He speaks like Nick Sirianni and he coaches like Nick Sirianni, and he even looks a little bit like Nick Sirianni. But Kevin Patullo insists he’s not a Nick Sirianni clone, and he believes their differences will only make the Eagles’ offense better.
Patullo, Sirianni’s fourth offensive coordinator in five years, met with the media Wednesday for the first time since being promoted from the passing game coordinator role he held from 2021 through 2024.
“It's interesting,” Patullo said. “We go back to the Colts (in 2018), and I think there's a lot of fundamental things that we see the same way, but I do think our brains work differently. It's a good back-and-forth conversational piece that we have constantly.
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SIGN UP HERE “There's a lot of things that he believes in that I believe in as well and we're going to do those things. But I do think we challenge each other to grow, and he's awesome about just finding new ideas and testing the waters and saying, ‘What if we did this? What if we tried that?’ He challenges you as a coach to really continue to grow your game. … He pushes us as coaches to get better and that's what's unique about it.”
Patullo will be Jalen Hurts’ sixth play caller in six years, following Doug Pederson in 2020, Sirianni at the start of 2021, then Shane Steichen the rest of 2021 and all of 2022, Brian Johnson in 2023 and Kellen Moore last year.
Even with a championship, the offense clearly underachieved last year, at least up until the NFC Championship Game and Super Bowl. With the talent they have, they should have averaged more than 26.8 points per game during the regular season.
Patullo said the offense will grow and change and not just because he’s a new coordinator but just because it needs to change constantly.
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“You want to make sure they're confident in everything that they can do and you want to be confident as a coach that you put them in that position so that they can go out there and do their best,” he said.
“We go through the process at the end of each year of examining what we do well, what we need to improve upon, and then really any trends or anything we see that we can add to it. And then from there we just expand upon it. ‘Hey, we're really good at this. Let's bring this to the table and try this and see where we can take it.’
“I think as we go forward, as we build this thing together as a staff, you'll see some new wrinkles here and there, but more so it's just kind of building on what our players do best.”
Patullo has the advantage of becoming offensive coordinator after spending four years with Sirianni and Hurts and at least a year with the entire offense while simultaneously taking over a position that allows him more say over the offense than he previously had.
So you get – in theory – new ideas along with an existing understanding of personnel.
“Knowing the guys and understanding them, their skill sets, what they can do and kind of being in a different role to where I saw big picture at all times and now I can concentrate on certain things,” he said. “And I've been in each room, every year with the receivers and the quarterbacks and spread my knowledge around.
“That’s huge. … We've had a lot of coaches stay the same and then we've had a lot of players stay the same. That's huge as far as guys knowing what we want to do when we want to do it, and then if something does pop up, we can all adjust together, which is what we have to do as a staff and players.
“The biggest thing is just be me. I mean, I'm not going to change who I am. I'm going to be who I am and then just rely on all the coaches that we have.”
Two of the Eagles’ last three offensive coordinators – Steichen and Moore – went on to become head coaches. And also Jon Gruden, Rich Kotite, Brad Childress and Frank Reich before them.
The way this franchise is set up, if you succeed as an offensive coordinator, you’re going to become a head coach.
It’s just a matter of when.
Patullo knows that, but he said that’s the last thing on his mind right now.
“To be honest, you're just kind of doing your job,” he said. “If you look at something like that big picture, I guess it could be overwhelming.
“But this is what I do, this is what I wanted to do. I've been wanting to do it, and I have an opportunity to do it and I've got a great staff around me, great players, great organization, everything. So it'll be fun.”