Sean Mannion is the biggest problem plaguing the Eagles offense. Fire him.
Asked if he would demote or fire Mannion, head coach Nick Sirianni didn't say 'No.'
LANDOVER, Md. — Tanner McKee doesn’t recognize blitzes. He doesn’t throw the ball very hard. He doesn’t throw it very accurately. He isn’t fast and he isn’t strong and he’s only started three meaningful NFL games.
He is the Eagles’ starting quarterback. He threw an interception, should have thrown two more, coughed up a fumble, took five sacks, and completed 23 of 34 passes for 212 yards.
Incredibly, McKee wasn’t the biggest problem in the Eagles’ 27-10 loss to the Commanders.
He isn’t the biggest problem during the Eagles’ six-game losing streak, their longest since Andy Reid strung together eight on his way out the door in 2012, his personal season from hell.
No, McKee isn’t the biggest issue.
Neither are the injuries that have crippled the team all year.
Neither is GM Howie Roseman, who’s mired in a different kind of slump, nor head coach Nick Sirianni, but Nick’s a close second.
» READ MORE: Grading the Eagles' loss to the Washington Commanders
The No. 1 problem: offensive coordinator Sean Mannion.
And we use the term loosely.
Why?
Because, while Mannion might be offensive, he isn’t coordinating anything.
He has the pedigree of a peasant and the imagination of a ditch digger.
He is so in love with football theory that he ignores football reality.
On fourth-and-4 at the Commanders’ 13-yard line, trailing by six points with just over 9 minutes to play, Sirianni made the decision to go for it.
Mannion’s play call excluded both Dallas Goedert and Saquon Barkley. They stood on the sideline looking stunned, incredulous that they — the only two healthy frontline skill players who dressed for the game; the all-time leader in playoff receptions and the back who’d logged the best season in Eagles history — were not involved in the biggest play of the game.
Maybe the biggest play of the season.
It was surreal.
It was astonishing.
It was a fireable offense.
Goedert was targeted just four times, all four times accurately. He had four catches for 30 yards. Again, he’s the best air option they had.
Mannion virtually ignored him.
That is coaching malpractice.
Will Mannion continue to call plays going forward? Will he be the offensive coordinator next week? Will his key card even work at the Eagles’ offices?
“I’m not thinking about any of that stuff right now,” said Sirianni, wearily. “We need to get better as a whole, and I got a lot of faith in everybody in that locker room. I got a lot of faith in the coaches in that locker room. I’ll keep it at that.”
You know what Nick didn’t say?
“No.”
Nick looked like more than a guy who’d gone from Super Bowl champion to six-time loser.
He looked lost.
He looked helpless.
He looked utterly defeated.
He sounded worse.
He sounded like a man who knows he has to have a hard conversation.
He knows he has to remove Mannion, whether it be philosophically, intellectually, or, with the help of Big Dom DiSandro, bodily.
The most daunting issue might be the absences: retired right tackle Lane Johnson, traded center/guard Cam Jurgens, and, of course, the avalanche of injuries.
“We’re not healthy,” said team spokesman Jordan Mailata, who also plays left tackle. “Do I think we have the personnel? Yes, we do have the personnel to run this offense.”
That personnel just isn’t fully ambulatory.
But that also is a coaching issue.
“They’ve got a call to plays, and we just say ‘Yes,’ and go out there and and try to execute,” Mailata said.
Trying and doing are very different things, especially when the doing is impossible. That’s the crux of the matter:
Mannion is asking inferior, inexperienced players to make plays they cannot make, mainly because they are inferior and inexperienced.
That is the cardinal sin of coaching, at any level. Coaches must never ask players to perform beyond their abilities.
Would you expect any coach in his third year of coaching anything to understand this?
Yeah. Me neither.
To presume that Mannion could be an offensive coordinator in the NFL is the biggest mistake Sirianni, Roseman, and owner Jeffrey Lurie have made since Sirianni came aboard in 2021, and that includes letting insubordinate receiver A.J. Brown get away with murder for three years.
No, Mannion’s a bigger mistake. It’s not really his fault. If somebody offered you a job you couldn’t do, wouldn’t you take it? Even if you’d never done the job at, say, the college level? The Ivy League level? The high school level?
The Madden NFL 27 level?
Well, that’s Mannion.
His offense scored 10 points Sunday night against the second-worst scoring defense in the league.
Mannion cannot be allowed to continue in this role.
Marcus Hayes alerts
The Eagles are 2-6. They are 2-6 because they score just over 17 points per game. He’s the biggest reason they score 17 points per game.
So?
So fire him.
Demote him.
Send him to Brazil on a Mormon mission. It did wonders for McKee.
Anything.
Anything is better than what we’ve witnessed in these eight games.
Give the design and play-calling to Sirianni, who abdicated the throne after a slow start in 2021, when he was the Sean Mannion of head coaches — an underqualified 10th choice.
» READ MORE: NFL ‘furious’ at Eagles’ mismanagement of the Jalen Hurts blood clot condition | Hayes
Mannion was always a mistake. An obvious mistake.
It was like giving a kid who’d mastered an Easy Bake Oven the pastry chef job at Del Frisco’s.
Mannion might understand the game, but he cannot implement it. Not now. Maybe in five years. Maybe in 10.
Not. Now.
It was always ludicrous to imagine he could.
He played in 14 NFL games at quarterback, started three, and stunk; two of those seasons he played for the Rams and Sean McVay.
He was an anonymous “offensive assistant” for the Packers in 2024 and the quarterbacks coach in 2025, both years under overrated, precisely coiffed Matt LaFleur.
Those are the entirety of the credentials that earned Mannion the job as the Eagles’ offensive coordinator at the age of 33.
That, and the fact that actual candidates like Brian Daboll and Mike McDaniel would sooner coach the Lenape Valley Pop Warner team than work for a maniac like Sirianni and a control freak like Roseman.
Seriously: Mannion?
They might as well have hired McKee for the job.
The Commanders were allowing 28.7 points per game. The Eagles scored twice. They scored their touchdown after a Commanders fumble. They scored it when the running back took the snap and surprised the dumbest defense in the NFL.
It is an insult to the illustrious careers of Saquon Barkley, Jordan Mailata, and Dallas Goedert that they remain under Mannion’s purview.
The Eagles’ defense spent the last week getting called dogs. They redeemed themselves most of the game.
Mannion?
For this season, at least, he is beyond redemption.
When Jalen Carter is at his game-wrecking best, he’s as unstoppable a force as there is in the NFL. Such was the case during the Eagles’ Super Bowl run two years ago. But since then, between injuries and uneven play, the defensive tackle’s contributions have been inconsistent. On the heels of general manager Howie Roseman signing Carter to a historic contract, The Inquirer’s Jeff McLane looks at the costs of the extension — both in terms of dollars and cents, as well as roster construction. Plus, Jeff advances storylines for the Nov. 10th NFL trade deadline, and, in his weekly mailbag, addresses some reporting about the Eagles’ salary cap situation. Listen here.
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