The Philadelphia Eagles Promote Kevin Patullo To Replace Kellen Moore As OC, So Prepare Yourselves For The Same Old Dominating Eagles Offense
Icon Sportswire. Getty Images.It's a gift and a curse. The issue with being as great as the Philadelphia Eagles (Super Bowl LIX Champions, in case you forgot), is that you're constantly getting coaches ripped out of your building to fill head coaching vacancies around the league. When you lose an offensive coordinator like Kellen Moore, you'd hope you would have this massive list of guys to choose from to replace him. But when you're playing in the Super Bowl, you're already a full month behind other teams who went out and had to hire the same guys.
So if all the options you would have liked to replace Kellen Moore with are already gainfully employed, well then the only option the Eagles have left is to hire from within. The next man up in that natural progression to Offensive Coordinator was Kevin Patullo, who was the pass game coordinator since 2021. He's been around for all of Jalen's career as a starting QB in Philly. He's been around for all of DeVonta Smith's career. He's been here for all of AJ Brown's time in Philly. If the Eagles are already a month behind the majority of teams in the league, at least now they won't need to waste anymore time getting used to a new coach in the building since they're all familiar with Kevin Patullo.
Now I'll be honest--promoting from within doesn't necessarily inspire a ton of confidence.
I think if you're trying to take advantage of this window right now where the Eagles can see if they can squeeze in a couple championships, it would have been nice to see them go out and hire an established offensive coordinator. But I just don't know how many of those guys were available. I think every option the Eagles had would have been a first-year offensive coordinator. So if you're going to hire a guy to do the job for the first time in their career, it's better to bring in a guy who is already familiar with all of the players and knows the system in and out.
It's not a move that makes you feel like the Eagles can already start planning their trip to California for next year's Super Bowl. But I don't think it's fair to automatically assume Kevin Patullo can't do this job just because Brian Johnson couldn't get it together when he was promoted to replace Shane Steichen. He has a better version of Jalen Hurts to work with, he has Saquon Barkley to work with, he has a bunch of champions who are hungry to do it again. Maybe not the splashiest hire the Eagles could have went with, and it's definitely a safe move. But sometimes the safest move is the smartest move.
Also, I think we can now say that it doesn't matter who Jalen Hurts' offensive coordinator is. He's had a different play caller in his ear pretty much every single year of his career since college, besides 2022. He's used to this by now, and we saw how much he took control of that offense on February 9th. Just give the man 2 plays to go up to the line with and trust that he'll figure it out from there.
P.S. -- Congrats on whatever head coaching job Kevin Patullo gets hired for in the 2026 cycle.
Go Birds.