PHLY Philadelphia Eagles Podcast - Emergency Pod: Ex-Bucs OC Josh Grizzard joins Sean Mannion's Eagles staff

Episode Date: January 30, 2026

New offensive coordinator Sean Mannion is not the only new face on the Eagles' offensive staff as ex-Bucs offensive coordinator Josh Grizzard has been hired as the new passing game coordinator for Nick Sirianni. What does it mean for Jalen Hurts and the rest of the Eagles offense? Nobody beats the Grizz. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello, everybody. Live from the Xfinity Mobile Studio. This is an emergency podcast presented by Xfinity. Bow Wolf, E.J. Smith, as we have new information about the revamped offensive coaching staff, E.J. It's not just Sean Mannion. Who else is joining us? The Eagles are hiring Josh Grizzard as their past game coordinator. And I got to tell you, Bo, I have a strong opinion.

about this higher. We'll get into it. But yeah, Josh Grisard was Josh Grisard was. It's going to be a tough one. Hey, we don't know what this is going to be about. Who knows? He was the Tampa Bay Buccaneers offensive coordinator last season. Before that, he was their past game coordinator. He spent extensive time with the Miami Dolphins before that, including a few seasons as a quality control coach for Mike McDaniel. So this is another guy with extensive history with, you know, good leading. offensive minds in the NFL, most notably Mike McDaniel and Liam Cohen. And he was in Miami even before Mike McDaniel. Yes, he predates Mike Daniel. Yes, correct. So this is, you know, an interesting one for a lot of reasons. But I wanted to also point out that he interviewed for the Eagles offensive coordinator job as well. He had two interviews, one virtual, one in person.

So, yeah, no, this is a big addition to Sean Mannion staff, a quick addition. Obviously, he had, you know, had connections in the Eagles building. that made this possible. And now it's an interesting, it's an interesting hire very quickly after the Sean Manion news. And it is interesting from just a, the Eagles chose Sean Mannion as the offensive coordinator, right? But in terms of filling out the staff,

they brought in four different guys for second interviews. And Grizzar is the only one who was unemployed. And so the only way to get two of them would be to hire someone else and then add Grizzar to the staff. So that's not to say that they didn't prefer Sean Mayan. Sean Maynian is the guy. They're not going to try to get around that by picking someone else just to get two instead of one. But this is a nice way to go about fortifying the staff.

And I think this is the kind of thing that we talked about a little bit yesterday with the Sean Mannion emergency pod. And obviously we'll get more into this in the full two o'clock show today is just that when you hire someone that inexperienced, the rest of the staff is going to matter. matter and to bring someone in who only has one year of play calling experience, but does have a play calling experience. And literally just went through the process that Sean Mannion is going to be going through in terms of doing this for the first time. It was a little bit different because Grizzar didn't have to fully install a brand new offense last year, which you would imagine Mannion is going to have to do.

But I think this is encouraging for the Eagles. And it tells you that they are committed to revamping the process on offense. It's also, it's just going to be something very interesting. to follow because these are not guys who have worked together before. And, you know, these are, Grizzard is, if you want to say the McDaniel tree or whatever it is, but, you know, he has different experience. Mannion, we've talked about, I mean, it is true that the list of offensive coaches he played for is very impressive, but he only has two years of actual coaching experience. These guys don't know each other that well as far as, as far as we're concerned.

and certainly they haven't worked with Nick Siriani before. So it's going to be just an interest. Like I would love to be a fly in the wall in, you know, the month of offseason meetings they're going to have in like putting this offense together. It seems like it will be an interesting process. That doesn't mean it's going to go perfectly, but it's going to be an interesting thing to follow. Yeah, no, my big takeaway with this is whatever your grade was on the Sean Mannion

higher last night, whether it was a C or a B, I think you at least add a plus onto that grade with Josh Grizzard as part of the package in this deal. I honestly probably would go up a letter grade. You know, I probably would have said like a C plus or a B minus on the Sean Mannion higher just because there's a lot of unknowns. But I think Josh Grizzard answers one of the unknowns. And I'll tell you what I mean by that. So like one of the things that we were going to be curious about with Sean Mannion is how much weight he would have in the room. You know, how much he would have the ability to install.

a system that is more reflective of a Sean McVeigh, Kyle Shanahan, Matt LaFleur, type of offense, you know, play action heavy, you know, usage of under center, usage of motion, some of the more modern things we've seen in the NFL. And the thing that the Josh Grizzard hired signals to me is that Sean Mannion will have significant say and weight into overhauling this offensive system. You know, like if it's not just his voice, you know, that it's going to be leading this charge and with a with a different offense. I think you know, Josh Grizzard isn't just like it adds to, you know, the indication that this is going to be a big change schematically for the Eagles

offense. I think that's what's needed. So to me, this does improve the Sean Mannion hire. Obviously, it's an important. I totally agree. It's an important part of his staff. But to me, yes, it does really bolster the confidence that people will need to have about what it's going to look like next year. And if it's going to look different than it has with past iterations of the Jalen Hertz, Nick Siriani offenses. Yeah. Now, let's not, you know, let's not overstate Grizzard. He had one year as an offensive quarter.

Sure. Yeah, but I just think it's more about the direction than it shows. Yeah. I totally agree with you. And it was, it was, it seemed very clear that they were going to have to bring in somebody else, period, whether that was, you know, a senior offensive consultant. You know, you know, I was going through the list of players or coaches that he had worked with in the past.

