Unscouted: Inside The Eagles' Slow Path Back On Offense

PHILADELPHIA - What’s it like being the reigning Super Bowl champions?

The cliche is that you’re going to get everyone’s best shot. How that materializes is about a lot more than just effort, however.

For the Eagles, it’s been about curveballs, something best exemplified by what the offense has been seeing on a week-to-week basis.

Eric Dickerson, the Eagles’ offensive quality control coach, not the Hall of Fame running back, is tasked with relaying to Kevin Patullo what defensive personnel grouping the play-caller will be working against on any particular play.

On one occasion this season, Philadelphia prepped for one of the game’s most well-regarded defensive coordinators with the comfort of understanding that the unit defaulted to one personnel grouping on first-and-10 against a base look.

When the Eagles arrived on the schedule, an innocuous tendency for the opposition was immediately turned on its head. Patullo heard nickel in his ear, and it was fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants time. A week of game prep had to be altered on play No. 1.

Now at 10-5 with the NFC East secured, the Philadelphia offense has started to look better and better in recent weeks, and more in tune with what the outside world expected.

Peaking At The Right Time

Kevin Patullo and Saquon Barkley — Oct 26, 2025; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; Philadelphia Eagles offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo and running back Saquon Barkley (26) against the New York Giants at Lincoln Financial Field. | Eric Hartline-Imagn Images

“Offensively you go out there, you're gonna see a lot of different looks and they're gonna have some surprises throughout the week,” Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts said. “You do a lot of preparation, you do a lot of game planning, what you expect to come, and sometimes those things never come.”

Patullo agreed with that sentiment.

“I think when you go throughout the full year, you start to see early in the year there's some trends, and then you kind of keep getting them, and they might go in and out,” Patullo explained to Eagles on SI Tuesday. “So I think it's just seeing a lot of different things.”

The players, in turn, are getting more comfortable. Think of it like a 3-1 fastball hitter getting in a groove after a steady diet of junk.

“The players have done a great job of just in-game moment changing and adapting to what we need to do,” said Patullo.

All of that starts in practice, which is more challenging in the modern era due to the strict limitations put on preparation in the current collective bargaining agreement.

“Even in practice, we challenge them frequently with different looks and give hard looks so that sometimes plays don't look great in practice, but that's okay because we're testing them,” Patullo explained.

A sample size of 15 curveballs to date also helps.

“I think it's just working from game one until now, we are getting a wide variety of stuff, and it's actually helped us up to this point to see different things in game and have something to refer back to,” Patullo noted. “I think that's the biggest thing with players and even coaches, when you can refer to something else, a moment in time, a play, a scheme, a defense this year, last year, last week, you have something to draw upon.”

Being able to draw upon a wider variety of circumstances has the Eagles’ offense peaking at the right time.

“It's a matter of being able to adjust a lot of the times on the fly and leverage yourself in the best way given that moment in real time in the game,” Hurts said.

MORE NFL: Eagles' Vic Fangio Believes Pro Bowl Selection Process Should Be Revamped