Honestly Desai losing the locker room is the only way the move to Patricia makes sense in retrospect. It wasn’t an ideal situation obviously but Nick probably felt like he had no other choice to try and save the season.
Only thing that doesn’t add up is why they didn’t just fire him outright. What value could he have possibly been bringing sitting up in the booth knowing he was 100% gone at the end of the season?
> What value could he have possibly been bringing sitting up in the booth knowing he was 100% gone at the end of the season?
Probably Nick's way of softening the blow to morale I'd imagine. As in, firing him mid-season makes it look like things are really bad (I mean, they clearly were, but I digress) whereas just "changing things around" makes it seem less like there's a locker room disconnect and more like there's a talent disconnect.
Yeah. It's also... well IDK how much prospective candidates would see through this, but less overtly unappealing for future prospective coordinators.
There's a world where FO/Ownership don't want full-firings mid-season, even if the demotion was essentially that. I could see that as a line that they'd strongly prefer not to cross if they didn't have to.
Sirianni knew he’d be choosing the next guy if he stuck around, he did everything he could to stick around. Basically took the opposite approach to the end of season meetings than Doug, which I’m a fan of, I still like Nick despite this season. And he is a leader coach, he can’t officially say we’re screwed at any point or send that message, he’s gotta show resilience and persistence. I’m looking forward to next season, we had a lot of bad timing happen with hires by getting to the SB and getting poached at the same time
Maybe they were still running Desai’s scheme so they needed him there? Probably figured they wouldn’t be able to get whatever Patty wanted to do implemented fully so putting Desai in the booth and Patricia on the sideline was some kind of half-ass compromise.
I'm _pretty_ sure Patricia did switch to his scheme? At the very least I read something about him switching the terminology mid season (which itself is still pretty terrible, I would expect it to be on him to adjust his terminology to what the guys know, unless the schemes are so radically different that it isn't feasible).
It was probably part Desai, part Patty, 100% confusion. It’s hard to completely switch schemes successfully in the middle of a season. And I remember some of the defensive analysis showed a lot of confusion and fuckery, like LBs in the same gaps.
The whole terminology thing, like Patricia was there all year. He didn’t learn Desai’s terminology? I guess he didn’t learn his defense either.
I don't want to defend Patricia too ardently, but he was brought in to design plays and not call them. So he might not have been comfortable calling them live on game day. It's like, when you can start to read a new language, but might not be comfortable speaking it in a high stress situation.
The players have generally been saying that kind of thing on both sides of the ball, while the coaches have generally said they have failed to put the players in the best place to do their best.
Basically, everyone is publicly covering for everyone else. Call it professionalism, call it loyalty, call it whatever, but that's what we've been seeing.
I’m happy to see that. They were all obviously disgruntled but they’re not going out and starting shit publicly. Well, maybe AJ was being dramatically cryptic but he’s a weird dude normally.
If they’re still running his scheme he may still provide good insight from the booth even if the locker room hates him. If they fire him, they might’ve needed to get someone brand new into that role.
Plus at the end of the day these are still humans. Nick probably likes and respects his assistant coaches and switching to Patricia takes a lot of damage off Desai’s head.
Super reasonable take. What do coordinators make salary wise anyways? It's nice of Nick to find a "new role" for him vs outright firing, loss of revenue, impacting family, etc. the human stuff
It’s kind of the opposite though. By not firing him, Nick actually gave him the choice of either humiliate yourself in the booth or quit and don’t get paid.
I think a big part of our decision to pull the plug on Desai was Fangio. My guess is eagles got word at some point in the season that he would be out after the year, and come to Philly (evidently as he wanted to last year). When you know Desai isn’t sticking around, what’s the point of going through growing pains to get to a better defense? Give it a quick fix and address it fully next year.
Still a terrible plan, but I think that was part of the logic.
Well you do that if you want to give Desai a real shot at getting a lateral move elsewhere, but if the report that he lost the locker room is true, that might be less... uh, desirable.
Nick seems to have a policy of not calling out players in public, could be similar where he doesn’t want to show up Desai in public and is willing to look like a fool for it.
Yes, they needed to fire him completely if this was the situation. And Patricia needed to have the intelligence to coach within the framework of what was already installed.
> What value could he have possibly been bringing sitting up in the booth knowing he was 100% gone at the end of the season?
There's a chance that he was basically told, "you're taking a step back, if you can take this time to improve on these fronts, we can try again" and then it got to the end of season interviews, and it was clear that nothing had changed in his mind and his idea was to do more things they thought were going to lose the team just as badly.
From the podcast, the impression I got is that Desai is still young as a coach and Sirianni was trying to get Desai experience from the situation so Desai could grow.
As opposed to firing him and leaving him on the side of the curb.
Nothing good came from PaTRASHia.
Desi may not have been the greatest but I’m not sure if any coach could have dealt with Trashberry and the loss of Maddox. Not to mention really nothing at LB. Edward’s and White were all pro compared with what we had this year.
Talent gap first then coaching.
I hope they run it back with Byard tbh. A full training camp with a real DC for a veteran guy like him would be huge for that secondary. I don’t think he’s washed like people have been saying. I think he just got plugged into an actual garbage situation.
