We are proud to be among the first, if not the first, to publish full projections for the upcoming season, going live just days after the Super Bowl. Publishing detailed projections in early February comes with trade-offs, not the least of which is a near-total lack of clarity on how free agency, cap transactions, and the NFL draft will reshape rosters.
We've been updating our projections in near real time, including during the recent onslaught of free-agent transactions. This version will remain largely stable until we can layer in the April NFL draft, but stable projections don't mean settled debates.
We have a staff of sharp analysts with sharp takes of their own, so I thought it would be worthwhile to solicit their views on the key coin-toss situations that will shape each team's outlook in the coming months. These are important questions where reasonable, informed people can credibly land in very different places. I asked my colleagues to weigh in with one assumption: they were answering strictly through the lens of a standard 0.5-PPR redraft league.
Philadelphia Eagles Coin-Toss Questions:
- Do you expect Sean Mannion to be an improvement over Kevin Patullo?
- Where do you see Saquon Barkley finishing this year?
- Will A.J. Brown be a Philadelphia Eagle at the start of the season?
- If Brown is traded, where do you project Smith, Hollywood Brown, and Goedert?
Q: The Eagles' offensive success has ping-ponged with each year's new play-caller. Do you expect Sean Mannion to be an improvement over Kevin Patullo?
Maurile Tremblay: There's a reasonable case that Mannion represents an upgrade, but his lack of play-calling experience is a concern. The case for optimism starts with the sheer scope of the 2025 offensive regression. The Eagles posted their lowest yards-per-rush of the Sirianni era (4.2), their yards before contact cratered from 2.64 to 1.52, rush success rate fell to 39.1 percent, and they produced just 73 plays of 16-plus yards — the fewest of Sirianni's tenure. Patullo's offense managed to strip mine nearly everything that made the 2024 Super Bowl run work. The bar for improvement is not particularly high. Mannion comes from the Shanahan coaching tree through O'Connell and Kubiak, bringing zone-blocking concepts and play-action schemes that are designed to work together as a system rather than as isolated concepts bolted onto an existing framework. Mannion, Kuper (the new OL coach), and Mahaffey (the new run game coordinator) all trace back to the same coaching tree, suggesting a level of schematic coherence that the 2025 staff lacked. Mannion's plan to significantly increase under-center play-action and integrate horizontal passing concepts with the run game represents a genuine philosophical shift, not just a personnel swap. The concern is that head coach Nick Sirianni has struggled with first-time play-callers, and Mannion has no meaningful play-calling experience. He'll also face the challenge of building trust with Jalen Hurts, who will be on his seventh play-caller in seven seasons. On balance, I'd lean toward expecting improvement just because the 2025 offense was so dysfunctional that any coherent schematic vision should represent a step forward. But the "first-time play-caller" risk is real, and if Mannion can't earn Hurts's trust quickly, the schematic improvements may not matter much in practice.
Jeff Haseley: He better be an improvement, or Eagles fans will be supremely disappointed. Patullo, especially late in the season, was a big-time scapegoat for many fans, and for good reason. Philadelphia struggled to establish a rhythm on offense, and it cost them in the postseason.
Meng Song: Sean Mannion is an unknown, having never called plays at the NFL level. That said, it's hard to imagine the offense getting worse than what we saw last year with Patullo. I think Mannion will sink or swim more on whether A.J. Brown is still on the roster and whether the offensive line stays healthier than it was in 2025.
Andy Hicks: "Promising" or "well-regarded" sounds good when describing Mannion, but the reality is that he has zero experience in this role. Philadelphia will be a demanding experience for a rookie play-caller. The knives were out for Patullo very quickly last year, and Mannion — with an aging Barkley and A.J. Brown potentially gone — has a huge task to keep the offense up to expectations.
VERDICT: Yes, Mannion will be an improvement over Patullo.
