Nick ‘Toofer’ Sirianni should start calling Eagles plays again. He succeeds, he stays. Fails? Fire him.
He was supposed to be able to call plays and be the head coach. Sean Mannion is cooked. Let Nick call the last nine games, sink or swim.
Part of the brilliance of 30 Rock, the NBC sitcom from 2006-13 that parodied the TV production process, lay in its quirky supporting cast and the irreverence inherent to the characters. This was before the peak of the #MeToo movement and the prevalence of the alphabet-soup era of sexual identities, and, while those initiatives have become and remain urgently important, some of the 30 Rockers wouldn’t make it past the sensitivity sensors today.
Exhibit A: Toofer.
Keith Powell’s character, James “Toofer” Spurlock, is a sweater-vested, argyle-socked African American who gets his nickname from his conservative, white boss, Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin), who says “Toofer” checks multiple corporate boxes: “With him you get a two-for-one; He’s a Black guy and a Harvard guy.”
Which brings us to Nick Sirianni.
When Jeffrey Lurie hired Sirianni in 2021, Nick was supposed to be a Toofer: Both a head coach and a play-calling offensive coordinator. If Sirianni was a competent Toofer then the Eagles would enjoy stability in the early stages of quarterback Jalen Hurts’ career.
Things didn’t worked out as planned.
In fact, with the team stuck in its first six-game losing streak in 14 years and no end in sight, these days Sirianni isn’t much of a one-fer.
How we got here
Sirianni surrendered play-calling duties after a 2-5 start to his head coaching career, in which he committed to a passing game Hurts could not handle. The team surged into the playoffs in 2021, has mostly thrived ever since, and Sirianni has never resumed play-calling duties.
That time is now. Sirianni should call the plays for the rest of the season.
Why?
Because the guy doing it was even worse than Sirianni was five years ago.
Marcus Hayes alerts
Sean Mannion not only is a first-year, first-time offensive coordinator who has been a coach for only 2½ seasons. He has never been a coordinator or a play-caller at any level, not even college intramurals.
Mannion is a failed quarterback, which actually is the most common path to offensive coordinatorship, but he has virtually no experience at anything beyond sitting in meetings, holding clipboards, and watching the starter on iPads. He spent 2024 as an offensive assistant in Green Bay, which means he coached nothing, then spent 2025 as the quarterbacks coach, helping the Packers finish 16th in scoring and 17th in passing.
It’s like Elon Musk hired Sheldon Cooper to pilot the shuttle to Mars because he understands the theoretical physics involved.
There’s no escaping it: Mannion was a bad replacement for Kevin Patullo, who got his house egged last season but now looks like Bill Walsh by comparison.
If Sirianni starts calling plays again he might not challenge the memory of Paul Brown, but he has to be better than Mannion. The choice, timing, and sequence of Mannion’s plays have been comically inept. Among a laundry list of other reasons — injuries, age, poor discipline, blood clots — Mannion is the main reason the Eagles are the only six-loss team in the NFC. The Birds are the lowest-scoring team in the conference by almost a field goal.
Even so, the bigger picture has less to do with Mannion than with Sirianni.
Role playing
Ray Rhodes was the last head coach Lurie hired who didn’t call the offensive plays. That was in 1995, when most head coaches didn’t call plays. Besides, Rhodes had no background as an offensive coach. Lurie is smart, and he quickly realized that the Golden Goose of the NFL would be a head coach with a background in offense who was able to call plays.
Toofers.
Andy Reid, Chip Kelly, Doug Pederson, and Sirianni all were hired as Toofers. Why?
Because top coordinators get hired away to be head coaches. The best way to retain your play-caller is to make sure he’s also your head coach.
Sirianni, who had not called plays as offensive coordinator in Indianapolis, failed in his first attempt. If he had been able to call plays, there would have been no revolving door of offensive coordinators. Stability marks the regimes of Reid in Philadelphia and Kansas City, of Sean McVay in Los Angeles, of Kyle Shanahan in San Francisco. Sirianni was supposed to deliver stability.
Still, Sirianni has won two NFC titles and a Super Bowl and made the playoffs in all five seasons. Before he gets fired, he deserves another chance to prove himself.
More to the point, he needs to demonstrate that he can call plays.
Otherwise, there’s no point in having him continue to coach.
New kids in town
The Eagles have switched offensive coordinators the last four seasons, twice because their coordinators earned head coaching jobs elsewhere, and twice because Sirianni promoted inexperienced reflections of himself.
Then, there’s Hurts.
Shane Steichen’s scheme and execution, Brian Johnson’s scheme and execution, Kellen Moore’s scheme and execution, Patullo’s scheme and execution, and Mannion’s scheme and execution all might have similarities in concept and terminology, but they are not identical.
» READ MORE: Saquon Barkley is worth more to the Eagles than what he’d bring in a trade. Keeping him is a no-brainer.
Hurts has not had the same OC in consecutive seasons since 2021 turned into 2022. Not coincidentally, Hurts has progressed very little since 2022. This is an indictment of Sirianni’s ability to develop quarterbacks, but it’s also an expected result in an absence of continuity.
When he was hired, Sirianni was expected to devise a scheme that would optimize a magnificent offensive line, a very good running back — at the time they had Miles Sanders — and develop Hurts in accordance with his strengths and in spite of his weaknesses.
Let’s be clear here: Very few quarterbacks don’t have physical weaknesses. Michael Vick, Josh Allen, and Cam Newton, guys with rifles on their shoulders and V-8s under the hood, they come along, what, once every five years? Ten? Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Joe Montana, Steve Young: none of them were the Ultimate Weapon.
We’ve acknowledged for years that Hurts wins despite his shortcomings. To belabor the shortcomings is like arguing about local climate patterns and refusing to move. If you don’t like it hot, don’t live in Florida. There are plays Hurts doesn’t like, and there are throws he can’t make, so why force them upon him?
Hurts has blood clots in his lungs. He won’t play again during this lost season. Tanner McKee is the quarterback of the moment. He brings his own set of challenges.
Let’s see if Nick can get the best out of McKee.
Let’s see if he can get the best out of what’s left of the roster.
If Sirianni can devise a feasible game plan during the week and call logical plays on game days, then he deserves to keep his job. If he cannot, then the Eagles must replace him with someone who can.
You know.
A real Toofer.
The Eagles have problems. Eight games into the season, that much is sure. But which ones are symptomatic, versus the ones that are systemic? From the head coach to the personnel, from coordinators to the front office, The Inquirer’s Jeff McLane and David Murphy scrutinize the micro issues that point to some of the larger dilemmas the Eagles now face: should they start to pack it in, and who will be held accountable for the team’s shortcomings? Listen here.
Listen to all episodes here or wherever you get your podcasts.