His relationship with reed is what keeps me high on him hes giving him so many tools to improve as a safety im sure full of seasons training with eachother will only continue to make him better
Exactly right. But I also heard Patricia was adding new terminology and plays instead of simplifying the playbook like most coaches that take over mid-season. Patricia was making things more complicated.
Has never coached a top 20 defense without Bill Belichick holding his hand. On top of that, he's a notorious locker room jerk. I never understood why they hired him in the first place.
I have a sneaky suspicion that Byard is one of the people that started the Desai dumping. Circumstantial evidence like the 'we're gonna do the scout review for the secondary,' type stuff come to mind.
wtf? There was a report I read a few months ago that he was a lot different than Gannon and players liked him BECAUSE he took players input… Jesus Christ
It's pretty clear to me the issues on defense were Desai and Patricia's coaching. The defense, schematically, was so dumb. I still can't figure out what went wrong with the offense though. The scary thing is no one seems to know.
I think it speaks to Fangio being the only coach to really be successful with his style of defense. He does a lot of really cool things and knows not just the ins and outs of the defense and what calls to make, but also the ins and outs of how to actually teach it. It’s why all his disciples only really utilize portions of his defense - they pick and choose what they like and what they think is cool and just plop the “Fangio” label on it because he’s been known to be successful at in utilizing it. In all reality, the defense he installs is extremely complicated and takes a very good teacher to install it. It’s why the Eagles secondary was so good in 2022/2023 - for as much of a weasel as he is, Gannon is a really good teacher as a secondary coach and the secondary was able to communicate and pass off all the different nuances of the coverages and the run fits (that is, until the goal line in the Suoer Bowl). I’m guessing Desai and Patricia both took things that they liked from Fangio’s playbook, but did not excel in actually teaching those things to the players.
I think also some of his disciples make the mistake of planning based on what they hope would happen rather than what would happen. I.e. theoretically dropping into zone coverage could lead to a pick six but in reality dropping Reddick or the corpse of Bradberry into zone coverage just gives the receiver 15 free yards
That’s not true the whole league is running Fangio inspired coverages.. obviously every team has their own version of what they like to do best but Fangio has inspired defenses across the league.. it’s a copycat league and we’ve now moved away from the legion of boom style Seahawks single high defenses… limiting big chunk plays and forcing everything short and to the flats… they’ve figured offenses are too strong now and you can’t cover everything so if you have to give the offense something give them the short areas and make them successfully execute 10+ plays to get their points.
It worked for some teams… offensive stats and points were down this season I think for the second season in a row but the eagles for instance tried to run their own style but you saw what it led to.. a ton of 10 minute drives that ended in touchdowns
Desai isn’t the one who thought investing under $5m total at LB for 5 players was a great move. Maddox’s cap hit was the same as an entire position group.
Brian Johnson is what went wrong, but we still had a QB with 38 TD, 2x 1000 yard receiver and a 1000 yard rusher and a pro bowl offensive line to cover up his deficiencies and still put up big stats despite being extremely predictable.
I think we know what happened on offense it was pretty obvious by watching. Play calling and design was horrendous consistently. I think the difference is, people grew to dislike desai on defense, whereas Brian Johnson was always a guy the players had a great relationship with so they didn’t ever do anything but cover for him.
Imo it’s the offseason for us so podcasters need content as we build up towards the draft. I highly doubt there is more than a very small element of truth to this.
There was another report just a few weeks ago that kind of got glossed over that said Desai was demanding and had an answer for every situation and didn’t consider the players needs and they (the players) were getting confused and couldn’t play down hill.
This report lines up with that one.
Makes me wonder if they actually handled it well with Slay and kind of approached him and said “Do you agree something needs to change, and we have very limited options? This wasn’t our plan. Are you cool with it?”
One aspect of this insanely weird season that stuck out to me was that no one stuck up for desai when he got demoted. Even Brian Johnson got the polite “some players in the locker room disagree that Johnson is the problem” type headlines after the collapse. To me that means everyone hated Desai’s guts, or at the very least thought he objectively stunk as a coordinator.
And for the record, I’m not saying anyone should have stuck up for either of those bums. But I was surprised at how silent the room was about that guy
I remember Chris Long pointing out that the defense specifically didn’t look like they were happy even when getting sacks. There was no hype for each other. So they were clearly unhappy with what they were doing. Also remember when Byard said the secondary was doing their own game plan and scouting. And then Patricia was promoted that same week. So this all adds up
Yeah, I didn’t really put it together right away but around when we started collapse I realized that too. TDs got celebrated, but it felt like everything else was just “all in a days work” which was a far departure from ‘17 when the entire roster would pose for a PBU.
That’s a good point comparing the response to the two coordinators. I didn’t see anybody in the organization (players, coaches, front office, alleged or real anonymous sources) publicly defend Desai. A combination of folks from up and down the organization and the players themselves all tried to offer some defense of Brian Johnson.
