Eagles 2023-2024 Season

[gmwannabe]

AND I hope Brian Johnson was watching the game today. lean on the o line and run the ball. Take the ball out of your QB's hands, especially when he is hurting. But then again the D is going to have to show up. Opportunity is now knocking.
gm

[bkeich]

Well you would think Nick's job security would be better than McCarthy's anyway.

I doubt McCarthy makes it to Tuesday as the Head Coach. In fact, I almost expected him to be fired while still on the field

[zambonir]

A time machine to fire him last year is what Jerry probably wanted.

[bkox]

From quarterback disconnect to locker room tensions: How Nick Sirianni's Eagles...

[Patchmk88]

I’d get rid of everybody on the coaching staff and everybody on defense other than our interior lineman.

[Patchmk88]

Team has quit.

[bkeich]

Stop throwing the ball to Watkins. I think we are averaging 1yd/target to him. Where is Z? He isn’t great, but he isn’t this awful. Honestly I would rather use Gainwell as a 3rd WR than Watkins.

[bkeich]

It is fitting that the final dagger in the season is Bradberry missing another tackle and giving up 50 yards after catch. He has been one of the worst CB I have ever seen this year. Hopefully he will be released before the snow stops.

[allentown]

Horrible game.

[HopeSpringsEternal]

Horrible game

… but not totally unexpected. They’ve been playing this way for two months

[bkeich]

Kelce with tears in his eyes. I think he has known for awhile that this year was it. If so, been a true pleasure watching him play.

Graham and Cox also almost certainly done.

I hope they do bring back Swift. Not his fault that they wouldn’t give him the ball.

Dean is the only LB worth keeping.

Slay and Blankenship are keepers. Byard a tough call, he was pretty bad. Whatever the dead money Bradbury brings is money well spent. Ricks is not worth retaining.

[MichaelJackSchmidt]

They should get rid of Howie but I think he's here for a long time. At a minimum, they need some coaches who can teach the players how to tackle. I want both coordinators to be fired.

[bkox]

Eagles legend Jason Kelce to retire after Hall of Fame career, per report

[zambonir]

The off-season won't be boring. You could see (from that ESPN article and the other one from the Inquirer) that some in that building (likely the coaches and front office trying to justify their own issues) are starting to complain about Hurts too.

Hurts also talked about what a pleasure it was (with Steichen) to have the same OC for two years in a row for the first time ever in his career (not that it was a long career though I believe he never did in colllege either). Will they keep, demote or fire Johnson? How much of it is on Sirrianni (tactically)? I don't think there's any chance Desai or Patricia stick around in any role.

If they actually did get rid of Howie A) it probably wouldn't be someone better and B) the Luries (plural) would just be making even more decisions (which is also one of the reasons for A). He gets one or two more kicks at the can (depending whether he's keeping Nick, if he fires him this should be the last one).

[zambonir]

David Murphy:

The Eagles’ problems are much bigger than Nick Sirianni. How can they not be...

The questions about Nick Sirianni’s future are mostly irrelevant at this point. This was not a referendum on a head coach alone. It was a referendum on an organization. Any time a roster no-shows this completely, and checks out this swiftly, and shows this little ability, if not inclination, to overcome obstacles, the first place you must look is the roster itself. At the philosophy that governed its construction. At the environment in which it operates. At the people in charge of putting that all together.

Those are the places you must look.

Once you do, you’ll start to see similarities between the wreckage of this Eagles season and the ones that claimed the jobs of the last three head coaches. The Dream Team. The Chip Kelly team that needed a pep talk from Jeffrey Lurie in New England. Doug Pederson’s last couple of seasons. The vibes are the same. The issues are the same. The head-scratching dysfunction is the same.

[schillingfan]

I thought A.J Btown was faking the injury, since he fumbled and the tackle didn’t look bad. Jalen would never fake an injury, he seems to always play hurt.

Not sure what Murphy’s point is. The team won the Super Bowl and went to the Super Bowl recently. You can’t fire Laurie and last year everyone thought Howienwas a geniius. Obviously Howie’s off-season was terrible, but the previous ear was remarkable. Much harder when you have to pay the quarterback.

You either fire Siarianni or bring in seasoned coordinators.

I heard lots of complaints on WIP about Howie and Laurie having too much control over game plans and who to play. If true Laurie needs to look in the mirror and bring in Belichek or Carrol and promise he and Howie will butt out of coaching.

[zambonir]

Obviously Lurie and Roseman have had a lot of success, and in fact, Lurie is probably about as good an owner as there is in sports (certainly in Philly, at least until Middleton figured it out). But he definitely became more meddlesome post-Kelly.

If they do fire Sirianni and want to hire a proven NFL coach (for the first time ever) their management style would have to change.