The Eagles finished 19th in points per game last year (22.3), which is exceedingly hard to do given the talent on the roster. As Jeff noted, Mannion better improve the offense, or the 2027 Eagles could look much different up and down the organization. While it is absolutely fair to point out Mannion's lack of play-calling experience, that is hardly unusual in today's NFL coaching landscape. More than half the league will have new play-callers this year, and many will be calling NFL games for the very first time. For every Ben Johnson or Sean McVay who is a gifted play-caller from the outset, there are three times as many well-pedigreed assistant coaches who simply do not adjust to the rigors of Xs and Os on game day. Mannion comes from a well-regarded coaching tree in Green Bay, and he is stepping into an offense that returns the majority of the players who dominated their way to a Super Bowl just two seasons ago. The real question isn't necessarily whether Mannion will improve on 2025, but how much he will improve the execution and if that means all the skill players are back to being must-haves at their ADPs.
Q: Saquon Barkley had 2,283 yards and 15 touchdowns in 2024, and 1,413 yards and 9 scores in 2025. Where do you see him finishing this year (remember, we are assuming players stay healthy)?
Maurile Tremblay: I think the answer lives somewhere between the two seasons rather than at either extreme. The 2024 season was a historic outlier. Barkley set the NFL's single-season rushing record under Kellen Moore's system, and that kind of peak production typically isn't repeatable even in ideal circumstances. Age, defensive adjustments, and simple regression to the mean all work against a repeat. The 2025 season, on the other hand, was depressed by a dysfunctional offensive scheme rather than by Barkley's own physical decline — yards before contact collapsed from 2.64 to 1.36, his 10-plus-yard runs fell from 46 to 28, and the offense as a whole posted negative rushing EPA. The 2026 scheme change should work in Barkley's favor. Zone-blocking concepts are a natural fit for Barkley's skill set. The integration of under-center play-action should create lighter boxes and more explosive opportunities than Patullo's motion-heavy, shotgun-dominant approach generated. I'd project Barkley somewhere in the range of 1,500 to 1,700 rushing yards with 10 to 13 touchdowns. If the offensive line gels quickly under Kuper and the zone concepts click with Hurts's play-action game, the higher end of that range is realistic.
Jeff Haseley: The ebbs and flows of a career, especially from a veteran running back, can be difficult to predict. A drop-off in production was expected after such a huge 2024 season, but I would not be surprised if he returned to form and exceeded his 2025 numbers. Hall of Fame running backs tend to bounce back after adversity, and while he is getting close to the sunset of his career, he is not there yet. He may have another big year in him before the decline hits.
Meng Song: Much of this will come down to whether the offensive line can stay healthy this season and whether Lane Johnson can still play at an All-Pro level in his age-36 season. This will directly impact whether Barkley can reach double-digit touchdowns again, as he did in 2024. I think his current ADP as the RB10 in the early second round of early best-ball drafts is about right, projecting a back-end PPR RB1 finish. Personally, I'd draft him above Jeremiyah Love, who's being drafted right before him in ADP.
Andy Hicks: At age 29, Barkley has seen his best days. At best, he is somewhere in between the last two years — in reality, he struggles to reach his 2025 numbers. The Eagles have a packed depth chart behind him. Barkley projects best in the mid-200 carry range this season, with the team likely aiming to do more with less. I do think he adds more touchdowns than last year's disappointing total of seven. Borderline fantasy RB1 is a good spot for him.
VERDICT: Barkley will be a Top-10 fantasy back this season.
It may feel analytically lazy to project Barkley to finish between his 2024 and 2025 numbers, but that is the most logical approach. 2024 was a career-best season and one of the great offensive performances in modern history; even Hall of Fame players rarely match that kind of output in consecutive years. Just about everything that could have gone wrong offensively went wrong in 2025, from the coaching issues already discussed to significant injuries throughout the offensive line. I am not saying everything gets fixed this year, but it won't take much for the offense to bounce back. We know Barkley remains committed to greatness, is healthy, and remains the centerpiece of the game plan, regardless of what happens with A.J. Brown.
