EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — It’s a trip to Seattle instead of London and a middle of the order first-round pick in this year’s draft. Other than that, it’s impossible to know what the future holds for the Eagles, a team looking for a head coach, a quarterback and an identity now that the book on this season has been sealed.
If you believe the team’s owner, the immediate future should not be nearly as painful as the recent past, which culminated Sunday with a mostly meaningless 35-30 win over the New York Giants at MetLife Stadium.
No, Jeffrey Lurie does not think the 2016 Eagles will be a rebuilding team even though the 2015 version became a crumbling one that, in the owner’s mind, required the removal of coach Chip Kelly. It got so bad that the owner also felt the need to conduct interviews with his players in an attempt to gauge their pulse.
It was a wild and weird conclusion and to interim head coach Pat Shurmur’s credit, the Eagles showed they at least still had one even when they had nothing to play for Sunday.
Now, it’s time to look ahead. The Eagles have confirmed that they interviewed running backs coach Duce Staley for the head coaching job, and Shurmur indicated that he would talk to Lurie and vice president of football operations Howie Roseman in the near future. The names of other potential candidates will continue to seep out, with Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator Doug Pederson and New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton among the names du jour on Sunday.
“I look forward to watching Chip succeed wherever he goes, because I think he really will,” Lurie said Wednesday at a news conference that clarified why Kelly became the former head coach of the Eagles. “But I also look forward to a real improvement in where we’re headed. I very much look forward to the 2016 season where we’ll have the opportunity with a new head coach, new leadership.”
Lurie, whose ownership turned 21 this season while his Super Bowl title total remained stuck at zero, continued with his thoughts, but the sentence ran on so long that he started to sound like and make less sense than Charlie Brown’s teachers. The three words that mattered most in Lurie’s vision of the future were “No, I don’t.”
That was in response to a question about whether the owner thought that the Eagles were starting over from scratch.
“The tempo was unique [in Kelly’s offense], but the kinds of players — whether it’s Darren Sproles, DeMarco Murray, Sam Bradford, Vinny Curry, you name it — these are players that can fit in any system,” Lurie said.
In truth, only one of the four players the owner listed fit well in Kelly’s system during the just completed season. Sproles would fit into any system, but Murray looked more uncomfortable than a fat guy in skinny jeans trying to run the football in Kelly’s scheme. There are also a lot better systems than Kelly’s for quarterback Sam Bradford.
In fact, we might have seen a little of that during Shurmur’s first and perhaps only day as the team’s play caller. The quarterback completed 30 of 38 passes for 320 yards and two touchdowns in one of his best performances of the season.
What was different? Most notably, the quarterback was given the freedom to audible at the line of scrimmage and there were times when the Eagles slowed things down, too.
“Yeah, I would say there were a couple of times today, more than in the past, when we did change things at the line,” Bradford said. “Sometimes it just gets us into a better play, gives us an opportunity for a more explosive play than if we were to run what was originally called.”
It was all done against a Giants defense that ranked last in the league and did not have anything to play for, but Bradford still looked confident in the season finale.
The only way to see if this is something that could work would be to keep Shurmur and Bradford around and let them run a hybrid offense based somewhat on Kelly’s scheme and somewhat on former coach Andy Reid’s scheme.
Make a change in coach and quarterback and the Eagles’ offense would be starting from scratch, a situation that would not be conducive to immediate success.
“You see organizations that are committed to change all the time and it’s hard for them to get any traction,” Shurmur said. “The decision I think the organization is faced with now is: Who’s going to lead the organization? Whoever that is will put in a system and then roll.”
Regardless of who becomes the next head coach, there are probably going to be square pegs that must be forced into round holes next season. If, for instance, the Eagles were to hire Carolina defensive coordinator Sean McDermott, they would likely restore the 4-3 defense that was run during former head coach Andy Reid’s entire tenure.
That might be good for Curry, but probably not so much for Connor Barwin, who has become a vital and valuable player during his three seasons here. Barwin is better in a 3-4 scheme. In fact, he made a big play for the Eagles on Sunday when he strip-sacked Eli Manning, leading to an 83-yard fumble return by safety Walter Thurmond. The extra point after that score put the Eagles ahead for good.
Every player will have to adjust to what comes next and it will be easier for some than others. Can the secondary, which surrendered a franchise-worst 36 touchdown passes, get better in a new system? It would be difficult for it to get worse.
Examine the other side of the ball and it’s fair to wonder if the Eagles will be talented enough regardless of who coaches them next season. Is Murray salvageable? Will Bradford return? How difficult a fix is the offensive line? Can the receivers get better?
It’s impossible to gauge where the Eagles are going to be a year from now. All we know for sure is that it’s going to be a lot different and during one of those weeks they will be playing the Seahawks in Seattle rather than the St. Louis Rams in England.
� Bob Brookover is a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
