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CSN Philly's Reuben Frank wrote a column on Friday titled: "Coach doesn't matter until Eagles fix disastrous front office." It's a long read, but it's a good one, so go check it out. Here's one of the things that stood out the most:
"Everybody knows Howie is holding back the organization," an NFL front-office executive said earlier this week. "Everybody but one person. And that person is the only one who matters. Jeffrey Lurie. He just doesn’t see it."
Some other highlights:
The franchise’s decline directly follows Howie Roseman’s rise to power.
Roseman has been general manager since 2010, minus last year, when Chip Kelly had the power. These have been dark days, filled with coaching turnover, quarterback instability, poor to average drafts and free agency catastrophes.
And precisely zero playoff wins.
Roseman is one of the most curious people to ever work for the Eagles. His track record is spotty, but he has Lurie convinced he’s some sort of boy wonder who can do no wrong. Lurie even fired Banner, his closest friend, in order to give Roseman even more power.
I predicted a couple weeks ago that the top coaching candidates would reject the Eagles because people league-wide just don’t want to work with Roseman. And here we are two weeks later with a guy coaching the Eagles who seven years ago was a high school coach in Louisiana.
Why is this topic being revisited now? Well, for one, it appears that the Eagles botched their coaching search. The team reportedly wanted Ben McAdoo, who stayed with the Giants. They also made a second run at 69-year-old Tom Coughlin, who turned them down. The words being used by Philly media to describe the Doug Pederson hire include "fallback choice." Roseman was part of Philadelphia's coaching search, and it's been suggested before that coaches don't want to work with him. We don't necessarily know if that's the case here, but it lines up with what's already been said.
Another reason this is relevant now is because this could be Roseman's last chance to get a coaching hire right. If Pederson doesn't work out, it's hard to see how Roseman would deserve another chance to hire the head coach after him.
My feelings about Roseman aren't a secret. I wrote back in December that his continued presence in the Eagles' front office is very troubling. Everything I've heard both publicly and privately leads me to believe he's much closer to being the problem than he is to ever being the solution.
Roseman has the chance to prove his doubters wrong by bringing high level talent to Philly and helping Pederson build a winner. Based on his track record, however, there's just not a lot of optimism he can be that guy. If Roseman fails as some people expect, it's only going to make people question why he was able to stay around so long. At that point it would be more than fair to seriously question Lurie's ability as an owner. If it isn't already.