Report: Former Washington GM Scot McCloughan has been working as Eagles front office consultant

Former Washington and San Francisco 49ers general manager Scot McCloughan has been working as a front office consultant for the Philadelphia Eagles over the past three years, according to a report from PhillyVoice’s Jimmy Kempski. (Nice scoop by my BGN Radio co-host! Looking forward to talking to him about it on an upcoming podcast.)

To be clear, McCloughan has not been exclusively helping the Eagles during that span.

It was already known that McCloughan has been running a scouting service — called Instinctive Scouting (big missed opportunity to name it ‘Scout McCloughan’) — for multiple NFL teams. The Cleveland Browns specifically brought in McCloughan to assist them in the 2018 NFL Draft.

NFL insider Mike Garafolo also had this to say about McCloughan back in October:

“One of the thing I tweeted the other day is if [Washington] never fired Scot McCloughan as their general manager, they wouldn’t have been firing the head coach [Jay Gruden], because he had this team moving in the right direction. I still believe that.

So, I checked in with Scot. I talked to him yesterday. Not about anything Redskins, just where he is right now. If you think that he’s not involved in the league anymore, you’ve got it completely wrong. You might think ‘Okay, he’s not employed by a team.’ But he’s got his own scouting service — Instinctive Scouting — where he’s running a lot of tape in his own house and sending reports to teams. To agencies, as well, who want reports on these college players.

He’s actually doing great. So, he’s down to 180 pounds. He’s back in the gym. He’s eating great. He cut out drinking. He also cut out the dip, he said he used to do the dip, and he said that’s the biggest thing for him, because it’s helping keep his mind clear as he’s doing all this work for all these teams on an independent consulting basis. He sounded great. [...] So, Scot’s living a great life right now and still is an integral part of the NFL even if he’s not a part of a team’s front office.”

McCloughan has had a reputation as one of NFL’s top talent evaluators and, as Garafolo alluded to, his ousting in Washington was undeserved. I wrote about it when he was fired:

Washington had a few decent seasons under McCloughan, relative to their typical standards at least. They went 17-14-1 the past two years and even won the NFC East in 2015. It wasn’t anything great, no, but it looked like they were potentially turning into a respectable franchise.

But everyone should have known better. It’s still Dan Snyder at the top so things are bound to go badly. McCloughan is reportedly being fired for relapsing into alcohol problems.

But as the Washington Post’s Mike Jones reports, that reason might just be an excuse.

Last week, the Washington Post wrote there’s an effort by some, namely team president Bruce Allen, inside the organization to discredit McCloughan. This certainly adds ammo to the theory that McCloughan’s alleged alcoholism wasn’t the only issue, if it was even one at all.

The Eagles obviously do their own scouting and it’s ultimately Howie Roseman who has final say on the team’s draft picks. But I suppose consulting with a respected mind like McCloughan can’t hurt. Nice to get an outside perspective.