You know, Gary Kubiak is out there. I don't know if he wants to get back into coaching. but like somebody like that on staff. If it's somebody like Grizzard, that's fine. I'm very curious to see how the rest of the staff looks. Is there going to be a run game coordinator? Is Stout going to continue doing that despite the reporting that we've had this week? I told you last night when we were done,

I was thinking more about who was the biggest winner from the deal, that question, which I couldn't really answer in real time. And I thought that maybe it was Jeff Stoutland because Sean Mannion's not someone who's going to come in here. and throw his weight around in terms of what the running game is going to look like necessarily, but we'll see what happens there. Yeah, I think this is very interesting stuff. This is encouraging. And it's also, I think, a fair indication that Nick Siriani is honest and serious when he says

he doesn't want play calling and running the offense to be his main job. He wants to be able to focus on the rest of the stuff. Absolutely. No, I think that that is definitely the direction that the staff is heading in. I'm going to pick out a winner with the Josh Grizzard hire potential a winner. And I'm going to say Jalen Hertz because I think that there is at least a level of succession planning that's built into this, you know, where, you know, you've got. Interesting. Because if you bring in Sean Mannion and the staff stays mostly the same, if Sean Mannion gets poached and I said this on the show yesterday and I think, you know, I feel even more strongly about it.

after, you know, sitting on it overnight. Like if Sean Mannion does a good job with the Eagles offense this year, he will be a one and done coach, or at least he will have opportunities or, you know, chance to be a one and done coach. You know, Davis Webb does not have extensive coaching experience, but he is in a similar situation. He's not even the play caller in Denver,

and he's already got head coaching interest elsewhere. So it's just the nature of the NFL these days. If you are a successful play calling offensive coordinator, you will get opportunities to be a head coach sooner rather than later. Josh Grizzard to me is, you know, a name that if we are there, if the Eagles find themselves there in a year or two, you have someone on staff who will be a part of installing this system and,

you know, envision, you know, having a vision for what this offense is going to look like and, you know, has, and has played calling experience. So, you know, I think that as the Eagles try to figure out how to navigate continuity,

like with Nick Siriani as a head coach that doesn't call plays, I think that hiring people like Josh Grizzard is, it's going to be an important step toward that. So, yeah, no, I think that Jalen Hertz might be an indirect winner down the road from a hire like this. I have a more direct winner for you. Okay. And that would be Werner Herzog impressions. Because between Josh Grizzard and Sean Mannion,

we have a grizzly man. I thought you were going to give me somebody like action. No, I need to go to the tape. I need to tune my ears to get a good Werner Herzog impression going. And then I'm excited to have that be a running theme for the entirety of the 2026 Eagles offense. You know, I thought I could exhale. They didn't hire Jim Bob Cooter. The jokes on the show weren't going to be too crass.

And here we are. Well, this is not crass. There's nothing crass about it. It's just I feel like this is going to have to be something I do at least once a day. Once a day. Okay. Better get ready. One other thing I wanted to mention is that, you know, the Eagles got a lot of criticism for how long the process took and, you know, the extensive search that they underwent.

But I do think this is the benefit of, you know, going through a search like that because you do end up. finding, you know, ways to fill out your staff and, you know, again, like take advantage of, you know, the opportunity to hire or interview a lot of different people. So I thought your framing was really good earlier, you know, like they kind of got two for one here. And because I'll be honest with you, like, you know, I said it last night before the Mannion hire. I thought Grizzard would have made sense as the O.C. So to get both of these guys, I think it really does kind of change, change the way that I look at the staff that they're building out for sure. I'll tell you what

I'm not even sure that they're done here so who else do you think from their interview cycle could make it in like a senior offensive assistant like a Matt Nagy doesn't have a job yeah so you bring him in as a what are you going to make him quarterbacks coach

I was thinking more senior offensive consultant yeah I think I think they have space to add somebody yeah like a senior offensive consultant I agree I think that they will they will explore those for sure because I think I mean there's maybe two or three OC jobs left, depending on the two open head coaching jobs,

and then maybe if somebody leaves an OC job for one of those jobs, but it doesn't look like Niggie's going to get a job. So I wouldn't be surprised if he's someone who comes on the staff in some capacity. Yeah, no, I think that's a good prediction by you. The other one that I'm curious about is quarterbacks coach. you know i was watching some uh sean mannion press conference clips last night and he harps a lot on footwork and it's something that you hear a lot about from sean mcvay uh you know Kyle Shanahan influence coaches is how important you know Kevin O'Connell's talked a lot about it too

um the importance of the quarterback's footwork being tied into the progression and how precise it needs to be it's not necessarily an area of strength for Jalen Hertz at least the last few seasons and I think it's a point of emphasis for this system. So especially like Sean Mannion coming from, you know, the quarterback's coach room, I do wonder who they will, who they'll bring in and if it will be somebody that has background in a McVeigh-Shannahan type system. That's a very interesting point.

Interesting to follow. All right, let's let this settle. We've got a full show coming up at 2 o'clock, so please join us for that. We will have Matt Schneidman, who covers the Packers joining us to discuss the mystery mannion himself. Fran Duffy is going to check in with his thoughts.

And the professor is going to join us. So a lot to come at 2 o'clock. Please join us for that. Thank you to Xfinity for helping us with this emergency podcast. Thank you, EJ. Everybody go back over to the end of the Anthony Gargano show. And we will be with you at 2 o'clock. Thank you, Lindsay.

And as always, we love you.