Kevin Patullo will bear a heavy burden as the Eagles’ latest offensive coordinator

Ryan Fitzpatrick graduated from Harvard with a degree in economics, which suggests that he knows how to take a precise measure of matters. He is the only former Crimson quarterback to have started even a single NFL game, and he started 147 of them. The best 16 of those in any season came in 2015, when he threw 31 touchdown passes for the New York Jets. Kevin Patullo, now the Eagles’ offensive coordinator, was his quarterbacks coach.

Fitzpatrick and Patullo spent five years together as collaborators — three with the Buffalo Bills, two with the Jets, the stretches that marked Fitzpatrick’s transition from being an answer to a quirky trivia question to persuading teams that he could help them win some games. He has spent the last three years analyzing the league for Amazon’s Prime Video, observing Jalen Hurts’ growth as a quarterback and Nick Sirianni’s maturation as a head coach, keeping an eye on Patullo’s actions and results as the Eagles’ passing-game coordinator for the last four years.

Now Patullo will get his shot this season as the play-caller for the defending champs. The key to understanding and evaluating how he will fare in that role, Fitzpatrick said, comes down to one name: Chan Gailey, who was the Bills’ head coach and the Jets’ offensive coordinator while Patullo and Fitzpatrick were with each team. “Chan is a huge mentor of mine in developing offense,” Patullo said, and Gailey’s approach likely will be a model for how Patullo will operate with the Eagles.

“What Chan did better than any coach I ever played for was that he highlighted players’ strengths,” Fitzpatrick said in a recent phone interview. “He called plays based on the players he had in the huddle. That’s something that Kevin will certainly lean on. It’s not my way or the highway. It’s ‘How do we highlight A.J. Brown? What does he do best? What does DeVonta Smith do best?’ It’s not just pigeonholing these guys in a certain system.”

The challenge for Patullo this season — and for Hurts, in particular — is that the Eagles’ opponents likely will enter each game committed to clogging up any running lanes for Saquon Barkley. The Kansas City Chiefs sold out to stop Barkley in Super Bowl LIX, and Hurts tore them to pieces, throwing for 221 yards and two touchdowns and rushing for 72 and another score. It won’t be surprising, then, if in the early weeks of the season Patullo has Hurts throwing a lot of deep passes against man coverage or gives him the freedom to check to such plays at the line of scrimmage.

“Those are the types of things, highlighting the strengths of the guys on the outside, that he’s really going to help Jalen with,” Fitzpatrick said.

In an ideal scenario, Hurts will help Patullo, too. About to begin his sixth season with the Eagles, 27 years old, and in the prime of his career, Hurts isn’t, and shouldn’t be, the same quarterback he was a year ago, two years ago, three. In New York, Patullo coached Geno Smith, who was Fitzpatrick’s backup there, and it took Smith more than eight years in the league before he had finally learned and matured enough to be effective. After starting just five games for four teams over a seven-year span, Smith went to two Pro Bowls in three seasons with the Seattle Seahawks, was named the Associated Press’s Comeback Player of the Year in 2022, and signed a two-year contract extension with the Las Vegas Raiders for as much as $85.5 million.

“Quarterbacks, in my opinion, are like fine wines,” Patullo said in an interview. “You’ve got to just let it age. That’s what I believe in. It just takes time. That time can be reps. That time can be actual time. Some guys just develop differently, and Geno’s a prime example of that. He’s played really, really well in the back half of his career. When I saw him in Seattle two years ago, I actually said, ‘Hey, fine wine, remember?’ He started laughing.

“I think Fitz is an example, too. He’s a smart guy, could play early. Then he had to figure out his game, and he matured over time. It’s like, ‘This is who I am. This is what I do.’ I think Jalen’s experiencing that, too. He’s developing and aging. He’ll come over to me and say, ‘Processing is so much easier now. I see this, that, and the other.’ The reps and the speed of what you see — it slows down, and everything changes. You talk to the older guys, and at that point in their careers, they’re playing at a different speed than they did early in their career. At the end, they’re like, ‘Yeah, I know what this is. I know what this feels like.’”

The pressure and possibilities that have accompanied the title of Eagles OC can be exhilarating and overwhelming for the man who holds the job. There is the opportunity for career advancement, and there is the risk of confirming the Peter Principle. Frank Reich, Shane Steichen, and Kellen Moore went to Super Bowls and became head coaches. Mike Groh, Press Taylor, and Brian Johnson are back to working their way up the coaching hierarchy again.

It would be understandable for Patullo, 44, to look at that history and ask himself what it might mean for him and his career. But he also wouldn’t be the first Eagles OC to have such an opportunity and fail to take full advantage of it.

“That’s a very sought-after position, to be a coordinator for this Eagles team with how talented they are,” Fitzpatrick said. “But it comes with really high expectations, and you’ve got to be able to deal with that.

“I think Jalen Hurts manages that as well as anybody in the league with his stoic demeanor and the way he goes about his business. Nothing really seems to bother him. Kevin is not necessarily built that way. Kevin cares a lot, and he can be an emotional guy. In that way, Jalen is probably going to help him a little bit this year.”

This is where things could get interesting for Patullo this season. He and Sirianni aren’t merely close friends and colleagues; they have similar personalities. Both of them naturally are open and approachable and emotional. Hurts, as everyone knows, is not, and that contrast between head coach and quarterback has made for some rough going in their relationship. Now Patullo will be dealing with Hurts even more directly than he once did — in his ear, calling plays, pushing back.

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So … interesting.

“I wouldn’t say he runs as hot as Sirianni,” Fitzpatrick said. “If you had to put them on a scale, where Sirianni is a 9 sometimes — he’s really mellowed out over the years — and Jalen is a 1, Kevin is probably a 5. He’s not afraid to lean on other people. He’ll know if his emotions are running hot and he’s getting too caught up in the highs and lows, he’ll be able to lean on a guy like Jalen, and he’ll be OK with that — to draw some strength and inner peace from him.”

That’s a lot to put on Hurts. That’s a lot to put on a first-time coordinator. But then, that’s the Eagles and the burden they bear as defending Super Bowl champions. Aging like fine wine? The quarterbacks he coached might have needed that kind of time, but Kevin Patullo himself? He won’t get it.