Eagles in the Midst of Jerry Jones-esque Head Coaching Search

The Philadelphia Eagles‘ head-coaching search isn’t going so well.

Over the weekend, the Eagles’ search for their next head-coach took a scary twist. Former Chicago Bears’ offensive coordinator Adam Gase, who was believed to be number one on the Eagles’ ‘list’ of head-coaching candidates, accepted a position to become the Miami Dolphins’ head-coach. In addition to that, ESPN’s Adam Caplan reported that Hue Jackson, Sean McDermott and Dirk Koetter, weren’t even on the team’s list.

In essence, the search became comical this weekend.

Kansas City Chiefs’ offensive coordinator Doug Pederson became the third non-internal candidate to interview for the job Sunday, if you really consider someone who previously played and coached for the team non-internal.

Duce Staley, who has never been more than a running-back’s coach, was the first one to interview, though many believe the interview was done just to satisfy the Rooney rule, which requires each team to interview on minority candidate. Given that they don’t appear likely to interview another African-American candidate, it’s hard not to entirely dismiss his candidacy as the Eagles essentially cheating the system.

Pat Shurmur interviewed for the job a week ago today, and by simply existing and garnering no other head-coaching interviews, he may be towards the top of the team’s list.

New York Giants’ offensive coordinator Ben McAdoo interviewed for the job as well, with his former boss Tom Coughlin reportedly expected to interview for the position today. In this case, it feels like McAdoo’s candidacy is a few years too early and Coughlin’s is probably years too late.

But from the outside, those two candidates, or some combination of them, may be the Eagles’ best option at this point. Pederson, a third-year offensive coordinator with very limited overall coaching experience, feels like the favorite for the job.

It’s sad the Eagles are at this point. It feels like the organization isn’t searching for Andy Reid or a younger version of Tom Coughlin. It feels like they are searching for a less qualified version of Dallas Cowboys’ head-coach Jason Garrett.

Garrett is well-respect by players around the league and prior to becoming the team’s head-coach, he was considered a pretty good young offensive mind. However, since becoming the Cowboys’ head-coach, it’s essentially believed that he’s been muzzled, having to accept things like Greg Hardy being on his team because the same general manager who signed him also owns the team.

And Garrett has enabled that situation, by not clashing with Jones and sticking with the organization even through the Hardy situation. It’s probably taking things too far to call him a “yes man”, but there’s no doubt Jones has limited his ability to either sink or swim as a coach.

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In the Eagles’ case, the most powerful person in the organization seemingly isn’t the owner anymore, because the owner seems to have blind faith in former general manager and current vice president of football operations Howie Roseman.

Roseman’s issue isn’t the same as Jones in that he doesn’t seem to have any grasp of how to build a good team — he’s demonstrated at least a proficient ability to do that. His issue is that he’s won power struggles with Chip Kelly, Ed Marynowitz, Tom Gamble and Joe Banner, with Reid also exiting during his tenure in the organization. Roseman has seemingly regained power in the front-office, and given his inability to work with others, that has limited the Eagles’ options at head-coach.

There’s probably no interest from either side from New England Patriots’ offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels, given a report from CBS Sports in 2013 that McDaniels has a negative opinion of Roseman. You can probably throw their defensive coordinator Matt Patricia, who has garnered some head-coaching interest, in that same category as well. Those two may not have initially ‘done it’ for some in terms of name value, but they start to sound more attractive by the day.

It’s not hard to connect the dots in some sense on Jackson either. He spent a season in Oakland, went 8-8 in a time where the organization was a raging dumpster fire, and was pushed out by a new regime. He’s earned another chance to coach based off his rise back to relevance now as the Bengals’ offensive coordinator and the positive impression most of the people who have played for him seem to have. So how have the Eagles not even requested an interview with him? Either they know that he wouldn’t be interested in the job — and he’s a candidate for the Cleveland job, so he hasn’t set a gigantic bar — or they believe that him and Roseman wouldn’t gel together. So there’s another candidate off the list.

And Gase agreed to a deal to join the Dolphins Saturday, after a report from CBS Chicago suggested that he entered Friday, after having interviewed with both, viewing the Eagles as the ‘leading contender’ to land lure him. Saturday he agreed to a deal to join the Dolphins, which included control of the 53-man roster.

Less than a third of the league’s head-coaches have control of the 53-man roster, and the Eagles did just fire a coach who was in that mix from day one on the job. Having control of the 53-man roster isn’t the same as having final say on the 90-man roster, which Kelly gained prior to the 2015 season and subsequently failed at. The previously mentioned Banner says it really isn’t even that big of a deal.

You would think that the head-coach having this minimal input on the final roster would fall under Lurie’s idea of a ‘collaborative process’. Instead, it just eliminated another one of the few attractive coaching candidates this off-season.

The problem is it doesn’t really seem like this coaching search falls under the umbrella of ‘collaborative process’. It’s not even clear what will happen with the team’s search for a personnel chief, but nothing in the organization seems to be trending in the direction of a ‘collaborative process’.

Next: Eagles Armchair: Offensive Line Off-Season Preview

The Eagles searching for a head-coach that they feel won’t step on the toes of the leader of their front-office doesn’t feel like a formula for a Superbowl. It feels like a formula to make sure the leader of the front-office doesn’t have his power stripped from him again. It feels like something Jones would do to avoid being questioned by his head-coach. The only difference here is that Roseman doesn’t own the team like Jones does. Lurie owns the Eagles and his desire to build a ‘collaborative process’ around someone who hasn’t demonstrated the ability to collaborate may leave the Eagles with an unqualified offensive coordinator or a soon-to-be 70 year-old coach, rather than the candidate that can help the team to win a championship.