Five reasons to not panic about losing Eagles OC Kellen Moore, who happened to be in the right place at the right time

When Kellen Moore won the Super Bowl as the Eagles’ offensive coordinator on Sunday, then took the job as head coach of the New Orleans Saints, it meant that Jalen Hurts would have a 12th different play-caller in the 10 seasons since he left high school.

That’s astonishing, but not necessarily because Hurts has endured so much change. Change is inevitable when teams win, and Hurts’ teams always win.

It’s astonishing because, no matter how many changes happen, Hurts continues to produce, and produce at high levels. National championship levels. Super Bowl levels.

So let’s all just calm down.

When Moore arrived last January, no one believed he would turn Hurts into the mature, game-managing, big-play quarterback he has become. Certainly, nobody thought that that would happen after just four games. But it did.

That’s because Hurts, ultimately, was coachable. That’s because Moore achieved a similar task when he coached Dak Prescott in Dallas, where he helped a competent quarterback to maximize his assets, like strength, speed, mobility, and spontaneity, and play around his weaknesses, like an average throwing arm. And it’s because Moore, Hurts, and head coach Nick Sirianni realized, four games into the season, that the offense needed to change its foundations, and they executed that change midstream, during the bye week.

What now?

It seems a fait accompli that Eagles assistant Kevin Patullo, the passing game coordinator and associate head coach, will ascend and take Moore’s chair. It’s a similar situation to 2023, when OC Shane Steichen left to coach the Colts and quarterbacks coach Brian Johnson got the OC job. But there are lots of differences this time, too, chief among them: Kellen Moore was no Shane Steichen.

» READ MORE: The Eagles need a new offensive coordinator. Could Kevin Patullo be next up?

Steichen was the quarterbacks coach and/or offensive coordinator for the Chargers when Philip Rivers resurrected his career and made three straight Pro Bowls, from 2016 to 2018. He was the OC in 2020 when Justin Herbert replaced Rivers and won Offensive Rookie of the Year over Justin Jefferson. He was the OC in Philly from Week 8 in 2021 until Super Bowl LVII, the span in which Hurts developed into a viable NFL quarterback.

Meanwhile, before 2024, Moore lost his job as offensive coordinator in each of the previous two seasons. After 2022, Dallas coach Mike McCarthy told owner Jerry Jones that Moore, Jones’ golden boy whom McCarthy had inherited, was the reason the Cowboys had failed, so Jones kept McCarthy and fired Moore. (McCarthy also didn’t return after this season, and he remains unemployed.) Moore landed with the Chargers in 2023 to further refine Herbert’s game. Coach Brandon Staley was fired after Week 15, and eventual successor Jim Harbaugh let Moore go, too.

» READ MORE: Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie built a Super Bowl culture on connection, compassion, and empathy

That’s why Moore was available for Philadelphia. Now, to review his actual effectiveness.

The Eagles offense ranked third in yards and points per game in 2022. In 2023 it fell to eighth and seventh, respectively. In 2024, when Moore arrived, it ... remained at eighth and seventh, respectively. Hmm. Maybe it wasn’t all Brian Johnson’s fault, and maybe Moore wasn’t some schematic savior. It’s more likely that he benefited from timing and advances in modern medicine.

The Eagles averaged 21.5 points in their first four regular-season games, in which they went 2-2. They averaged nearly 30 points in their final 12 meaningful games, in which they went 11-1.

How did they get so much better so fast? Did Moore sell his soul to the devil?

It’s more like Moore owes his new job to sports science.

A.J. Brown, the best receiver in team history, missed both early losses with an injury. DeVonta Smith, who is nearly Brown’s equal, did not play in the second loss. Right tackle Lane Johnson, the best lineman in team history, also missed the second loss. When that trio returned healthy after the bye week, Moore became a stone-cold genius.

I know I’m using a lot of superlatives here, but this one is the least disputable: Saquon Barkley just had the best season of any Eagle in team history. His 2,005 yards shattered the Eagles’ rushing record by nearly 400 yards, he gained the eighth-most rushing yards in league history, and he set the NFL record for rushing yards in the regular season and playoffs.

Miles Sanders had a Pro Bowl season in 2022, but when he left via free agency, D’Andre Swift replaced him, and Swift was, perhaps, 70% as effective.

» READ MORE: Nick Sirianni is at the doorstep of an Eagles dynasty

Enter Barkley, the best running back in the league. Barkley just turned 28 on Sunday. There’s a pretty good chance that Dana Bible would’ve been a good offensive coordinator with Barkley in the offense (look him up, kids).

It seems impossible that the least-appreciated stats from the Eagles’ 2024 season are the most important ones, but here we are.

Hurts’ passer rating of 103.7 was the best of his career. He ranked fifth in the NFL, above MVP Josh Allen, Rookie of the Year Jayden Daniels, and Patrick Mahomes, the NFL’s best player. Hurts also had the best completion percentage of his career, 68.7%, eight-best in the league. He was the MVP runner-up in 2022, but he was a smarter, more efficient quarterback in 2024.

» READ MORE: Jalen Hurts’ improbable path to Super Bowl MVP removes any doubt that the Eagles ‘have the quarterback’

Hurts led the league in turnovers from the start of the 2023 season through Week 4 of 2024. He threw risky passes, often late, and they were intercepted. He took bad sacks and tried reckless runs and fumbled the ball away. Since then, he has accepted that he doesn’t have to be a hero for the team to win. That’s a lesson that great quarterbacks such as Brett Favre and Dan Fouts never learned.

Should Moore get some credit for Hurts’ maturation? Sure. But so should Sirianni and Patullo, and both will remain.

If we’ve learned anything about the Eagles’ head coach over the past four seasons, it’s that he is eager to learn himself. He’s as eager to improve himself as he is to improve his players and his team.

Let’s not pretend that hiring Moore and defensive coordinator Vic Fangio was purely the product of Sirianni’s desires. Owner Jeffrey Lurie and GM Howie Roseman coveted both of them for years, especially Fangio.

Let’s be honest about this, too: With the exception of Barkley, Fangio was as important an addition as anyone who got a check from Lurie this season. And Fangio isn’t going anywhere.

As long as Sirianni understands the strengths of his team — specifically, that it will best succeed by running the ball and trusting its defense — then the departure of Moore, while disruptive and possibly painful, doesn’t have to be fatal.

No passer had a sounder pocket in 2024 than Hurts. His average “pocket time” was 2.7 seconds, according to Pro Football Reference; many of the 38 sacks he suffered were the result of good coverage or Hurts surrendering himself.

The Eagles’ offensive line has been the NFL’s best, overall, in the 12 seasons since Stout took it over. It clearly was the best this season. It had three Pro Bowl players: Johnson, left guard Landon Dickerson, and center Cam Jurgens. It also had the highest-rated lineman, according to Pro Football Focus; left tackle Jordan Mailata, whose accolade resumé was diminished because he missed four games early in the season.

All four of those linemen will return. And Moore had virtually nothing to do with their dominance.

Godspeed, Kellen Moore. The Eagles will be just fine without him.