As an NFL offensive coordinator, Kevin Patullo is fine dealing with the criticism that comes with the job.
But lines were crossed after the Eagles loss on Black Friday.
The New Jersey home of the 44-year-old offensive coordinator was vandalized with eggs early Saturday morning, the Moorestown Police Department confirmed earlier this week.
“As coaches and players, we all know that part of our job is to handle criticism,” Patullo said on Wednesday afternoon. “And so it’s perfectly acceptable to sit up here and talk about what’s going on, how to fix it, what we’re going to do going forward and we know that. But when it involves your family, obviously it crosses the line. That happened. And at this point, we just have to move on. We’re trying to win. That’s all we want to do is focus.”
Patullo is in his first season as the Eagles’ offensive coordinator but is in his fifth season on the Eagles’ coaching staff. On Wednesday, he called Philadelphia a “special place” to coach and spoke positively about his experience here over the last half decade.
On Wednesday, Patullo called the egging an “unfortunate incident.”
“That’s the part of it that happened,” he said. “Us as a family, we know we have to stick together. To be honest, there’s a lot of great people in the community. I have great neighbors. There’s so many people who have reached out to my wife and I and our family.”
The criticism of Patullo is understandable this season. The Eagles’ offense has been underperforming, especially relative to expectations. The Eagles have the highest offensive payroll in the NFL but are 19th in points and 24th in yards.
Earlier this season, Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni said Patullo had thick enough skin to deal with the criticism that might come his way in the offensive coordinator role.
How has Patullo learned to deal with it?
“When you first start coaching, you know it’s always there, right?” Patullo said. “As you start to develop your career and you move up and you move up and you move up, you gotta learn from people. Nick does a great job with all of us as coaches, just preparing us for these kind of moments. And different mentors you have. And so you know the pressure is there. But we all accept it because we ultimately want to be at the highest part of our coaching career and continue working through that. This is part of it. It’s a challenge but it makes it fun.
“When you look back on it, you hope that you have more good than bad memories and when you go through the process like this, it defines you as a person in your career but not as an individual and not as your family. When you look at the big picture, it’s just a piece of who we all are as coaches, who I am, who my family is. And ultimately, it’s a great career that we’re in. We get to do something that very few people get to do. We’re one of 32. I am, Nick is, we all are, in the world. And when you look at it that way, we’re very fortunate. And it’s exciting. There’s nothing better than winning a game in our stadium. There’s nothing better than going on the road and winning in front of all these Eagles fans. It’s very unique and it’s fun.”