If they don't fire him, bringing in seasoned coordinators won't necessarily fix everything if everyone isn't on the same page. That's where you'd just be repeating the mistakes of the Pederson era and possibly just wasting another year (or two - is it actually reasonable to make the benchmark for next season Super Bowl or bust now?)

The defensive failing was equally the coaches and roster (i.e. Howie). The offense is probably easier to reboot. I don't think it's guaranteed Johnson is gone (and that's where the issue of how much say Jalen gets also comes in, which is also a repeat of the Pederson era).

Of course Reich is also out there which could be a situation where everybody's happy (the kind of coach the front office would want to bring in who also happens to be Sirianni's pal).

Everyone thought Sirianni was a genius too. And that Lanning was terrible. And that Hurts was going to be a five-time MVP. There is plenty of blame to go around. But as always, in every sport, it starts at the top. The good and the bad.

Kind of crazy that it isn't just Lurie who never hired a proven NFL head coach. Khayat, Williams, McCormack, Vermeil, Ryan, Kotite and Rhodes were all rookies. Marion Campbell, one of the biggest failures, was the only one who'd done it before post- Kuharich.

[allentown]

Yes, it starts at the top. Lurie has been very impressed by inexperienced HC candidates who are intelligent and come with a well-thought-out novel strategy to rejuvenate his team. They have been guys with A PLAN. They've been guys with a list of youngish guys they want on their coaching staff. They've been guys who were able to sell themselves in a meeting and who must have seemed totally committed to making their vision of The Plan reality. They also were very stubborn. They all started well. The Plan and THEIR STAFF were as good as they advertised -- at least in the beginning.

That success caused the poaching of the initial coaching staff and a lot of effort around the league to figure out how to defeat The Plan. Within less than three years the strategy to counter THE PLAN was a success. One team found a chink, then every team exploited it. The HC's stubbornness and his follow-on staff not being as competent or as in-synch as the original staff prevented meaningful counter-adjustments, as in Siriani's quote this year that the offense would exe the same with only better execution and minor tweaks.

Howie has been a jealous GM who has always sought greater football authority and who had his own PLAN (emphasize only both lines and offensive skill positions other than RB). The SB seems to have led both Lurie and Howie to meddle too much. Who knows how much control the HC had over selection of his follow-on staff? A lot of talk about Lurie being allowed to direct draft picks. The years the team succeeded they were able to afford an extra star, because the starting QB was on a rookie contract. Dallas and SF have had the same advantage. Fortunes seemed to change with the big contracts to Wentz and Hurts. The budget got tighter, but both young QBs were allowed to stick their thumbs in too many pies at too young an age, before they had fully mastered their craft. Both young QBs also extremely stubborn.

The Eagles are a strange case of a team where almost all their coaches have a winning record with the team and then dramatically collapse. I won't state that the above are the reasons, but they strike me as plausible. I guess I should add that most of the coaches had a significant character/personality flaw which came to the fore when things went south.

I think Sirianni and most of his staff need to be gone and that this may well happen. Howie also should be gone, but this won't happen. The oftense and defense need to change by more than minor tweaks. That won't happen if Sirianni stays.

I don't want Sirianni to be replaced by an ancient mariner and doubt this will happen, unless Howie is jettisoned.

[phillychuck]

I strongly disagree about Roseman. He is one of the top GMs in the league in terms of talent acquisition strategy, trade execution, cap management, and follow through. He's also just about as good as anyone on talent evaluation.

I think you make a very good point that the coaching hires have all been pretty good as long as they have been able to retain their major staff members (OC, DC, etc.). Andy seems to have now figured out how to get around losing coordinators (Mahomes is the answer?) in KC. If that's the case, maybe the Eagles' model is to hire a new guy every three years or so and move on. Seems weird, but who knows?

[zambonir]

I think Howie and Lurie are so philosophically inseparable (since the former's return, obviously) that a new GM would just not be an improvement, regardless of the fact that Howie has minuses as well as pluses. The next Joe Banner isn't walking through that door, the last thing we probably want is for a veteran head coach to be given roster power, and anything else just means Lurie (and probably, increasingly, his son) is running things.

They deserve a ton of credit for what they are good at and what they have achieved, but there's also been some luck (only part of it being "residue of design" type luck) and best-case scenarios that make them think they are smarter than they actually are. Wentz was a disaster given how much effort and research and draft capital went in to getting him but they won a Super Bowl with Foles and got back to it with Hurts so that's great - but it's not gonna go like that every time. And drafting Hurts looks genius now but it did actually destroy the Pederson/Wentz era and easily could have gone worse had he not worked out so spectacularly so fast (and we'll see how it goes from here).

I do think it would be entertaining to see them hire Belichick or Carroll or see where the dice land. But I think they would be more likely to hire Vrabel or Harbaugh (the latter of whom would also be very entertaining). If they don't actually make their move fast Nick is probably staying though, since all those guys will be gone.