At some point last season, Eagles play calling duties shifted from head coach Nick Sirianni to offensive coordinator Shane Steichen. Speaking this summer, Steichen confirmed that he’ll be doing that this year, and Sirianni was asked Wednesday to explain the process that led to this point.

He gave a lengthy answer, so I’ll truncate the quote:

“…I was just noticing Shane was already calling the two-minute drills, and like I said, it’s a collaborative event. You can’t just go out and call a game without putting the plan together. You put the plan together all week. One of my favorite things to do in the world is help put the plan together and put the plays in you think are going to work against the defense. That’s one of my favorite things to do in the world. We’re continuing to do that.

But what I noticed was, well, I wasn’t communicating enough with (Jonathan) Gannon about something, or I wasn’t communicating enough about the defense about something that they needed to be pumped up or Coach Clay or the special teams. I love doing that, to go over into the kickoff return and say, ‘Let’s go, let’s get a play going.’ There are a lot of things that have to happen on the offense before a drive starts.

You have to communicate to all the offensive players, ‘Here are the next string of plays.’ You have to put together the next string of plays of what you’re talking about. I just really trusted Shane. Shane and I spend so much time throughout the week together, again, coming up with a plan amongst the coaches, and Shane and I are doing most of the heavy lifting.

We shifted to it during one of the games, and I felt comfortable with being able to talk to everybody – there are things that come up with the referees that I need to do. There are things that come up with the guys upstairs that I need to talk through a situation and how we might need to handle it. There are just so many things that came up, and you know what, I wanted to trust the guys on the staff that I had, because I have good coaches. We just talked about it.

I trusted Shane, he did a great job when he did it, and I feel really comfortable that we continue on that way.”

This all makes a lot of sense because Sirianni was absorbing a TON of responsibility last year. He was a first-year head coach and first-time play caller. It’s admirable to try to take on all of the responsibility, but is it the best way to operate? Probably not, and when that was recognized, they shifted those responsibilities into something more tenable for the entire team. Sirianni has less on his plate now, and can focus on other things.

He did, however, go on to explain that he will continue to be “in every meeting.” The only that’s really changing is that he will no longer call plays, but every other aspect of game planning, play design, and installation will remain what it was in 2021.

Sirianni:

“Even in that aspect, we’re coming up with the first 15 [plays] together. We’re coming up with the order of the 3rd down. We are coming up with the order of the second-half openers at times. We’re coming up with the red zone, the two-minute.

There is so much that goes into it. Just like the draft, it can’t be like, ‘Hey, we’re at pick 7, go.’ There’s been a lot of work that’s went into it. We aren’t going to have pick 7. Let me rephrase that. There has been a lot of work that’s went into that, and it’s the same thing as we go.

Again, like I said, I have total confidence in Shane, and I’m just really excited to go and have that same process next year.”

I’m sure there will be speculation as to how we arrived at this point. Conspiracy theories and whatnot. Did Howie Roseman step in and ask for this change? Is Jeffrey Lurie lurking in the shadows? Did Sirianni just come to this realization himself? Whatever the case, this seems like a more logical way to divvy up the offensive duties.

Thing is, most NFL coaches don’t want to give up responsibilities like play calling, and Sirianni was asked if there was difficulty in making that move:

“No, I think that’s where a lot of problems happen in the NFL is from an ego standpoint, right. It’s what is the best thing to do. If I said I’m going to stand on a table and run these plays that we ran with Philip Rivers, because that’s what we do, that’s an ego thing to me. So, it’s the same thing here. I felt like I needed to make a change in the sense of how to free me up to be a better head coach, and I had a good assistant to call the plays, and so that’s what I went with.

So yeah, no hesitation there at all, no ego thing there at all. Shane has done a great job, and imagining we do what we’re supposed to do and win games, do what we were paid to do to come here, Shane will get an opportunity to be a head coach and then we re-discuss it again.

But again, I don’t want you guys to get caught up in this, well, because he’s calling the plays on game day, that’s it. There is so much that happens before the games are being called, and I’m not going to tell you the percentage of plays that I call or what he calls, but there’s just so much that’s happening before that, it is a true group effort going into it. Then it’s just a matter of who’s the one calling it on Sunday.”

That last paragraph is the key there. No doubt, there will be some shitty play call this year, and people will be out for Shane Steichen’s head. But what if Nick Sirianni was in his ear asking for that call specifically? Or, there’s a great play that Steichen gets credit for, but Sirianni wanted it instead? You never really know who gets all of the credit or blame for something, so we just have to try to keep that in mind before we go bitching and complaining on Twitter and sports radio.