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I thought this was kinda funny. Back in '20 I joked that Norv was in essence back running our offense since Steichen said he talked to him about every day.
Shane Steichen sat in the booth above the field as a quality control coach in Cleveland in 2013 watching offensive coordinator Norv Turner call the plays. The Browns were heavy underdogs in a Week 14 game against the New England Patriots, yet on that December afternoon, Turner’s offense tallied its most yards of the season. Jason Campbell threw three touchdown passes. If not for two Patriots scores in the final 61 seconds, that day would have been remembered as a remarkable upset.
Steichen recalls the game for one specific reason that still resonates a decade later as the Eagles’ offensive coordinator.
“He might have looked at his call sheet three or four times, and I was like, ‘This is unbelievable,’” Steichen said of Turner.
“No question,” Turner confirmed in an interview with The Athletic.
Turner, who was a head coach for three NFL teams and an offensive coordinator for seven, is Steichen’s biggest influencer as a play caller. He helped Steichen break into the NFL in 2011. Steichen has since ascended the coaching ranks and spent seven years on the Chargers’ offensive staff before Eagles coach Nick Sirianni handed him the play-calling duties in the middle of the 2021 season.
“I thought Norv just had an unbelievable feel for the game, calling the game, when to call shots,” Steichen said. “He always said, ‘Shoot, the best games I’ve ever called is when I really am not looking down at the call sheet.’”
Norv Turner was a head coach for three NFL teams and an offensive coordinator for seven. (Doug Pensinger / Getty Images)
That sentiment actually came from a conversation with John Madden in 1999 when Turner coached Washington. Madden met with Turner before the game to discuss the play calling for a team that finished the year No. 2 in scoring offense. The famed broadcaster and Super Bowl-winning coach looked at Turner’s play sheet and asked how Turner found everything on it. Turner shared that if he has to look at the sheet throughout the game, “We’re probably not doing very good.”
“You have a pretty good idea what you have and what you like and what you practice and what you want to do,” Turner said. “So a lot of times — and that’s what Shane talks about — a lot times you don’t look at your play call. You know what you want to run and it’s in your mind and you don’t have to read it off a card. It’s something that you’ve gone through so many times. It’s branded in your brain and you just call it.”
This has been a guiding principle for Steichen, who calls the plays for an offense ranked No. 3 in DVOA (defense-adjusted value over average), No. 3 in scoring, No. 3 in yards, No. 4 in third-down percentage and No. 3 in red zone percentage. His work as a play caller hasn’t just helped the Eagles to the No. 1 seed, it’s also made Steichen a popular head-coaching candidate. He’s already interviewed for jobs with Houston, Indianapolis and Carolina.
“I’ve had a few drives for sure where we’ve been rolling, but I’ll look down at (the play sheet) every once in a while,” Steichen said after the Eagles’ 48-22 win over the Giants in Week 14. “But when it’s going good, yeah, you’re usually not looking at it.”
With the Eagles set to play the Giants in the NFC divisional round, Steichen will call plays against a defense he’s seen twice in the past month. That Week 14 meeting was Philadelphia’s highest-scoring output of the season. Steichen’s offense scored a touchdown on the first three drives of the game. Jalen Hurts went 9-for-10 on the opening drive and completed passes to seven different players. Turner watched that game and saw it as an example of one of the discussion points they had about play calling.
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“The key to play calling is as you go through this, trying to match up your best plays, your best people against their worst people or the worst looks they have,” Turner said. “So you do the things you do best against a team that doesn’t defend them very well. And the best example, I think, was their first game in New York. … It’s a matter of they spread New York out, and New York struggles with that — they had a hell of a start.”
When Steichen described what makes a good play caller, the first characteristic he identified is a “feel, a rhythm of the game.” There are technical aspects, such as knowing tendencies based on down. That allows the play caller to be “aggressive and attacking,” which Steichen explained as a hallmark of a good play caller. But he often describes feel and rhythm, and it’s that “feel” that most resonated with him about Turner.
“I think these guys that get zeroed in and locked in and say, ‘This is what we’re going to do this week,’ I think you can be too rigid,” Turner said. “I think you have to have a good plan but then you have to have flexibility. You know the guy you want to take a shot at. You know the guy you know that you think you can get a reverse on, where you want to run the reverse. … During the week, Friday, Saturday, you kind of play the game in your mind over and over and over again. I used to, before the game, go walk the field, knew where I wanted to call certain things. … And you go in with the mindset that you need to be aggressive, particularly early in the game.”
