PHILADELPHIA — Kevin Patullo has spent five seasons in Philadelphia and two decades in the NFL — long enough to understand that when an offense underperforms, the play caller will face criticism.
There’s a difference between hearing boos and experiencing your family’s home being vandalized. That’s what happened when eggs were thrown at Patullo’s home in Moorestown, N.J., in the overnight hours after the Eagles’ 24-15 loss to the Chicago Bears on Friday.
“As coaches and players, we all know that part of our job is to handle criticism,” Patullo said Wednesday in his first public comments since the incident. “It’s perfectly acceptable to sit up here and talk about what’s going on, how to fix it, what we’re going to do going forward, and we know that. But when it involves your family, obviously it crosses the line. That happened, and at this point, we’ve just got to move on. We’re trying to win. That’s all we want to do is focus, whether it’s my family, whether it’s the team, all we’re trying to do together is focus on this week. We’ve got a long week, which has been good to have an extra day of preparation, and go out to L.A. and beat the Chargers.”
Patullo, the Eagles’ first-year offensive coordinator, oversees an offense ranked No. 22 in offensive points per game, No. 24 in yards per game, and No. 17 in EPA/drive. With 10 of 11 returning starters from last year’s Super Bowl lineup, the external expectations and internal standards for the offense were greater than the results during the Eagles’ 12 games have revealed. That led to coach Nick Sirianni offering votes of confidence in Patullo three times in the last 10 days, and for the home crowd to be seen and heard chanting “Fire Kevin” on national television on Black Friday.
Those circumstances explain the tenor of the local fan base surrounding the Eagles’ offense, but the actions of the vandals left egg on the face of a Philadelphia fan base in a story that’s drawn national attention in recent days.
“Ultimately, you want to be able to separate your job from your family,” Patullo said. “That line was crossed. It was an unfortunate incident, and that’s part of it that it happened. Us as a family, we know we’ve got to stick together. To be honest, there’s a lot of great people in the community. I have great neighbors. So many people have reached out to my wife and I and our family, and so it’s not anything or one specific person. It happened, and we’ve got to move on from it at this point.”
During his comments, Patullo referenced the “awesome” experience coaching in “such a unique place” like Philadelphia during the last four years. He discussed coaching at home in two NFC Championship Games and the “amazing atmosphere” during the Eagles’ Super Bowl parade.
As a close confidant of Sirianni, Patullo has had a front-row seat to how Sirianni endured criticism during his tenure. As the passing game coordinator and associate head coach, Patullo has not been in the direct spotlight of the fan base. The Eagles had mostly shielded him from public interviews during his first four seasons.
The offensive coordinator title and play-calling duties presented a different public profile. The benefits can be immense — three offensive coordinators have been hired as head coaches during the last eight seasons. It can also make one a public scapegoat; the other three offensive coordinators during that eight-year period have all been dismissed.
“Nick does a great job with all of us as coaches, just preparing us for these kinds of moments, and different mentors you have,” Patullo said. “You know that the pressure’s there, but we all accept it because we ultimately want to be at the highest part of our coaching career and continue to work through that. This is part of it. It’s a challenge, but it makes it fun. When you look back on it, you hope that you have more good than bad memories. And when you go through the process like this, it defines you as a person in your career but not as an individual, not as your family.”
Patullo has been scrutinized for most of the season. In fact, Sirianni was asked ahead of Week 3 how well-equipped Patullo is to handle what comes with his role. Sirianni said one of the hardest roles on a coaching staff is to be the coordinator or position coach where the head coach has a background, and Patullo has developed “thick skin” and dealt with Sirianni’s criticism throughout the years. But hearing it from your boss and friend is different than the boos and the chants of a home crowd — even disregarding despicably resorting to vandalism.
“We know there’s going to be criticism, and we know what we signed up for, and I think Kevin’s got a great mindset on that. He always has,” Sirianni said on Sept. 17. “Full transparency, he can be my mentor at times as far as helping me get through things. That’s one reason I value Kevin so much. The football mind, all those different things are why he got the job, but I’ve always used Kevin to talk through things, and we all need that. We all need to be able to talk through things. I have no question in my mind that through the past eight years with Kevin, he’s built for that.”
That’s being tested. The problems on offense are not exclusive to the person calling plays. When most of the other faces and roles remain the same from previous seasons, and the Eagles are having their worst offensive season during the Sirianni era, then the offensive coordinator will be blamed. The answers from Patullo during his weekly news conference are not changing much, while the Eagles continue searching for answers with few concrete explanations about the issues. Patullo acknowledged there have been only two games this season when the Eagles “had a consistent flow where plays are just kind of coming off the call sheet.” Sirianni continues to insist that he does not believe Patullo is the isolated problem. He calls for collective responsibility and says the Eagles are not seeking to assign blame.
“He knows that we’re going to do everything as a staff that we need to do to get the win and get the job done and continue to improve,” Patullo said.
“I think just him having confidence in all of us together really says a lot.”
Unless and until there’s improvement, the criticism about Patullo won’t quiet. But there’s a line that should never be crossed. That was already violated last weekend. Despite the incident, Patullo said he’s not uncomfortable in his New Jersey neighborhood.
“We’ve had a great experience here in Philadelphia, and it’s a very special, unique place to work,” Patullo said. “I look forward to all the more games we have and finishing strong in the season.”