PHILADELPHIA — A mid-March snowstorm dumped more than 26 inches of snow in Green Bay, Wis., the second-largest snowfall on record — according to the National Weather Service — in the city that houses a football stadium nicknamed “The Frozen Tundra.”

Flights were canceled, which meant new Philadelphia Eagles offensive coordinator Sean Mannion, a few weeks into the job and prior to his family making its move east, was facing a delay returning to the office. It was a few days into free agency, and NFL draft prep was in full swing.

Mannion could have picked up the phone and called his new boss, Nick Sirianni, to tell him his return trip to Philadelphia would be delayed. Instead, he got in the car and started driving the 900-plus mile route to his new home. Sirianni called his new offensive coordinator to check in and was surprised to learn that Mannion was five hours away.

“This dude loves football and he loves to work,” Sirianni said last month during an extended interview session with Eagles beat reporters. “I’ve really enjoyed being around him.

“I think we think — about everybody — ‘Man, he’s just got it.’ But it doesn’t happen — whether it’s a player, whether it’s Sean — without this obsession to get better. Sean has this obsession to get better, this obsession with his craft, which is why he’s excelled in this profession and I’m really looking forward to continuing to work with him."

Mannion is the fourth Eagles offensive coordinator in four years, and the Eagles hired him to revamp an offense that took a step back in 2025 for a variety of reasons. The team didn’t come close to defending its Super Bowl title in part because its offense wasn’t capable. The offensive line was too banged up. Jalen Hurts was inconsistent at times. Saquon Barkley, behind a battered line, wasn’t the Barkley that dominated in 2024. A.J. Brown wasn’t happy. And Kevin Patullo, the first-year offensive coordinator, appeared not up for the job.

Mannion, 34, is another first-year coordinator, but he brings a sense of freshness to the Eagles and Sirianni having worked under a different coaching tree that surely will lead to scheme changes with the Eagles in 2026 and beyond.

Sirianni is entering his sixth season with the Eagles. It is the longest stretch of time the 45-year-old head coach has spent in one place since becoming a coach. It is not unfair to say his future in Philadelphia could rest on how Sirianni helps the Eagles adapt to another new voice leading the offense and moves the franchise into its next stage.

Show and tell

Just five head coaches remain in the league who have been in their position longer than Sirianni has been with the Eagles. Five years at one place isn’t a very long time in the grand scheme of a normal working career. In the NFL, it has become a rarity.

The Eagles under Sirianni have done a lot of winning. Only the Buffalo Bills, who just fired Sean McDermott this offseason, have a better winning percentage since the start of the 2021 season than the Eagles’ 69.4% win rate with Sirianni in charge.

A handful of key Eagles have been around for the entire Sirianni experience, which means they’ve had the same voice leading team meetings for quite a while.

How does Sirianni try to keep it fresh?

“I think it’s constant growth,” he said. “Show and tell is one thing. I always tell these guys, me showing you what it looks like and telling you what it is in this aspect, that’s the easy part. Being relentless with the monotony of it and consistent every single day, that’s the hard part. You do that through film and you do that through practice and their actions and our habits. But then you also try to find stories that paint your picture out there.”

Sirianni has done his best to not repeat often. Lately, he has found himself going to ChatGPT for inspiration. One day during the offseason program, Sirianni typed a prompt into the artificial intelligence assistant. He wanted to find a “true” — yes, he knows that the AI isn’t perfect yet — sports story that exemplified the three-word motto Lane Johnson and DeVonta Smith probably find themselves reciting in their dreams: Tough. Detailed. Together.

The chatbot spit out the story of Arizona State wrestler Anthony Robles, who, despite being born with one leg, went undefeated as a senior and won the 2011 national championship at 125 pounds in Philadelphia. Sirianni did some more research on Robles and had his next story for a team meeting.

Extended time in one place, though, means he’s been able to personalize some of these stories and connect them to his own roster. Sirianni brought up a story former NFL coach Tony Dungy once told about the Immaculate Reception. Sure, there was some luck involved in Franco Harris catching the deflected pass, but Harris had a habit of being around the ball, being in the right place at the right time.

“Now I’m thinking about that and I’m like, well, that’s Tank Bigsby,” Sirianni said, mentioning the backup Eagles running back. “He is constantly running to the football. He is constantly doing everything he’s supposed to do. And I was able to hit back the story.

“I guess what I’m saying is … we’ve created stories. We’ve created things that people are looking up on [ChatGPT].”

‘You have to adapt’

The post-Shane Steichen years have been a roller coaster at the offensive coordinator spot. Brian Johnson, an internal hire, lasted less than one full calendar year in the role after the 2023 Eagles collapsed at the end of the season. Kellen Moore, an external hire, helped the Eagles win the Super Bowl before becoming the head coach of the New Orleans Saints. Then came Patullo, another internal hire and Sirianni’s close friend.

How things work out with Mannion and the new scheme remain to be seen. He is the Eagles’ third coordinator since 2023 who will be calling NFL plays for the first time.

Football, Sirianni said, is about adapting.

“You have to adapt in-game, you have to adapt in-season, you have to adapt to all different styles of how you coach different people,” he said. “What’s great about this world is no two people are perfectly alike. We may have similarities and similar traits but everyone is different.”

Mannion, who Sirianni said tends to beat the head coach to the building, has only been a coach for two seasons. He was on a league roster as recently as 2023. The Eagles have had inexperienced coordinators before, but none quite like Mannion. So Sirianni said he has adapted his approach in some ways. In the past, he might have warned Steichen or Moore about a certain scenario he planned to throw at them in practice. But a third-and-12 from the 3-yard line might be a pop quiz for Mannion this time around.

“My job is to make sure that I put him in as many scenarios as I possibly can to help him go through that,” Sirianni said.

That part of Sirianni’s job hasn’t changed, but failures of the past may have informed how he views his role moving forward.

But the more things change, the more they stay the same, as the saying goes.

Sirianni said he noticed something when watching the NBA and NHL playoffs this year. The New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs, the Carolina Hurricanes and the Vegas Golden Knights, they all said the same things, the same messages he’s been repeating her for more than five years.

“There’s a common denominator of these good teams that they just want to play for each other,” Sirianni said. “We’ve talked a lot about that and tried to live that. That’s tricky and that’s hard. How do you come together as a football team? You come together through shared hardships. You get that through the offseason. You come together through building trust, consistently doing what you’re supposed to do. And you come together through the time that you put in with each other. That time, sometimes it feels like it’s invisible progress.

“Our best teams since I’ve been here have been the closest teams. We believe in that very much.”

How close will this team become? How will Mannion bring the offense to the next level? How will Sirianni help the Eagles navigate the changes and reach the high expectations in the building?

The answers to those key questions won’t be known for a few months. The Eagles begin camp next week, and a key season in Sirianni’s career trajectory is about to get underway.

“It’s a blessing to be at a place for so long in the NFL,” Sirianni said, “and I look forward to continuing that for years to come.”

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