With Turner and Steichen, matchups remain front of mind. The Eagles had a critical touchdown drive against Dallas in Week 6 when they ran the ball on 10 of 13 plays. They had that pass-heavy drive in the first meeting against the Giants. There’s a misconception that an offense must achieve balance throughout the game, and that there should be a mix of run and pass during a drive. Rather, they’re going to try to exploit the advantageous matchups.
Steichen returned to that same word — ”feel” — when explaining why he’d be compelled to keep running or keep passing. He must have a feel for the game, know the situation and know what’s working.
Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that when third-string quarterback Ian Book discussed Steichen’s play calling, he found the same word Turner and Steichen used as if it was the perfect third-down call.
“The best word to describe it is ‘feel,’” Book said independently of the description from Turner and Steichen. “You can’t go too into detail because it’s hard to explain, but right timing, or plays we need to give our offense juice and understand what we’re good at it.”
Book also appreciates the way Steichen incorporates plays at precise moments. That’s one way Book witnesses Steichen developing his feel for a game. Steichen also finds ways to redress staple plays, allowing the Eagles to run different variations from the same look. One example was DeVonta Smith’s touchdown catch in the first game against the Cowboys on a play when Smith is typically used to pick a defender.
“I think it’s endless, honestly,” Steichen said. “You can do so many different things with a certain play to dress it up. We go up there and look at different ways to do that every single week, and that’s what we have to do as coaches to keep running the plays that we’re good at and keep dressing them up.”
Steichen first met Turner when he played quarterback at UNLV with Turner’s son, Scott. Steichen’s first NFL opportunity came when Turner offered him a job on the Chargers’ defensive staff while he was the offensive assistant at Louisville in 2010. It lasted two years before Steichen followed Turner to Cleveland and shifted to offense, but Turner believes that time on defense helped Steichen see the game through a different lens and recognize matchups.
Shane Steichen began his NFL coaching career as a defensive assistant for the Chargers. (Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)
Steichen said he’s grown most as a play caller with his understanding of situational football — what to call from a certain down and distance, the flow of the game and what to do to center the offense if it’s struggling.
“The more you play, the more you see,” Steichen said. “The more you call games, the more you see and the more you have a feel for it and when to call things at certain points in the game.”
Sirianni is a stickler for situational football. It’s an exhaustive emphasis. In meetings, he’ll use the Socratic method to prepare his play caller. Sirianni will stop the tape and ask: “Hey, there are 14 seconds left. We got no timeouts. The ball is here. What’s your call?”
When Sirianni turned play-calling duties over to Steichen last season, the intent was for Sirianni to take a more global view, focus on game situations and confer with different coaches. Sirianni distinguished between play design and play calling, and the head coach still oversees the game plan. But he trusted Steichen’s offensive mind and said they think similarly. Steichen actually came to Philadelphia with more play-calling experience than Sirianni.
“It helps me manage the game better in my opinion, and it helps me be involved with the defense,” Sirianni said. “I don’t want to look down at my call sheet — I’m going through it and I’m doing that at times, but I want to make sure I’m there with the defense and saying whatever I need to (defensive coordinator) Jonathan (Gannon) or the players, and same thing with special teams. …
“That’s my job as the head coach is to manage the game. Everybody does it a little bit differently, I get it, and what works best for us is that I do it this way.”
Steichen doesn’t have a decade calling plays, but he’s now done it with multiple starting quarterbacks with different styles, in different offensive systems and against almost every defensive scheme. That’s given the 37-year-old enough insight to recognize what he didn’t appreciate when he first called plays in the NFL.
“It’s not always going to be perfect,” said Steichen, who referred to the Week 17 loss to New Orleans as the worst game he’s called. “But bouncing back from those games that aren’t always going to be perfect, especially when you are struggling, trying to find something to get it going, and then getting out of that rut. Then, really just looking at yourself. Looking at yourself in the mirror and going back and saying, ‘What could I have done better as a play caller in those situations?’ Then go forward from there and make the corrections.”
Turner emphasized a line similar to one that was reinforced to Sirianni by his college coach, Larry Kehres. “It’s about players, not about plays.” Turner jotted down the numbers of key players on his sheet as a reminder between drives to appropriately incorporate them.
Steichen’s personnel has changed over time — Philip Rivers was in his second decade in the NFL when Steichen started calling plays for him in Los Angeles, Justin Herbert was a rookie in 2020 and Hurts was in Year 2 when he took over in Philadelphia — but Turner takes pride in seeing carryovers from the play-calling concepts he taught Steichen. And when Steichen doesn’t need to glance at his sheet as the offense accumulates points, it’s a nod to Turner’s influence.
“When he got the opportunity (with the Chargers), it was clear that he had a good feel,” Turner said. “You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. You can figure out what the guy does best and let him do it.”
