Sean Mannion covered a lot of ground in his chat with the media Thursday, and while we’ve already written a couple stories off that availability – Dave Zangaro on how Mannion knows he’s ready to be an offensive coordinator and me on how things are going between him and Jalen Hurts – there’s a lot more from Mannion you might be interested in.
There’s so much interesting leftover stuff we’ve broken it up into two parts. Here in Part 1, Mannion gets into what he wants the Eagles’ offense to look like, why Chris Kuper is the right guy to replace Jeff Stoutland, his early impressions of rookie 1st-round pick Makai Lemon and much more.
Tomorrow, among other things, he discusses the quarterbacks and coaches who have influenced him, the importance of footwork for a quarterback in his scheme and how the Eagles’ offensive linemen are adjusting to Mannion’s zone blocking scheme.
Check out Mannion’s take on a number of key issues today and tomorrow.
What will the offense look like? “I think the biggest thing we want our offense to look like is we talk about play style a lot, playing with great effort, great physicality, being great teammates. I think it’s when you turn on the tape, what does the Eagles’ offense look like? Those are the things we really want to stand out just as a broad stroke. There’s things I believe in and there’s things that schematically I have a background in, but ultimately it’s going to be a blend and it’s constantly going to evolve and it’s all with that exact goal in mind … maximizing things for the players. How do we make the Eagles the best team we can be, how we make the Eagles’ offense the best it can be and how do we put all of our players in a position to really, really succeed and maximize their strengths?”
What was the interview process with the Eagles like? “I was at the East-West Shrine game and got an interview virtually and I felt like we just really hit it off right away. I felt great about the football conversations and getting to connect with Nick and Howie and Mr. Lurie and all the people involved. From there, came in here for an in-person interview and again, it was just even more validating, getting to be in the building and getting to have further discussion. It came together kind of from there and felt like it was a great fit, great fit for me, great fit for my family, great fit just in terms of the football side of things here and yeah, really excited.”
What makes you feel ready for your first coordinator job? “In terms of being ready for it, I think I lean on all my experiences. My years in Green Bay, my years as a player, learning things constantly along the way. Even as a player, I knew this is what I wanted to do next. I knew I was going to get into coaching. So I always had that in mind as I’m learning things, how am I going to use this someday from a coaching perspective? I’ve been really fortunate to work with a lot of great coaches and pick up a lot of things along the way and always kind of attacked it with the end in mind in terms of knowing someday I’m going to get into coaching, someday I hope to become a play caller. How am I going to use this? I really leaned into that throughout my career and learned a lot along the way.”
What made this the right job? “The first thing is that the Eagles have been an outstanding organization, top to bottom. You know that from afar just with the results on the field and the culture and the kind of system of excellence that they’ve built here. Then getting to talk with Nick and see the way he views the game, see the way he views building a program and running an organization and all the things that we really value here. Tough, detailed, together. You could just tell it was a great fit and it was very much in perfect alignment with how I view the game as well. So once you get to dive into those football discussions, all the things that you know about the organization from afar become validated once you kind of see behind the curtain and it was a great fit. I felt like we really hit it off from the start.”
What are your early impressions of Makai Lemon? “Makai’s been a lot of fun to work with. I’m really excited to bring him on board and I think the way he works at practice is really impressive. He’s a tremendous young talent, but even just out at practice, you can see he practices really hard. He studies hard. He really takes a ton of pride in all the little details and that’s a sign of a true pro and he’s just getting started on that journey. But with his degree of talent and the way he’s been working, I really think he’s going to do a lot of great stuff for us now and in the future. His development’s going to be great but really excited about him. All the things we saw at USC, catches the ball really well, good after the catch, plays with toughness. That’s something that Nick really, really has built this program around and something really resonated with me and Makai’s a good example of that. And like I said, the way he’s wired out at practice, you can tell he’s going to be a great player and we’re excited to have him.”
What can you tell us about new offensive line coach Chris Kuper, who is replacing Jeff Stoutland? “I first was with Chris as a player when he was in Minnesota and you could just tell he’s a great teacher, detailed, obviously has a very unique background, having played a long time in the NFL. I think the way he’s going to be able to connect with all of our players, especially a veteran group of guys with our group specifically, it’s going to be a great fit for us. But he’s a great teacher, great communicator, really good at coaching the fundamentals, understands a wide variety of schemes and some of the things that we want to do. He’s been a great fit and really, really excited to have Coop on board. I could tell when I first met him, I was like, ‘This guy really knows football. He really knows how to teach and he really knows fundamentals.’ … All the people that we have on staff, I really feel great about our group collectively because it’s people who know how to teach, are detailed, they work hard and they’re great high character people. That’s exactly who you want to work with on a daily basis. Coop certainly [is] the embodiment of that.”
Is this an all-new offense or will we see some things we saw in the past? “It’s a blend. There’s things schematically that we’re bringing. There’s things that the Eagles’ offense has really thrived with doing in the years past. In terms of the verbiage of the terminology, it’s a process of seeing, ‘Hey, what makes sense to keep? What are things that with some of the new changes coming in (that) need to change?’ So that’s something we’ve looked at really from day one, understanding kind of the background of the scheme here, what are some of the things we want to add, things we want to tweak and how do we build kind of the language of our offense. There’s elements that are new and there’s elements that will remain in terms of terminology, but that process has been a lot of fun because ultimately it’s all about bringing something to the table and then how can we continue to make it better?”