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NEW ORLEANS — The sustained dominance of the Eagles offensive line can be traced back to The Three Little Pigs.
Sometime early in Jeff Stoutland’s tenure as an offensive line coach — long before he was considered the NFL’s best position coach — the Eagles brought in a Philadelphia-based elementary school teacher to share some best practices for learning. This is the origin point for the “cold-calling” method that Stoutland uses to keep his 300-pounders on their toes during meetings.
The premise is that asking a question and then calling on a random student keeps the entire audience engaged, whereas asking a question to one person allows others to tune out.
“It was performed in front of me off of ‘The Three Little Pigs’ and the houses they lived in,” Stoutland told The Post. “They would say, ‘Pig No. 3, lived in what house, Coach Stout?’ And I was like ‘Don’t call on me. I don’t want you to call on me!’ ”
Since then, Stoutland, now in his 12th season, starts every offensive line meeting with his “dirty dozen” list of 12 pop-quiz questions.
“Now everyone is on the hook,” Stoutland said. “If you take every question you ask throughout the week and stack it up, and times it by the number of guys in the room, bingo! You just got so much more done.”
For example, if the Eagles call this play to the right side against this defensive alignment, what technique do you use, Jordan Mailata?
“It’s something they use in law schools,” the left tackle Mailata laughed. “Do we look like we’re in law school?”
Behind Saquon Barkley’s 2,000-yard rushing season, the creation of the “Tush Push” as the most unstoppable play in football, and a run to Super Bowl LIX is the best offensive line in the NFL. What else is new in Philadelphia?
Seven Eagles offensive linemen have combined for 26 Pro Bowl selections — by far the most in the league — since 2013 under Stoutland’s watch. That’s a whopping 70 percent of players he has coached for at least 25 career starts, according to NBC Sports Philadelphia.
“I don’t think there is a secret sauce. It’s the culture,” center Cam Jurgens said. “Everybody is so invested in working hard. … you either elevate or you get out. You can get chewed up and spit out, or you can lick your wounds and keep getting better and learn from your mistakes.”
The baton-passing from Tra Thomas to Jason Peters to Mailata at left tackle, from Jon Runyan Jr. to Lane Johnson at right tackle, and most recently from Jason Kelce to Jurgens at center has kept the offensive line in elite hands since the turn of the century. No wonder the Eagles have been to eight of the last 25 NFC Championship games and four Super Bowls.
“They’ve had maybe the best tandem of tackles in football for 25 years,” NFL analyst Brian Baldinger said. “The organization is always thinking ahead to who they might lose, who they might want to take, and who is coming down the pipeline. They are never reactionary. They have missed on guys, but they have developed guys, so ‘If this doesn’t work out, we have this guy here ready to go.’ ”
Different or better?
Are the Eagles doing things differently up front than the rest of the NFL? Or better? Or both?
Stoutland is the only offensive line coach who still has his starters on the field two hours before kickoff logging about 30 extra practice reps on stunts, run fits and blitzes, the well-traveled color commentator Baldinger says. The pregame attention to detail for handling a specific run blitz in Week 3 directly led to Barkley’s go-ahead 65-yard fourth-quarter touchdown run in a win against the Saints.
“I think they do more repetitions than anybody, which makes them better because there is less thinking on a look that you haven’t seen,” Baldinger said. “I could draw up the entire run game in variations on six plays. They have big, powerful people that move bodies. They might still break down or have missed assignments, but you don’t see indecision with the Eagles.”
Nick Gates started 39 games at tackle, guard and center for the rival Giants and Commanders before curiosity led him to the Eagles as a backup.
“We just do it better than everybody else,” Gates said. “From the outside looking in, I always wondered, ‘What sets these guys apart?’ Being inside, it’s what coach Stout expects from us — greatness — every day. He gets on you no matter what, but if you are not giving incredible effort or being lazy, that’s what he says he can’t coach. All coaches say that, but they let you get away with it. With Stout, there is none of that.”
Stoutland has navigated the slipperiest slope in professional coaching, where mega contracts birth egos. He is “relentless” — a self-description that players agree with — but beloved. He is a stickler about many things — but not arbitrary scale numbers that don’t hinder athleticism.
“When Stout first came in, he wasn’t a hard ass,” said Todd Herremans, a guard for the Eagles from 2005-14. “He asked a lot of questions. He leaned on the vets to take the temperature. Nobody wants constant nagging and yelling. I think that his strategy is that you can be as hard as you want on your players as long as they respect you. He earns your respect first, and then he develops you and can talk to you like a father figure.”
Stoutland listened to Herremans’ advice on architectural design and knocked down a wall in his home. Surely, he can listen to what makes players comfortable.
Right guard Mekhi Becton said that’s the difference.
“He takes the time to learn his players and how they accept coaching,” Becton said. “The main thing you have to do as a coach is not coach everybody the same. I’ve dealt with coaches like that all my life.”
Best of the best?
The making and remaking of the offensive line is a testament to the whole operation, starting with general manager Howie Roseman’s eye for value and loopholes. Some organizations (read: Giants) spend a decade pouring countless resources into an offensive-line emphasis without ever getting above-average results.
“I have the best offensive line in the league,” Barkley said. “You could make the argument [for] one of the best offensive lines ever. I stand on that.”
Four starters Sunday against the Chiefs will be different from the lineup in the 2018 Super Bowl and two will be different from the Super Bowl two years ago. Where did they come from?
The mainstay Johnson was drafted No. 4 overall in 2013 and now is one of just 18 remaining active players from that class.
Left guard Landon Dickerson was a college center drafted in the second round in 2021 to play guard.
Jurgens was a 2022 second-round pick who Kelce helped scout and groom to be his successor.
Becton was a first-round draft bust of the Jets who had never played on the interior in his life but instantly became a force under Stoutland.
Mailata was an Australian rugby player identified by Stoutland in the NFL’s International Player Pathway program who had never played organized football before he was a 2018 seventh-round pick.
“You go some places and the backups are not up to snuff,” Herremanns said. “The Eagles are reloading with guys who can replace legendary figures. They are waiting their turn to start here or go get a contract somewhere else.”
It should be unfathomable that the Eagles lost a future Hall of Famer [Kelce] and got better. Except that it happened once before when Peters exited in 2021.
“It’s a lot harder this year than the previous years,” Mailata said, “and I think that was with intent to grow us closer.”
Jurgens and Dickerson were named Pro Bowlers. Mailata was a Pro Bowl snub. All three are 27 years old or younger — proof that Eagles’ offensive line greatness is a flat circle.
“Why the meeting room is so hectic is so that if [starters] go down, guys can come up and play at a high level,” Johnson said. “A lot of different faces here, but how we go about things has always been consistent. They’ve done that long before I got here, and I feel like they’ll continue to do it long after I leave.”
