Shane Steichen Exits Eagles, Enters Indianapolis to be Colts' Head Coach
PHILADELPHIA - After sifting through 14 known candidates over the past five weeks, the Indianapolis Colts officially hired Shane Steichen to be their new head coach Tuesday, two days after Philadelphia's heartbreaking 38-35 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LVII.
The Eagles' offensive coordinator and play-caller, Steichen reaches the big chair at age 37 after helping pilot the league's third-ranked offense and overseeing the development of Jalen Hurts from competent starter to superstar over a span of two seasons.
Steichen's acumen with quarterbacks (Philip Rivers swears by him and Steichen helped develop Justin Herbert during his rookie season in 2020 with the Los Angeles Chargers) was surely a selling point to the Colts, who are coming off a disappointing four-win season in which another former Eagles OC, Frank Reich, was fired in-season.
The Colts have the No. 4 overall pick in the upcoming NFL Draft and are expected to look heavily at the top available quarterbacks.
Herbert threw 31 touchdowns and completed 66.6% of his pass attempts and was named AFC Offensive Rooke of the Year when Steichen was the Chargers' offensive coordinator before he joined the Eagles as Nick Sirianni's OC in 2021.
After an ugly 2-5 start in 2021, Sirianni decided to hand over play-calling to Steichen before playing the Chargers in Week 9 that season.
Since that game, the Eagles are 22-7 (including the postseason) with Steichen calling the plays.
Hurts, meanwhile, threw for 3,701 yards this past season, added another 760 on the ground, and had 35 combined touchdowns while finishing second in the MVP voting to Patrick Mahomes.
Hurts also had a spectacular Super Bowl in a losing effort, joining 49ers legends Joe Montana and Steve Young as the only players to account for at least 370 total yards and four touchdowns in the big game.
"Shane is extremely deserving of this opportunity," former NFL head coach Norv Turner said. "He's done a great job all the way back to the Chargers with Justin Herbert and one style of offense. Then in Philadelphia, you look at the progress Jalen Hurts has made in a different style of offense. So he's been successful in two different systems."
The thought around the league is that the Eagles will move forward by elevating quarterbacks coach Brian Johnson to the OC job with Alex Tanney, a young assistant Sirianni is very high on, taking over the positional coaching duties.
Johnson is very close to Hurts and that gives him the edge over passing game coordinator Kevin Patullo, who is extremely close to Sirianni and was set to take over as interim head coach in 2021 when Sirianni came down with a case of COVID-19 and was in danger of missing a game.
There is also significant interest around the league in Johnson for OC jobs so if Philadelphia fails to act, it could lose what many in the league believe is another future head coach.
The other aspect of this is the play-calling.
Sirianni was very comfortable with Steichen piloting his offense and the coach has already noted that he could take the play-calling aspect of the job back if Steichen got a head-coaching job.
-John McMullen contributes Eagles coverage for SI.com's Eagles Today and is the NFL Insider for JAKIB Media. You can listen to John, alongside legendary sports-talk host Jody McDonald every morning from 8-10 on ‘Birds 365,” streaming live on YouTube. John is also the host of his own show "Football 24/7 and a daily contributor to ESPN South Jersey. You can reach him at jmcmullen44@gmail.com or on Twitter @JFMcMullen
