After last season’s late-season setbacks, the Philadelphia Eagles hired Kellen Moore as their offensive coordinator to completely overhaul the setup.
Quarterback Jalen Hurts claims that the redesign is more of an overhaul.
“You get to a point where you feel, I’m going to be comfortable with this, I like this, that time comes when you can rep it, rep it, rep it later on, but right now it’s been a lot of new inventory in — the majority of it, probably 95% of it being new — and so it’s just been that process, and it’s been a fun process because you get to see what works for other people,” Hurts told ESPN on Thursday.
“I think the goal coming in was to learn Kellen’s offense and to master it, and I think that’s been a process, and by the end of it, I want it to be mine and have it in my own way.”
Moore and head coach Nick Sirianni have discussed in the past that the offensive is a synthesis of the concepts they each ran as players.
Hurts went on to say that although the plays may resemble those Philly used the previous season, there are differences in the way they approach it and the roles that each player has.
“The Xs and Os, the lines on the paper, they very well may be what they are supposed to be, but how I coach and how I detail these routes, how I coach the quarterback, what I want his timing to be, where I want him looking, where I want his eyes,” Sirianni stated.
Does the receiver read the route, or do they not? Is the quarterback required to handle this, or are there alarms, checks, and changes already in place? That’s what distinguishes a system as such.”
The Eagles players have spoken highly of the new plan during OTAs and minicamp, but there are still some hitches to sort out because the timing hasn’t always been ideal at this point in the summer.
Moore was brought in with the expectation that his background in Dallas and Los Angeles would offer a new perspective on a system that had grown old the previous season.
To help the play-action offense and running game, Moore should add more variety, move the ball more, and maybe start Hurts at center more often than he did last season.