Sixteen years into his NFL career, Andy Dalton has seen just about everything. But this training camp — his first with the Eagles — is unlike any Dalton has participated in before.
Dalton, 38, is competing with incumbent Tanner McKee to back up Jalen Hurts. That isn’t a new phenomenon for Dalton. He hasn’t been a full-time starter since 2019, his ninth and final year with the Cincinnati Bengals, the team that drafted him 35th overall in 2011.
What is unfamiliar, however, is that Dalton doesn’t know when it’s his turn to take reps with the second-string offense in team drills. Neither does McKee. Both quarterbacks wait for orders from their coaches before one or the other joins the huddle.
At first, Dalton had questions about how they would split reps. Now, he’s accepted the surprise element of their current situation, which is reminiscent of game days for the backup quarterback.
“I was joking with Tanner, I was like, ‘This is just real life right here,’” Dalton said Tuesday. “‘You don’t know when you’re going to be going in.’”
It’s been an offseason of surprises for Dalton, who was traded to the Eagles after spending the last three seasons with the Carolina Panthers. He had never been traded before. He only had experience choosing to sign with teams in free agency, including the Dallas Cowboys (2020), Chicago Bears (2021), New Orleans Saints (2022), and Panthers.
Still, Dalton said he is “excited” to be in Philadelphia and to play in the new Sean Mannion-led offense. But the scheme isn’t entirely new to him. Dalton has experience in similar offenses that were also offshoots of the Kyle Shanahan/Sean McVay coaching tree, namely Zac Taylor’s first year with the Bengals in 2019 and the past two seasons with Dave Canales and the Panthers.
There are some similarities among the three systems. Dalton pointed out their shared emphasis on quick decision-making and pure-progression passing. He also noted that Mannion’s offense requires its quarterbacks to use a cadence that Dalton has learned in the past.
“Everybody’s got their own little variation of it,” Dalton said of the broader offensive scheme. “But for me, I feel very comfortable in this offense.”
The trade may have come as a surprise to Dalton, but McKee expressed an understanding of Howie Roseman’s rationale behind the move.
Yes, McKee was the primary backup last season, a role that was hardly threatened in camp by Dorian Thompson-Robinson (who is now playing in the UFL) or Kyle McCord (who is in camp with the Green Bay Packers). McKee has generally fared well in his handful of preseason and regular-season outings over the last two years, save for his lone start in 2025 — a 24-17 loss to the Washington Commanders in Week 18 — in which he primarily played with backups.
However, McKee acknowledged Roseman’s objective to strengthen the roster every season.
“I don’t think you can be surprised whenever they bring in somebody or there’s competition, because in the NFL, there’s always going to be competition,” McKee said Tuesday. “They’re trying to improve the roster every year, and so anybody that they can bring in to make you compete or make you earn your spot, that’s definitely what everybody wants.
“And for a player, it’s great. It is great to have somebody to push you and to make you better. The stakes in practice are a little bit higher, and so it makes it fun.”
McKee is embracing Dalton’s presence, especially his knowledge of the offense. In practice on Tuesday, for example, the 26-year-old quarterback was on the field for a play that broke down. Later on, McKee said he went to Dalton for insight on how he would’ve read the play given the defensive coverage.
“It is great having that overall wisdom, I guess you could say, of just the experience that he’s had to talk through things,” McKee said. “It really does make each other better, and that’s exactly what everybody wants when we have competition, is to make the Eagles organization better.”
The lessons McKee has learned aren’t limited to firsthand experiences on the field. Because he is splitting second-string reps, unlike last year’s training camp, McKee is forced to take more mental reps from the sideline while Dalton is on the field.
McKee likened that experience to practices during the season, when Hurts is commanding the majority of the snaps. Those mental reps can be valuable, too, he explained.
“Sometimes, you learn from mistakes, but a lot of times you have to learn from mistakes of other people as well,” McKee said. “And so paying attention on the sideline, watching film, all those things are just a little bit more important when you’re not getting as many.”
The two depth quarterbacks will soon take their competition to the next level when preseason begins, as the Eagles open their exhibition slate against the Baltimore Ravens on Aug. 15.
Both players will make their cases for the backup role. Dalton may not have the starting job he once held down at the outset of his career, but he has approached his role as a backup with the same level of preparation and attention to detail.
Most importantly, he hasn’t lost his love for the game and all of the surprises that come with it.
“There’s nothing else like this,” Dalton said. “So I’m trying to soak it all in as much as I can. Trying to get the most out of the game because obviously once you’re done, you’re done.”
