their guy. [NBCSP]
Moore will be arriving to the Eagles in a tough bind, however.
He'll be charged with fixing an Eagles' offense that completely fell apart under Sirianni's watch, which presumably still has the head coach on thin ice, all while managing the relationship with Jalen Hurts and trying to find the path to get him back to MVP-caliber form.
After how bad the Eagles looked the last month and change of the season, that seems much easier said than done. Granted, Moore has a uniquely similar background to Hurts that may compliment the road ahead perfectly, as David Murphy writes:
Here, too, Moore has some encouraging background. Like Hurts, he is the son of a longtime high school football coach. Like Hurts, he was an undersized and overlooked college quarterback who rose to great heights. Nine years before Hurts was on the Heisman Trophy stage at the Downtown Athletic, Moore was there as the fourth-place finisher in 2010.
Moore seemed to have a good working relationship with both Dak Prescott and Justin Herbert. His first year calling plays in Dallas, Prescott threw for 4,902 yards, eclipsing his previous career high of 3,885. As for Herbert, his experience was limited to 12.5 games before a season-ending injury. For what it’s worth, the Chargers ranked eighth in the NFL in scoring offense through their first 11 games.
The quarterback is the key. Always is. It will be as true for Moore as it was for Johnson, and as it is for Sirianni. [The Inquirer]
The coordinators have been turned over for the second time in 12 months under Sirianni, which in the NFL, is a sign that either something has gone incredibly right or disastrously wrong.
The Eagles, somehow, did both, losing their coordinators after a Super Bowl run – the always expected brain drain – then needing to wipe the slate clean entirely from this season's implosion, which is far more unprecedented.
Either way, this is strike 2 for Sirianni, writes Peter King. He only gets one more:
The instant-coffee type of changeover of coordinators is simply not a good sign for the staying power of Sirianni. Vic Fangio and Kellen Moore, good coaches, are the sixth and seventh coordinators (in title or reality) under Sirianni in the last 12 months. Dating back 50 weeks, these have been the most important coaches on Sirianni’s staff:
• Offensive coordinators: Shane Steichen, Brian Johnson, Moore.
• Defensive coordinators/play-callers: Jonathan Gannon, Sean Desai, Matt Patricia, Fangio.
Steichen and Gannon got head-coaching jobs, so they’re certainly not evidence of poor choices. But the Eagles crashed by any metric on defense this year, and Desai and Patricia were powerless to stop a landslide of 30.6 points allowed per game after Dec. 1. Johnson and Sirianni oversaw the late-season cratering of Jalen Hurts’ game to finishing 18th in passing yards per game and 22nd in passer rating, a stunning decline for a quarterback who was every bit Patrick Mahomes’ peer in the Super Bowl last season. The most important task for Sirianni and Moore will be getting Hurts back to all-in. His laconic play, his aloof attitude and his tepid support of Sirianni in his post-playoff-loss press conference must be addressed by the coach. Hurts just didn’t look like the same player in the 1-6 finish. On the bench, he looked like he wanted to be anywhere but where he was. It’s all concerning, particularly after the Eagles trusted him enough to make him the highest-paid player, by a lot, in franchise history.
So, there’s a lot to do. Sirianni’s a good coach—I have no doubt about that. But the Eagles’ brass has allowed him now to bring on new coordinators in two consecutive years. I doubt Sirianni will have a third chance to wipe the slate clean. [NBC Sports]
The Eagles' offense avoided the middle of the field in the passing game like it was the plague, which was a big factor in what made Hurts and Co. so predictable.
A.J. Brown has proven near unstoppable on slants and shallow posts, while Goedert is a pass-catching threat more than capable of boxing defenders out from the ball – which Sirianni, Hurts, and Brian Johnson all seemed to forget.
Will things really be different under Moore?
Looking at the route charts Brendan Deeg pulled up on the Chargers' Keenan Allen and the Cowboys' CeeDee Lamb from NFL Next Gen Stats, yeah, they look far more promising.
DeVonta Smith and A.J. Brown will thrive in a Kellen Moore offense. pic.twitter.com/frOqCK40JS
— Brenden Deeg (@BrendenDeeg_) January 28, 2024
Here's hoping.
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