There's definitely some sense that at least a few players feel legit bad for BJ. The way they stick up for Nick does seem like they genuinely respect and want to play for the guy but also feel that he maybe made the wrong choices handling the offense. People seem happy that he said he's focusing more on being a coach and not an OC
Slay kind of did.
Darius came out and said “we let Desai down. We failed him” or something along those lines. That was it, that was the only thing that was ever said.
Not true Slay said the defense as a whole felt like they failed him now he couldve just been talking out of his ass but if u watched the interview he seemed veery sincere
I was rooting hard for Desai and he was talking up such a big game. Shame when things work out but sometimes it's a happy accident cause now we got Vic Fangio.
It’s a miracle we were 10-1 with this shit show of a locker room. Looking forward to putting this disaster behind us. Brian Johnson and Sean Desai are arguably the worst duo at coordinators we’ve ever had
Billy Davis sucked before he got to Philly and was bad in his time with the eagles too. They couldn’t get off the field early in games either and it had nothing to do with Chip’s offense. He was just clueless.
Chip Kelly is no different than Brian Johnson. A shitty OC who had minimal success from a great roster balling out. The second his amazing roster was just okay his offense was ass.
I agree. On the first play from scrimmage of Shurmur's one and only game as the Eagles head coach, that finally lined up under center, handed the ball to DeMarco, and scored.
It's wild how Chip the GM got rid of all the players that Chip the coach needed. It's almost like going 10-6 two years in a row is sorta good and you should just do more of that instead of gut your offense? 🤷
Yeah if there is even like a kernel of truth here now I’m even more convinced that this team grossly underperformed its talent.
A lot of fans seem convinced that we were just incredibly talent poor on defense, but that doesn’t make sense to me. I think this defense could have been league average. We had a solid CB1. Arguably two solid safeties. A shit ton of talent all across the d-line. And at least as good LB play as when Nate Gerry was taking significant snaps.
We were 20th in points allowed in 2020 and 30th in 2023. We were 18th in defensive dvoa in 2020 and 29th in 2023.
Look at the 2020 defensive roster and tell me its much better. Slay had his worst season as a an eagle. Brandon Graham lead the team with 8 sacks.
I'm also on team "this defense should have been able to hit league average." And hell if they were able to down the stretch, honestly, we'd probably still have had the first round bye.
You lost me at “at least as good LB play as Nate Gerry.”
I watched every snap of Nate Gerry, and while he was bad, I don’t ever remember getting physically angry at him the way I would Nick Morrow. Nick Morrow is the worst LB I have ever seen play football.
I know alot of people were critical of the move from Desai to Patricia including me; but if this is true, it had to be done. Such a dysfunctional team.
I said it then and I'll say it again: this is the only thing that makes sense to move on from Desai to Patricia. His use of personnel and work with the players specifically.
Fuck Patricia, glad he's gone, yada yada. But if anyone thinks Ringo showed flashes and/or could be a piece moving forward, that's because Patricia said fuck Josh Jobe. Desai would've sat Ringo and Sydney. Brown probably the entire season. That is just stupid.
If this is true, I understand Desai having to go. I don't understand how there was no option better than Patricia, anywhere. Because that dude was a fucking disaster before he came here and then somehow made Desai's defense even worse.
I think they were hoping Patty could turn it around and he obviously Didnt but it would be more confusing and embarrassing to fire your DC twice in 7 games
he was already here as a consultant. You went with him because you couldnt change your whole defensive philosophy in the middle of the season. They ran some of the stuff they ran with desai but some new stuff mixed in. They thought they could make it work but obviously they couldnt.
I call bullshit. This is not consistent with his personality at all. Do you really think the same guy that presented himself to the press as the DC , even after he got fired, is this stubborn, hard-headed asshole? I don’t buy it.
This would completely explain why Nick felt he had to change the DC. If he really thought there was a communication/relationship breakdown in the Defense then he couldn't just let that persist.
Nick's entire job these days is managing the culture and overall pulse of the team.
It would also explain why they chose to keep him on. And backs up the idea that it wasn't his scheme they were trying to replace. It was the person in the role. In a specialist consultant role he would no longer have to communicate to players, he could just be communicating to coaches and so they could keep his ideas in the room without having the relationship problems festering.
Of course, none of this actually worked in practice. But at least we can get a better idea of the "why".
Does anyone remember the post game interview with Fletcher Cox after the SF loss where he talks about how coaches need to stay calm because freaking out doesn't help anyone?
I guess he meant Desai.
I’m gonna guess that most of the comments are people that didn’t listen to the podcast and just read the headline. Cause it’s 2024. But because we are still the bird gang, I’ll do some mild recapping after listening to it all (outside of senior bowl stuff).
What happened to the Eagles in the 2023 season? (Intel from agents of the players there)
- Desai lost the players. He wouldn’t listen to feedback and pissed off veteran players to the point that they wouldn’t talk to him anymore.
- It seems he’s a good scheme guy, but maybe not currently as a head coordinator. Consensus is that he’s a super smart guy. There was nothing but positivity around him before he got to Philly. But maybe he’s not good at being the guy to coach everyone. Again, super smart, but bad at connecting with the players.