(Top photo of Shane Steichen: Bill Streicher / USA Today)
Eagles’ Shane Steichen developed a ‘feel for the game’ from watching mentor Norv Turner
Shane Steichen sat in the booth above the field as a quality control coach in Cleveland in 2013 watching offensive coordinator Norv Turner call the plays. The Browns were heavy underdogs in a Week 14 game against the New England Patriots, yet on that December afternoon, Turner’s offense tallied its most yards of the season. Jason Campbell threw three touchdown passes. If not for two Patriots scores in the final 61 seconds, that day would have been remembered as a remarkable upset.
Steichen recalls the game for one specific reason that still resonates a decade later as the Eagles’ offensive coordinator.
“He might have looked at his call sheet three or four times, and I was like, ‘This is unbelievable,’” Steichen said of Turner.
“No question,” Turner confirmed in an interview with The Athletic.
Turner, who was a head coach for three NFL teams and an offensive coordinator for seven, is Steichen’s biggest influencer as a play caller. He helped Steichen break into the NFL in 2011. Steichen has since ascended the coaching ranks and spent seven years on the Chargers’ offensive staff before Eagles coach Nick Sirianni handed him the play-calling duties in the middle of the 2021 season.
“I thought Norv just had an unbelievable feel for the game, calling the game, when to call shots,” Steichen said. “He always said, ‘Shoot, the best games I’ve ever called is when I really am not looking down at the call sheet.’”
Norv Turner was a head coach for three NFL teams and an offensive coordinator for seven. (Doug Pensinger / Getty Images)
That sentiment actually came from a conversation with John Madden in 1999 when Turner coached Washington. Madden met with Turner before the game to discuss the play calling for a team that finished the year No. 2 in scoring offense. The famed broadcaster and Super Bowl-winning coach looked at Turner’s play sheet and asked how Turner found everything on it. Turner shared that if he has to look at the sheet throughout the game, “We’re probably not doing very good.”
“You have a pretty good idea what you have and what you like and what you practice and what you want to do,” Turner said. “So a lot of times — and that’s what Shane talks about — a lot times you don’t look at your play call. You know what you want to run and it’s in your mind and you don’t have to read it off a card. It’s something that you’ve gone through so many times. It’s branded in your brain and you just call it.”
This has been a guiding principle for Steichen, who calls the plays for an offense ranked No. 3 in DVOA (defense-adjusted value over average), No. 3 in scoring, No. 3 in yards, No. 4 in third-down percentage and No. 3 in red zone percentage. His work as a play caller hasn’t just helped the Eagles to the No. 1 seed, it’s also made Steichen a popular head-coaching candidate. He’s already interviewed for jobs with Houston, Indianapolis and Carolina.
“I’ve had a few drives for sure where we’ve been rolling, but I’ll look down at (the play sheet) every once in a while,” Steichen said after the Eagles’ 48-22 win over the Giants in Week 14. “But when it’s going good, yeah, you’re usually not looking at it.”
With the Eagles set to play the Giants in the NFC divisional round, Steichen will call plays against a defense he’s seen twice in the past month. That Week 14 meeting was Philadelphia’s highest-scoring output of the season. Steichen’s offense scored a touchdown on the first three drives of the game. Jalen Hurts went 9-for-10 on the opening drive and completed passes to seven different players. Turner watched that game and saw it as an example of one of the discussion points they had about play calling.
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GO DEEPER
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“The key to play calling is as you go through this, trying to match up your best plays, your best people against their worst people or the worst looks they have,” Turner said. “So you do the things you do best against a team that doesn’t defend them very well. And the best example, I think, was their first game in New York. … It’s a matter of they spread New York out, and New York struggles with that — they had a hell of a start.”
When Steichen described what makes a good play caller, the first characteristic he identified is a “feel, a rhythm of the game.” There are technical aspects, such as knowing tendencies based on down. That allows the play caller to be “aggressive and attacking,” which Steichen explained as a hallmark of a good play caller. But he often describes feel and rhythm, and it’s that “feel” that most resonated with him about Turner.
“I think these guys that get zeroed in and locked in and say, ‘This is what we’re going to do this week,’ I think you can be too rigid,” Turner said. “I think you have to have a good plan but then you have to have flexibility. You know the guy you want to take a shot at. You know the guy you know that you think you can get a reverse on, where you want to run the reverse. … During the week, Friday, Saturday, you kind of play the game in your mind over and over and over again. I used to, before the game, go walk the field, knew where I wanted to call certain things. … And you go in with the mindset that you need to be aggressive, particularly early in the game.”
