By Game 6 of his post-Super Bowl season, Jalen Hurts didn’t know where to go, where to pass, when there were receivers double-covered or how to execute an offense.
All of which meant one of two realities are coming into play: Either the quarterback who for a time was the highest-paid player in history suddenly forgot how to play football, or Jeffrey Lurie was about to pay for trusting the Eagles offense to insanely inexperienced upper-level coaches.
Go with the latter.
Not that any one of them is to blame, didn’t deserve a chance, won’t someday be the best in the business or have the potential to show football brilliance, but here are the up-to-date resumes of the Eagles’ most trusted coaches:
• Nick Sirianni, 44 career games, playoffs included, as a head coach at any level of football.
• Brian Johnson, six career games as an NFL offensive coordinator.
• Sean Desai, 23 career games as an NFL defensive coordinator.
Adhering to the eternal truth that assistant coaches are never to be blamed for failure and deserve nothing more than win-as-a-team back-pats after success, the criticism arc must bend toward Sirianni. While the man has been hugely successful into his third season as the Eagles’ coach, he is only now becoming subject to the obsessions of opposing coordinators. Good for him that he stumbled into as deep a pool of excellent personnel as the Eagles have had in the modern era – nod there to the wisdom of Howie Roseman – but the more he coaches, the more opponents will begin to pick up his trends.
For decades – going back to Dick Vermeil – fans have been told that their coaches have been so possessed with winning that they regularly pull scouting all-nighters. What, they’re the only ones? The NFL is made for obsessive, goal-driven coaching maniacs, the kind who will do nothing all day but critique a Hurts-Sirianni-Johnson film festival and eat an apple.
And didn’t Hurts let it slip earlier that he was seeing defensive twists in games that he wasn’t expecting?
No, the Eagles are not at a crisis point. They are wildly talented. And talent ultimately will trump coaching. It’s just that Sirianni and his right-hand men simply are too inexperienced not to occasionally have their bluff called at football’s no-limit table.
• The Eagles have successfully injected rugby into their game plans, solving almost every fourth-and-short situation by allowing Hurts to push behind a great offensive line, with some boosting from behind, to concoct a first down. The explanation is that he is the only quarterback who can squat 600 pounds. Bully for him. But every NFL team has some oversized parade-balloon capable of squatting 650 pounds. And once coaches begin having such individuals report in as quarterbacks, the rule will be changed and fourth-and-one will again be a welcome moment of high drama for fans.
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Sports gambling touts have your best interest in mind. Never forget that.
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Daryl Morey can’t get a high-paid player to buy into what the Sixers are trying to do for the second time in three years, not for love, not for money.
Even if the rock-bottom line is that Ben Simmons is a known basketball loser and James Harden thinks the NBA is a travel agency he can contact to book passage to any desired destination, it’s starting to become a bad look for the Sixers’ essential general manager.
While the overwhelming consensus was that Morey had to rid that organization of Simmons, he could not and did not improve the room with the injection of Harden. (He did, though, briefly improve the on-court product.)
The Sixers will begin their regular season in Milwaukee next Thursday, and Harden has called Morey a liar and has taken to missing practices for personal issues. The excitement builds.
• The sooner the Sixers stop loudly introducing Joel Embiid as “The Process,” the sooner that stain on sports history can begin to fade into history. Even Embiid, at the crack of training camp, acknowledged that the process is behind. Let the healing begin.
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Spare me the customer survey.
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After a 4-1 victory over Edmonton the other night, here’s one comment about the Flyers: Ah … maybe?
It was not so much that John Tortorella’s club won an October game as much as how it was done in context. The Flyers played all of last season without Sean Couturier, one of the great two-way forwards of his generation. Wednesday, Couturier helped smother Connor McDavid, whose one assist came when Couturier was not on the ice.
Also missing last season was Cam Atkinson, the Flyers’ most natural goal-scorer. That would have been him scoring twice in that game.
Not absent last season was Tortorella’s obvious disinterest in Tony DeAngelo, Kevin Hayes and to a lesser extent Ivan Provorov. Talented as they were, they are all gone in the kind of weeding for which Tortorella was hired in the first place.
Beyond that, there was Carter Hart being named the No. 1 star.
Better locker room vibe. Couturier back to full strength and neutralizing superstars. Hart head-standing. Atkinson scoring.
For now, just leave it at that.
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Being on a board of directors doesn’t sound boring.
Contact Jack McCaffery at jmccaffery@delcotimes.com
Source: Berkshire mont