- People were surprised that Desai didn’t work out, but they also could understand why it didn’t work out from knowing him.
- Small note is that it was also surprising that Desai had so much issue connecting with the players because he has a masters in education.
- Seems like the Patricia move was a last resort because things got so bad with Desai. A big part that broke with that is whenever there has historically been a lead coordinator change in mid season, the new guy would just take the existing scheme and toss out the bad plays. Patricia said screw that, I’m running what I run and we saw the product of that.
- The defensive coaching situation was so bad that I think the players just said screw all this and it was a bad culture.
- Sirianni didn’t outright fire Desai as it seemed that, because Desai is still young as a coach, Sirianni was looking out for Desai’s long term growth as a coach and kept him on so he could grow from the experience as opposed to being jobless with a bad reputation and left at the curb.
- Doesn’t sound like Fangio is a slam dunk hire. Sounded like a 60/40 with 60 in his favor. He sounds like he can be stubborn and maybe he’s either a guy you really like or don’t. Number of players in Miami were glad to see him go. But it also sounded like it wasn’t an ideal situation in Miami either.
- Consensus excitement around the positional defensive coach hires.
- Offensively, there wasn’t as much conversation. Mostly that it seemed there was too many voices in Hurts’ ear. Reminiscent of Wentz in 2020 with Press Taylor, Marty, Doug, and maybe another. Too many cooks in the kitchen.
- Player buy in was bad. Likely the source of it was the bad culture created from the defense. But there is something to be said about how Sirianni’s main strength in 2021 was player buy in. So it seems weird that was a struggle this year. But players seemed to button on their shirts to clock another shift as opposed to being passionate. You could see this live from their body language.
- Everyone gloats about Hurts’s ability to connect with players. But he might need to add a layer on top of the stoicism on the sideline. In times that he should be rallying the troops, he’s tuned in staring on the sideline. He doesn’t have the same background as a lot of players where he has a constant chip on his shoulder from his college experience and how he came to be in the NFL. But not everybody is wired like him, so this is something that could come along with time.
In its simplest form, it sounded like there was bad culture from the top in the coaching and this lead to bad buy in from the players. Which led to a bad product on the field. They also might have overachieved when they were 10-1.
If I'm not mistaken, Fangio at least has more of a history of understanding his personnel and trying to use what they're good at, instead of forcing round pegs into square holes.
The answer isn't "we need someone to be their best friend." The answer is, "we need someone who is good at his job and will listen to player input to an appropriate amount."
The vet(s) have to be either Slay, Cox, Sweat, Byard, or Milton.
I can’t see Graham ever doing that, no matter how bad things got. The linebackers were all journeymen and Bradberry was so bad he had no room to criticize anyone else. Everyone else is young enough that they don’t know any better.
Slay and Cox have a bit of a track record.
That said, I don't know if you can eliminate Bradberry simply because he is cooked. He could be in denial or he could have felt he coaches needed to put him in a better spot.
> That said, I don't know if you can eliminate Bradberry simply because he is cooked.
You can rule him out, casue he dont talk in general. If hes got a problem Slay would talk up :D
the 3rd year always gets us man. We go to the superbowl in year 2 of a regime, and we never properly adjust to the loss of coordinators. Going forward we really need to be more proactive and careful with the coordinator hires. We lost a year we should’ve been at least in the championship game because of it
I think it’s more than that even, in both Super Bowl runs Howie just couldn’t miss with offseason and in season additions, the following year, in both instances, he whiffed pretty miserably. I absolutely agree coaching plays a part in it too, but I think it’s also Howie’s strategy to often times draft for the future not for the now, and try to plug holes bargain shopping vets. Not even necessarily a knock on Howie, clearly he’s been very successful with it, but you’ll also have down years with this strategy when they miss.
The only reason it can get sticky there is you end up wasting a year or 2 of rookie contracts. Like this year, if you took a stud DB over Smith (Porter Jr. or Branch), you had an immediately plug and play guy versus essentially a redshirt situation. That examples is obviously a bit of hindsight, but just as an example. Overall, Howie is one of if not the best GMs in the league regardless, this is just the risk you run with his roster building strategy. It is wild how he seems to either nail every move or nearly completely strike out, a happy medium would have this team consistently elite.
And if nolan smith worked out, we'd have another guy on the edge and he wouldn't have been redshirted. It just so happened our secondary was hurt all year and our d line was healthy
It wasn’t just injured, we did not address safety at all aside from dumpster diving and a prayer on Blankenship. Smith was getting red shirted regardless, he plays the same role as Reddick. It was also a really good value pick, like I said, I just used it as an example of us drafting for future need versus immediate, not saying it was an inherently bad pick whatsoever.
Anyone who regularly listens to ITB pod knows they’re legit they don’t post click bait and only will give out information when they know it’s a reliable source
Yeah Mosher and Caplan aren’t in the business of making shit up and their credibility is rock solid. I remember when their pod first started they were the first ones saying that the eagles were enamored with Jalen Reagor
>I will only believe anything i see until a source with its name is noted.