With Turner and Steichen, matchups remain front of mind. The Eagles had a critical touchdown drive against Dallas in Week 6 when they ran the ball on 10 of 13 plays. They had that pass-heavy drive in the first meeting against the Giants. There’s a misconception that an offense must achieve balance throughout the game, and that there should be a mix of run and pass during a drive. Rather, they’re going to try to exploit the advantageous matchups.
Steichen returned to that same word — ”feel” — when explaining why he’d be compelled to keep running or keep passing. He must have a feel for the game, know the situation and know what’s working.
Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that when third-string quarterback Ian Book discussed Steichen’s play calling, he found the same word Turner and Steichen used as if it was the perfect third-down call.
“The best word to describe it is ‘feel,’” Book said independently of the description from Turner and Steichen. “You can’t go too into detail because it’s hard to explain, but right timing, or plays we need to give our offense juice and understand what we’re good at it.”
Book also appreciates the way Steichen incorporates plays at precise moments. That’s one way Book witnesses Steichen developing his feel for a game. Steichen also finds ways to redress staple plays, allowing the Eagles to run different variations from the same look. One example was DeVonta Smith’s touchdown catch in the first game against the Cowboys on a play when Smith is typically used to pick a defender.
“I think it’s endless, honestly,” Steichen said. “You can do so many different things with a certain play to dress it up. We go up there and look at different ways to do that every single week, and that’s what we have to do as coaches to keep running the plays that we’re good at and keep dressing them up.”
Steichen first met Turner when he played quarterback at UNLV with Turner’s son, Scott. Steichen’s first NFL opportunity came when Turner offered him a job on the Chargers’ defensive staff while he was the offensive assistant at Louisville in 2010. It lasted two years before Steichen followed Turner to Cleveland and shifted to offense, but Turner believes that time on defense helped Steichen see the game through a different lens and recognize matchups.
Shane Steichen began his NFL coaching career as a defensive assistant for the Chargers. (Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)
Steichen said he’s grown most as a play caller with his understanding of situational football — what to call from a certain down and distance, the flow of the game and what to do to center the offense if it’s struggling.
“The more you play, the more you see,” Steichen said. “The more you call games, the more you see and the more you have a feel for it and when to call things at certain points in the game.”
Sirianni is a stickler for situational football. It’s an exhaustive emphasis. In meetings, he’ll use the Socratic method to prepare his play caller. Sirianni will stop the tape and ask: “Hey, there are 14 seconds left. We got no timeouts. The ball is here. What’s your call?”
When Sirianni turned play-calling duties over to Steichen last season, the intent was for Sirianni to take a more global view, focus on game situations and confer with different coaches. Sirianni distinguished between play design and play calling, and the head coach still oversees the game plan. But he trusted Steichen’s offensive mind and said they think similarly. Steichen actually came to Philadelphia with more play-calling experience than Sirianni.
“It helps me manage the game better in my opinion, and it helps me be involved with the defense,” Sirianni said. “I don’t want to look down at my call sheet — I’m going through it and I’m doing that at times, but I want to make sure I’m there with the defense and saying whatever I need to (defensive coordinator) Jonathan (Gannon) or the players, and same thing with special teams. …
“That’s my job as the head coach is to manage the game. Everybody does it a little bit differently, I get it, and what works best for us is that I do it this way.”
Steichen doesn’t have a decade calling plays, but he’s now done it with multiple starting quarterbacks with different styles, in different offensive systems and against almost every defensive scheme. That’s given the 37-year-old enough insight to recognize what he didn’t appreciate when he first called plays in the NFL.
“It’s not always going to be perfect,” said Steichen, who referred to the Week 17 loss to New Orleans as the worst game he’s called. “But bouncing back from those games that aren’t always going to be perfect, especially when you are struggling, trying to find something to get it going, and then getting out of that rut. Then, really just looking at yourself. Looking at yourself in the mirror and going back and saying, ‘What could I have done better as a play caller in those situations?’ Then go forward from there and make the corrections.”
Turner emphasized a line similar to one that was reinforced to Sirianni by his college coach, Larry Kehres. “It’s about players, not about plays.” Turner jotted down the numbers of key players on his sheet as a reminder between drives to appropriately incorporate them.
Steichen’s personnel has changed over time — Philip Rivers was in his second decade in the NFL when Steichen started calling plays for him in Los Angeles, Justin Herbert was a rookie in 2020 and Hurts was in Year 2 when he took over in Philadelphia — but Turner takes pride in seeing carryovers from the play-calling concepts he taught Steichen. And when Steichen doesn’t need to glance at his sheet as the offense accumulates points, it’s a nod to Turner’s influence.
“When he got the opportunity (with the Chargers), it was clear that he had a good feel,” Turner said. “You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. You can figure out what the guy does best and let him do it.”
(Top photo of Shane Steichen: Bill Streicher / USA Today)