The New Staff

Doug Pederson coached the Eagles to a Super Bowl in 2017. He coached the Eagles to a 4-11-1 record in 2020. The team was headed in the wrong direction. One of the keys to Pederson’s firing is that he wanted to bring back most of the staff from the 4-win season, thinking that those guys could solve the problems.

Jeff Lurie disagreed.

Pederson was fired and Nick Sirianni was hired to fix the Eagles. I’m sure one of the ways he sold Lurie and Howie Roseman is that he talked about building a strong coaching staff. It took a while for Sirianni to fill all his spots, but the staff is finally complete. Let’s take a look.

Head Coach – Nick Sirianni

Offensive Coordinator – Shane Steichen (Chargers)
Passing Game Coordinator – Kevin Patullo (Colts)
QB Coach – Brian Johnson (Univ of Florida)
WR Coach – Aaron Morehead (Eagles holdover)
RB / Asst Head Coach – Jemal Singleton (Bengals)
TE Coach – Jason Michael (Colts)
OL Coach – Jeff Stoutland (Eagles holdover)
Asst OL – Roy Istvan (Eagles holdover)
Offensive Quality Control – T.J. Paganetti (Eagles holdover)
Offensive Quality Control – Alex Tanney (former NFL QB)

Defensive Coordinator – Jonathan Gannon (Colts)
DL Coach – Tracy Rocker (Univ of South Carolina)
LB Coach – Nick Rallis (Vikings)
DB Coach – Dennard Wilson (Jets)
Asst DBs – Jay Valai (Univ of Texas)
Senior Defensive Asst – Jeremiah Washburn (Eagles holdover)
Defensive Quality Control – Joe Kasper (Duke)

Special Teams Coordinator – Michael Clay (Niners)
Asst ST Coordinator – Joe Pannunzio (Eagles holdover)
ST Quality Control – Tyler Brown (Univ of Michigan)

Coaches Assistant – Tyler Scudder (Iowa State Univ)
VP of Player Performance – Ted Rath (Eagles holdover)
Head of Strength & Conditioning – Fernando Noriega (Rams)

There aren’t a lot of big names on the staff, but I think that is kind of the point. Pederson loaded up on proven coaches like Frank Reich, John DeFilippo, Ken Flajole, Cory Undlin and Jim Schwartz. He kept veteran coaches like Duce Staley, Dave Fipp and Jeff Stoutland.

Sirianni has embraced youth. Andy Reid did that when he hired Ron Rivera, Leslie Frazier, Sean McDermott, Steve Spagnuolo, Brad Childress, Tom Melvin and Pat Shurmur. Reid kept young holdovers like Juan Castillo and John Harbaugh. That turned out to be an amazing staff.

Sirianni isn’t likely to land a group that good, but there is something to be said for taking a chance on young coaches. If you can find guys that are smart, hungry and good teachers, you can build a really strong staff.

This group should have plenty of new ideas. Several of them are coming up from the college ranks. Johnson was part of a cutting edge offense at Florida. I would hope he’ll have some good ideas to share with his NFL counterparts.

I do think it was important to keep Stoutland and Istvan. They did good things with the young OL last year. Jordan Mailata, Nate Herbig and Jack Driscoll all showed real promise. They could be starters in the future. Keeping the coaches should help the young players to continue to develop.

I’m excited to see what Gannon does with the defense. He coached under Matt Eberflus in recent years, but spent a lot of time under Mike Zimmer. Gannon has seen some very good 4-3 defenses and he’s seen them built and coached differently. I liked Schwartz and what he did, but it will be fun to see things done a different way.

Sirianni wasn’t afraid to take chances in hiring this staff. He added a lot of people he knew on offense and let Gannon have a strong hand in building the defensive staff.

We know there will be one or two duds in this group. That happens with just about every coaching staff. If I’m nervous about one group, it would be STs. That’s a young group in charge of a key part of the team.

I don’t love the staff, but I wouldn’t have loved Reid’s staff back in 1999 either. I’d never heard of several of those guys. It will be interesting to see if Sirianni hit any home runs.

*****

With Wentz almost certainly gone, this is a good development.

I’m told a group of the Eagles young receivers are planning on working out with Jalen Hurts in Texas sometime in the next month pic.twitter.com/GE3YPtcQjU

— John Clark (@JClarkNBCS) February 11, 2021

That group needs reps. They must build some chemistry. It is smart to get this going now.

_