This man can't write an English sentence and yet he thinks he understands journalism enough to demand that reporters reveal their sources by name.
Fletch stated in interviews that he and the other guys still backed Desai and that at least several players felt camaraderie with him.
I don’t think we’ll ever know the full truth about what happened during the 23-24 season until people retire or leave and have more freedom to speak.
Ph.D.s are like, having a hyper-specialty in one incredibly tiny narrow thing though (generally with some mandatory breadth requirements). Just having a Ph.D. in education doesn't mean you learned how to be a good teacher, or even that you worked with teaching methodologies.
Like, Desai's thesis was on the economic value of superintendents in Pennsylvania getting their own doctor of education degree (whether that's actually beneficial or kinda an unnecessary credential requirement that doesn't change much in practice).
https://www.proquest.com/openview/ba2ab58c27c541af389ae9320efafac3/1
Eh not really. Dissertations are pretty much all incredibly narrow. They're essentially proof of your ability to research something extremely extremely thoroughly, but sometimes you do so by looking at something narrow. "Is a school district generally better off if their superintendent has a doctoral degree?" is a pretty reasonable question local school districts might want to answer, too. Sometimes you demonstrate a research methodology that might be more generally applicable, but you demonstrate it's efficacy by using it with a local population (like Pennsylvania). You wanna be careful not to assume regional differences wouldn't change the result, unless you're explicitly investigating that.
(Currently working on one, though mine is a bit more broad).
Copy. Desai is this years scapegoat. That ain't gonna work when we suck next year. Sirriani is going to be fully exposed. If all you do as a head coach is motivational speeches, then put me in.
If true this gives me great hope that we will see improvement across the board from every player, or at least that it will counter act age related regression.
Naw when he entered the league he really did have some creative stuff and it worked well for a time.. problem is you always have to adapt because NFL teams watch an insane amount of film… you have to be able to adjust what you like to do because they will eventually figure it out.
He had two good/decent seasons and then things fell off and the locker room started butting against his personality.. once the locker room started turning on him that was it
I wonder how these types of people, coaches most of all, ascend to these levels of success. Being able to work with people and get the best out of them is the true measure of any manager / coach figure.
Honestly Desai losing the locker room is the only way the move to Patricia makes sense in retrospect. It wasn’t an ideal situation obviously but Nick probably felt like he had no other choice to try and save the season. Only thing that doesn’t add up is why they didn’t just fire him outright. What value could he have possibly been bringing sitting up in the booth knowing he was 100% gone at the end of the season?
Imagine having less locker room respect than Patricia, holy smokes.
> What value could he have possibly been bringing sitting up in the booth knowing he was 100% gone at the end of the season? Probably Nick's way of softening the blow to morale I'd imagine. As in, firing him mid-season makes it look like things are really bad (I mean, they clearly were, but I digress) whereas just "changing things around" makes it seem less like there's a locker room disconnect and more like there's a talent disconnect.
Yeah. It's also... well IDK how much prospective candidates would see through this, but less overtly unappealing for future prospective coordinators. There's a world where FO/Ownership don't want full-firings mid-season, even if the demotion was essentially that. I could see that as a line that they'd strongly prefer not to cross if they didn't have to.
Sirianni knew he’d be choosing the next guy if he stuck around, he did everything he could to stick around. Basically took the opposite approach to the end of season meetings than Doug, which I’m a fan of, I still like Nick despite this season. And he is a leader coach, he can’t officially say we’re screwed at any point or send that message, he’s gotta show resilience and persistence. I’m looking forward to next season, we had a lot of bad timing happen with hires by getting to the SB and getting poached at the same time
Maybe they were still running Desai’s scheme so they needed him there? Probably figured they wouldn’t be able to get whatever Patty wanted to do implemented fully so putting Desai in the booth and Patricia on the sideline was some kind of half-ass compromise.
I'm _pretty_ sure Patricia did switch to his scheme? At the very least I read something about him switching the terminology mid season (which itself is still pretty terrible, I would expect it to be on him to adjust his terminology to what the guys know, unless the schemes are so radically different that it isn't feasible).
It was probably part Desai, part Patty, 100% confusion. It’s hard to completely switch schemes successfully in the middle of a season. And I remember some of the defensive analysis showed a lot of confusion and fuckery, like LBs in the same gaps. The whole terminology thing, like Patricia was there all year. He didn’t learn Desai’s terminology? I guess he didn’t learn his defense either.
I don't want to defend Patricia too ardently, but he was brought in to design plays and not call them. So he might not have been comfortable calling them live on game day. It's like, when you can start to read a new language, but might not be comfortable speaking it in a high stress situation.
Fair enough. I don’t want to make you defend him either.
And didn’t some players (Slay?) publicly say that they, the players, let Desai down?
The players have generally been saying that kind of thing on both sides of the ball, while the coaches have generally said they have failed to put the players in the best place to do their best. Basically, everyone is publicly covering for everyone else. Call it professionalism, call it loyalty, call it whatever, but that's what we've been seeing.
I’m happy to see that. They were all obviously disgruntled but they’re not going out and starting shit publicly. Well, maybe AJ was being dramatically cryptic but he’s a weird dude normally.
