As the Eagles were making their comeback from being down 26-7 to the Rams in the third quarter to winning the game, social media buzzed with speculation that the team had made a change to their offensive operation.
The team’s sudden jolt of offensive life led some to wonder if offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo was still calling the plays and if quarterback Jalen Hurts was now handling the responsibility. At a Monday press conference, head coach Nick Sirianni laid doubt about who was making the calls to rest.
“Kevin called the plays yesterday in that second half,” Sirianni said, via a transcript from the team. “But make no mistake about it, Jalen does a great job of communicating. Jalen sees the field really, really, well. He can come back and tell you what happened without even looking at the picture. Then you look at the picture like, ‘Yeah, this, that’s exactly what happened’. Jalen has a great feel for how that’s going. So, there’s communication, right? There’s talk through it, everything like that. But yeah, Kevin called the plays. Kevin will continue to call the plays, but I love the communication that we get from Jalen. I love the communication that we get from all our guys. I think we get a lot of good information from our guys, Jalen particularly, and that’s the way it should be as a quarterback, but you don’t trust every quarterback.”
Patullo took over the job after Kellen Moore left to become the head coach of the Saints and the first two weeks saw the team pick up 238 yards through the air. They won both those games, but there was plenty of hand-wringing about how conservative the offense was in both contests.
Hurts had just 17 passing yards in the first half on Sunday and lost 18 yards on sacks, but he threw for 209 yards in the second half. The way the game played out likely had a hand in the change and we’ll see if the Eagles continue to lean on the passing game in Week 4 against the Buccaneers.
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