PHILADELPHIA — Nick Sirianni has spent his coaching career running other people’s offenses. For the past three seasons, he was the offensive coordinator under Frank Reich with the Colts. Before that, he worked under Anthony Lynn, Ken Whisenhunt, Mike McCoy and Reich, among others, with the Chargers.
In taking over as the Eagles coach, Sirianni will import his own offense to Philadelphia. Finally, the 39-year-old’s scheme will be on display. He’ll be designing his own offense. He’ll be calling his own plays.
And in his introductory news conference last week, Sirianni stressed flexibility in his system, which was something that was key during his time with the Colts.
“The offensive philosophy, again, we’re going to be multiple,” Sirianni said over Zoom. “We can attack multiple ways. I’ll just use the example here from Indianapolis. We had Andrew Luck as our quarterback. That followed up with Jacoby Brissett as our quarterback then Philip Rivers as our quarterback. Those three teams looked different. They were all different in their own ways of how we attacked defenses and how we played the game.”
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Sirianni brought in two assistants with a similar background to him in offensive coordinator Shane Steichen, who was with the Chargers for the past seven seasons, and pass game coordinator Kevin Patullo, who was with the Colts for the past three seasons.
But Sirianni will also have some external voices. He retained offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland, who was also the run game coordinator under former coach Doug Pederson, and reportedly wide receivers coach Aaron Moorehead, which could provide some continuity on that side of the ball. He was effusive in his praise for Stoutland.
Sirianni, though, would not put himself in a box when it came to how he would define his offense. He had to adapt on the fly with the quarterback changes in Indianapolis, and he inherited a pair of quarterbacks with different skill sets in Carson Wentz and Jalen Hurts in Philadelphia.
Wentz is a couple years removed from his peak, while Hurts made some impressive plays down the stretch last season. But both have different strengths for an offensive staff to work with. Sirianni wouldn’t want to put his quarterback in a situation that doesn’t play to his strengths.
“I think that’s the sign of a good coach, that you’re going to change based off of your personnel, right?” Sirianni said. “We have a certain personnel in place. We’re going to figure out what they can do well and what their strengths are, and we’re going to play to their strengths and we are going to try to keep them out of situations that they don’t excel well at.
“That can change. We can look at the tape and think about, ‘Hey, well this would look really good. This is how he fits a couple things we’ve done in the past.’ But that can change based off of practice. In practice, say, ‘We’re going to have to see it in practice.’ Then that could change based off of a game.”
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In Sirianni’s three seasons in Indianapolis, the Colts ranked seventh, 25th and 10th in yardage and fifth, 16th and ninth in points. According to the DVOA metric from Football Outsiders, the Colts offense ranked 10th, 19th and 12th.
Sirianni doesn’t necessarily seem to be bringing an unstoppable scheme with him from Indianapolis, and there are some serious personnel questions — starting at quarterback with Wentz and Hurts — for the Eagles to answer this offseason before Sirianni’s system can round into form. Plus, he could be attempting to institute his scheme during another virtual offseason because of the coronavirus pandemic.
But while Sirianni’s offense doesn’t seem to have a calling card yet, he’s hoping that its adaptability serves it well when it comes time for the games to start.
“It’s an ever-changing offensive philosophy,” Sirianni said. “Sure, we have our core plays in place that we want to do, that we want to be good at, because that’s what we do. But a lot of it is going to depend on our personnel and utilizing our personnel to their strengths and their weaknesses.”
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Daniel Gallen covers the Philadelphia Eagles for PennLive. He can be reached at dgallen@pennlive.com. You can follow him on Twitter and Facebook. Follow PennLive’s Philadelphia Eagles coverage on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.