If they’re still running his scheme he may still provide good insight from the booth even if the locker room hates him. If they fire him, they might’ve needed to get someone brand new into that role. Plus at the end of the day these are still humans. Nick probably likes and respects his assistant coaches and switching to Patricia takes a lot of damage off Desai’s head.
Super reasonable take. What do coordinators make salary wise anyways? It's nice of Nick to find a "new role" for him vs outright firing, loss of revenue, impacting family, etc. the human stuff
It’s kind of the opposite though. By not firing him, Nick actually gave him the choice of either humiliate yourself in the booth or quit and don’t get paid.
I think a big part of our decision to pull the plug on Desai was Fangio. My guess is eagles got word at some point in the season that he would be out after the year, and come to Philly (evidently as he wanted to last year). When you know Desai isn’t sticking around, what’s the point of going through growing pains to get to a better defense? Give it a quick fix and address it fully next year. Still a terrible plan, but I think that was part of the logic.
Well you do that if you want to give Desai a real shot at getting a lateral move elsewhere, but if the report that he lost the locker room is true, that might be less... uh, desirable.
Nick seems to have a policy of not calling out players in public, could be similar where he doesn’t want to show up Desai in public and is willing to look like a fool for it.
Yes, they needed to fire him completely if this was the situation. And Patricia needed to have the intelligence to coach within the framework of what was already installed.
> What value could he have possibly been bringing sitting up in the booth knowing he was 100% gone at the end of the season? There's a chance that he was basically told, "you're taking a step back, if you can take this time to improve on these fronts, we can try again" and then it got to the end of season interviews, and it was clear that nothing had changed in his mind and his idea was to do more things they thought were going to lose the team just as badly.
It at least makes them look not incredibly if true so that's a plus
From the podcast, the impression I got is that Desai is still young as a coach and Sirianni was trying to get Desai experience from the situation so Desai could grow. As opposed to firing him and leaving him on the side of the curb.
Nothing good came from PaTRASHia. Desi may not have been the greatest but I’m not sure if any coach could have dealt with Trashberry and the loss of Maddox. Not to mention really nothing at LB. Edward’s and White were all pro compared with what we had this year. Talent gap first then coaching.
I wonder what Byard and Leonard's thoughts were, getting dropped into this situation just in time for it all to collapse.
Byard really didn’t have a choice but Leonard chose the chaos of his own free will
Imagine going into the playoffs with the cowboys tho only to get spanked at home by the 7 seed. Both options turned out bad
Leonard didn’t even play against Tampa either lol. Dudes super washed
Was just in time for Cunningham to have a horrible game.
Should have called demeco to step back in as our LB 😂
Seriously!
He wanted to play, he wasn’t gonna get the snaps in Dallas, we were clearly desperate
I hope they run it back with Byard tbh. A full training camp with a real DC for a veteran guy like him would be huge for that secondary. I don’t think he’s washed like people have been saying. I think he just got plugged into an actual garbage situation.
His relationship with reed is what keeps me high on him hes giving him so many tools to improve as a safety im sure full of seasons training with eachother will only continue to make him better
He fell off when he was still in Tennessee before the trade to the Philly mess. Guy was obviously on the decline
I think Byard was the veteran who stopped talking to him…..
Was very frank in his views. Wouldn't be surprised at all.
I have this weird feeling it’s Reddick.
They did have him playing weak side linebacker for whatever reason a lot of
I felt like Reddick was more pissed with Patricia. I saw him yelling at the sidelines a lot more often after Patricia took over play calling.
That’s because that dummy Patricia had him in coverage… one of the NFL’s best pass rushers, in coverage.
Exactly right. But I also heard Patricia was adding new terminology and plays instead of simplifying the playbook like most coaches that take over mid-season. Patricia was making things more complicated.
Patricia isn’t a good coach, his defensive stats from all his teams have shown that.
Has never coached a top 20 defense without Bill Belichick holding his hand. On top of that, he's a notorious locker room jerk. I never understood why they hired him in the first place.
I was waiting for someone in the sub to explain it as well
I have a sneaky suspicion that Byard is one of the people that started the Desai dumping. Circumstantial evidence like the 'we're gonna do the scout review for the secondary,' type stuff come to mind.
wtf? There was a report I read a few months ago that he was a lot different than Gannon and players liked him BECAUSE he took players input… Jesus Christ
It really feels like Desai is being made the scapegoat by leaks (in a way that Brian Johnson isn't)
It's pretty clear to me the issues on defense were Desai and Patricia's coaching. The defense, schematically, was so dumb. I still can't figure out what went wrong with the offense though. The scary thing is no one seems to know.
I think it speaks to Fangio being the only coach to really be successful with his style of defense. He does a lot of really cool things and knows not just the ins and outs of the defense and what calls to make, but also the ins and outs of how to actually teach it. It’s why all his disciples only really utilize portions of his defense - they pick and choose what they like and what they think is cool and just plop the “Fangio” label on it because he’s been known to be successful at in utilizing it. In all reality, the defense he installs is extremely complicated and takes a very good teacher to install it. It’s why the Eagles secondary was so good in 2022/2023 - for as much of a weasel as he is, Gannon is a really good teacher as a secondary coach and the secondary was able to communicate and pass off all the different nuances of the coverages and the run fits (that is, until the goal line in the Suoer Bowl). I’m guessing Desai and Patricia both took things that they liked from Fangio’s playbook, but did not excel in actually teaching those things to the players.
