It can’t be a coincidence that the, ”first 15” scripted plays are absolutely terrible nearly every week. Sirianni more than likely is designing those, as he’s said himself he’s in charge of the game plan and other things even if he’s not fully calling plays.
Nick also said in multiple press conferences earlier this year that he was the one who called a lot of the situational play calling late in close games that came under criticism from fans.
At the end of the day, Nick is an offense HC and this is his offense. A lot of the first half play calling reminds me of 2021 before Steichen took over play calling. Not enough running, and a passing game that seemingly takes 5 seconds to develop and is either a screen or a huge bomb downfield. It drives me insane when w don’t work the middle of the field because Smitty and AJ are 2 of the best in the league at working the middle and the sidelines.
It seems that the offense comes to life in the 2nd half when BJ is presumably calling most plays while Sirianni transitions to just managing the game and the players? I was hard on BJ too but the more I think about it the more what I’m saying makes sense. The creativity in the run AND pass game is exponentionally better than the first half in a lot of our games this year, the tape looks like 2 different football teams at times
I see somebody else listens to the Eagle Eye podcast lol
And while I don’t inherently disagree with this take, ultimately the execution and design of the plays is on BJ and the players.
Nick is so much more to this team than just the first 15 plays of a game - so sure, he deserves some flack for them being so remarkably unsuccessful at times - but at the end of the day we shouldn’t be calling for his head over it.
On top of all of that, they’ve all said time and time again that this offense is cumulative. Nick has a hand in it, whoever the OC is has a hand in it, Stout has a hand in it, all of the consultants and personnel coaches have a hand in it, even Jalen has a hand in it because a lot of our plays are choice-based (RPOs, zone reads), sometimes he goes off-script, and I’m sure he tells the offensive staff what he does and doesn’t like which affects what we install - and of course all of the players on the field have a hand in the execution of it. There is no one person to blame for any particular part of the offense that we’re struggling with. I wish more people would realize this.