Jeff Lurie said on Monday that he didn’t care if his next head coach comes from the offensive or defensive side of the ball.
We all rolled our eyes.
Because Lurie always talks about the importance of being elite on offense.
Then on Tuesday, two of the first names we heard brought up in the coaching search were defensive coordinators. The Eagles reportedly requested to interview 49ers DC Robert Saleh and Buccaneers GM Todd Bowles.
So maybe Lurie wasn’t lying after all.
But would the Eagles really hire a defensive-minded coach to replace Doug Pederson?
Well, probably not. It’s still far more likely that the Eagles end up hiring a coach from the offensive side of the ball, but the Eagles are clearly not ruling out some of the top defensive candidates. One of the points Lurie made on Monday in his 42-minute press conference was that hiring a defensive-minded head coach does not preclude a team from having an elite offense.
“I think there's a couple ways to skin that cat,” Lurie said on Tuesday. “You can hire somebody really steeped in offense or you've seen great offenses coached by head coaches coming from the defensive side. I don't think there's any predilection for one over the other, but I do think somebody that is constantly curious of where the league is headed and what you need to do to have really good units and again, without a really good elite offense, I tend to err on that side. But not that side of the ball for head coach. Doesn't matter.”
There are plenty of examples in the NFL this season of a “defensive” coach heading up a team with an elite offense.
- The Bills head coach is former Eagles DC Sean McDermott and they have an MVP candidate quarterback and the No. 2 offense in the NFL.
- The Ravens’ head coach is a former special teams and defensive coach in John Harbaugh and they have a former MVP quarterback and the seventh-best offense in the NFL.
- The Titans’ head coach is former DC and former NFL linebacker Mike Vrabel and they were fourth in the NFL in points scored and second in total yards.
Three prominent examples of playoff teams who have defensive-leaning head coaches and top-10 offenses. So it can work. And two of those three head coach examples coached in Philadelphia before.
Ultimately, the Eagles need to find some of the same characteristics they had in Pederson. They need their next coach to be a leader. You can argue that those leadership characteristics are more important than hiring a coach who is a schematic genius. (The differences with Pederson and Lurie were in their plans of how to attack the future.)
So maybe the next head coach could be a defensive-minded guy, as long as he checks other boxes.
It’s worth noting that the Eagles did interview defensive candidates for the head coaching position in 2016 before hiring Pederson but it seemed like the most serious candidates were offensive coaches. You’d have to go back to 2013 when they nearly hired Gus Bradley to find an example of when the Eagles really considered hiring a defensive coach.
Lurie has hired four coaches in his time as owner and the last three have been offensive. Ray Rhodes, hired in 1995, was the last defensive head coach the Eagles hired. Since then, they’ve hired Andy Reid, Chip Kelly and Pederson.
Because as Lurie is never shy to say: Offense is king.
“I think you all know me – I put a heavy emphasis on wanting to have an elite offense, and I feel like defense has variables, variations throughout the year,” Lurie said Monday. “But if you want to be a dominant team, you need to be a top offensive unit.”
It’s not impossible to have a great offense without an offensive head coach but there’s an extra step. As the Eagles interview Saleh, Bowles and possible other defensive coaches, they’re going to want to know their plan for the offensive coordinator position. If the head coach isn’t the play caller, then that OC job is nearly as important.
It has been reported by NFL Network’s Mike Silver that Saleh’s top choice for an OC position is his colleague from San Francisco, Mike LaFleur. LaFleur is the younger brother of Packers head coach Matt LaFleur and is the 49ers passing game coordinator. So a plan like that might work. You find your head coach in Saleh and trust that a Kyle Shanahan disciple like LaFleur is the answer as the offensive coordinator.
Of course the downside of a setup like this is that top-tier offensive coordinators are poached more often for head coaching jobs than top-tier defensive coordinators. Heck, it’s about to happen to Vrabel in Tennessee for the second time in a few years. Matt LaFleur was his OC in 2018 but was hired by the Packers after that season. And two years later, it looks increasingly likely that LaFleur’s replacement, Arthur Smith, is going to get a head coaching job this offseason.
The Eagles fired Pederson a week after the season ended, so they’re getting a late start on this coaching search. Despite that late start, they normally like to cast a wide net. It’s probably not likely they’ll end up hiring a defensive coach, but Lurie is at least keeping that possibility open.
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