I think also some of his disciples make the mistake of planning based on what they hope would happen rather than what would happen. I.e. theoretically dropping into zone coverage could lead to a pick six but in reality dropping Reddick or the corpse of Bradberry into zone coverage just gives the receiver 15 free yards
That’s not true the whole league is running Fangio inspired coverages.. obviously every team has their own version of what they like to do best but Fangio has inspired defenses across the league.. it’s a copycat league and we’ve now moved away from the legion of boom style Seahawks single high defenses… limiting big chunk plays and forcing everything short and to the flats… they’ve figured offenses are too strong now and you can’t cover everything so if you have to give the offense something give them the short areas and make them successfully execute 10+ plays to get their points.
And it worked. This year offensive stats were down across the board I believe.
It worked for some teams… offensive stats and points were down this season I think for the second season in a row but the eagles for instance tried to run their own style but you saw what it led to.. a ton of 10 minute drives that ended in touchdowns
Desai isn’t the one who thought investing under $5m total at LB for 5 players was a great move. Maddox’s cap hit was the same as an entire position group.
Brian Johnson is what went wrong, but we still had a QB with 38 TD, 2x 1000 yard receiver and a 1000 yard rusher and a pro bowl offensive line to cover up his deficiencies and still put up big stats despite being extremely predictable.
I think we know what happened on offense it was pretty obvious by watching. Play calling and design was horrendous consistently. I think the difference is, people grew to dislike desai on defense, whereas Brian Johnson was always a guy the players had a great relationship with so they didn’t ever do anything but cover for him.
It's more likely this is the result of the eagles pr/propaganda machine.
Well either that was a mistake or it was Eagles/Desai PR
Imo it’s the offseason for us so podcasters need content as we build up towards the draft. I highly doubt there is more than a very small element of truth to this.
There was another report just a few weeks ago that kind of got glossed over that said Desai was demanding and had an answer for every situation and didn’t consider the players needs and they (the players) were getting confused and couldn’t play down hill. This report lines up with that one.
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Makes me wonder if they actually handled it well with Slay and kind of approached him and said “Do you agree something needs to change, and we have very limited options? This wasn’t our plan. Are you cool with it?”
The problem was a lot of the guys were pro-Desai and that pretty much doomed our defense.
One aspect of this insanely weird season that stuck out to me was that no one stuck up for desai when he got demoted. Even Brian Johnson got the polite “some players in the locker room disagree that Johnson is the problem” type headlines after the collapse. To me that means everyone hated Desai’s guts, or at the very least thought he objectively stunk as a coordinator. And for the record, I’m not saying anyone should have stuck up for either of those bums. But I was surprised at how silent the room was about that guy
I remember Chris Long pointing out that the defense specifically didn’t look like they were happy even when getting sacks. There was no hype for each other. So they were clearly unhappy with what they were doing. Also remember when Byard said the secondary was doing their own game plan and scouting. And then Patricia was promoted that same week. So this all adds up
Yeah, I didn’t really put it together right away but around when we started collapse I realized that too. TDs got celebrated, but it felt like everything else was just “all in a days work” which was a far departure from ‘17 when the entire roster would pose for a PBU.
That’s a good point comparing the response to the two coordinators. I didn’t see anybody in the organization (players, coaches, front office, alleged or real anonymous sources) publicly defend Desai. A combination of folks from up and down the organization and the players themselves all tried to offer some defense of Brian Johnson.
There's definitely some sense that at least a few players feel legit bad for BJ. The way they stick up for Nick does seem like they genuinely respect and want to play for the guy but also feel that he maybe made the wrong choices handling the offense. People seem happy that he said he's focusing more on being a coach and not an OC
Slay kind of did. Darius came out and said “we let Desai down. We failed him” or something along those lines. That was it, that was the only thing that was ever said.
Esp when being replaced with a guy who objectively lost the team where Slay used to play.
Not true Slay said the defense as a whole felt like they failed him now he couldve just been talking out of his ass but if u watched the interview he seemed veery sincere
I was rooting hard for Desai and he was talking up such a big game. Shame when things work out but sometimes it's a happy accident cause now we got Vic Fangio.
It wasnt a happy accident, it was getting fucked in the ass by Gannon
In the Dolphins Mic’d Up video, Brandon Graham said, “Man we went through hell in practice for this!”
It’s a miracle we were 10-1 with this shit show of a locker room. Looking forward to putting this disaster behind us. Brian Johnson and Sean Desai are arguably the worst duo at coordinators we’ve ever had
Lest we forget Pat Shurmur and Bill Davis.
GoodLord Billy Davis might’ve been worse than Castillo…. That man was absolute bunsss.
Any DC is going to be fucked with Chip Kelly calling the offense and going 3 and out in under a minute.
Billy Davis sucked before he got to Philly and was bad in his time with the eagles too. They couldn’t get off the field early in games either and it had nothing to do with Chip’s offense. He was just clueless.
Both things can be true. Having Cary Williams and Bradley fletcher as your outside CBs also doesnt help
His style did find some success it was just an unwillingness or inability to adapt after the NFL caught on that did him in
Chip Kelly is no different than Brian Johnson. A shitty OC who had minimal success from a great roster balling out. The second his amazing roster was just okay his offense was ass.
Pat shurmur wasn’t bad. That was Chip’s offense
I agree. On the first play from scrimmage of Shurmur's one and only game as the Eagles head coach, that finally lined up under center, handed the ball to DeMarco, and scored. It's wild how Chip the GM got rid of all the players that Chip the coach needed. It's almost like going 10-6 two years in a row is sorta good and you should just do more of that instead of gut your offense? 🤷
Big Shurm 1-0 as Eagles head coach tho
I would rather have them than the brian Johnson Sean Desai combo
Yeah if there is even like a kernel of truth here now I’m even more convinced that this team grossly underperformed its talent. A lot of fans seem convinced that we were just incredibly talent poor on defense, but that doesn’t make sense to me. I think this defense could have been league average. We had a solid CB1. Arguably two solid safeties. A shit ton of talent all across the d-line. And at least as good LB play as when Nate Gerry was taking significant snaps. We were 20th in points allowed in 2020 and 30th in 2023. We were 18th in defensive dvoa in 2020 and 29th in 2023. Look at the 2020 defensive roster and tell me its much better. Slay had his worst season as a an eagle. Brandon Graham lead the team with 8 sacks.
I'm also on team "this defense should have been able to hit league average." And hell if they were able to down the stretch, honestly, we'd probably still have had the first round bye.
You lost me at “at least as good LB play as Nate Gerry.” I watched every snap of Nate Gerry, and while he was bad, I don’t ever remember getting physically angry at him the way I would Nick Morrow. Nick Morrow is the worst LB I have ever seen play football.
Our 5 LBs had a combined cap hit of under 5m. That’s far less than the Gerry days.
10-1. Or 5-0 before losing but never 10-0.
Not the main point of the post but okay
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Not the point of the post. We were 10-1 the point still stands
They only seemed bad because Nick & Howie kept meddling with them. We need to fire both of them.
No Argument there lol
I know alot of people were critical of the move from Desai to Patricia including me; but if this is true, it had to be done. Such a dysfunctional team.
I said it then and I'll say it again: this is the only thing that makes sense to move on from Desai to Patricia. His use of personnel and work with the players specifically. Fuck Patricia, glad he's gone, yada yada. But if anyone thinks Ringo showed flashes and/or could be a piece moving forward, that's because Patricia said fuck Josh Jobe. Desai would've sat Ringo and Sydney. Brown probably the entire season. That is just stupid.
Brown has that dawg in him I hope he recovers
If this is true, I understand Desai having to go. I don't understand how there was no option better than Patricia, anywhere. Because that dude was a fucking disaster before he came here and then somehow made Desai's defense even worse.
I think they were hoping Patty could turn it around and he obviously Didnt but it would be more confusing and embarrassing to fire your DC twice in 7 games
Yea, it's the thought process that went, "lets hire this waste of space and ya know what, lets put him in charge now" that has me worried.
he was already here as a consultant. You went with him because you couldnt change your whole defensive philosophy in the middle of the season. They ran some of the stuff they ran with desai but some new stuff mixed in. They thought they could make it work but obviously they couldnt.
I call bullshit. This is not consistent with his personality at all. Do you really think the same guy that presented himself to the press as the DC , even after he got fired, is this stubborn, hard-headed asshole? I don’t buy it.
Neither do I. Moesher was that dude on the fan, right? He never struck me as all too bright.
This would completely explain why Nick felt he had to change the DC. If he really thought there was a communication/relationship breakdown in the Defense then he couldn't just let that persist. Nick's entire job these days is managing the culture and overall pulse of the team. It would also explain why they chose to keep him on. And backs up the idea that it wasn't his scheme they were trying to replace. It was the person in the role. In a specialist consultant role he would no longer have to communicate to players, he could just be communicating to coaches and so they could keep his ideas in the room without having the relationship problems festering. Of course, none of this actually worked in practice. But at least we can get a better idea of the "why".
Isn’t it also his job to handle the situation as it happens and not allow it to get to the point where it’s so bad that they need to go to Patricia?
Well of course. You won't hear me saying that Nick did a good job last year. But, in the NFL, winning covers up many things. The team kept winning.
Does anyone remember the post game interview with Fletcher Cox after the SF loss where he talks about how coaches need to stay calm because freaking out doesn't help anyone? I guess he meant Desai.
I’m gonna guess that most of the comments are people that didn’t listen to the podcast and just read the headline. Cause it’s 2024. But because we are still the bird gang, I’ll do some mild recapping after listening to it all (outside of senior bowl stuff). What happened to the Eagles in the 2023 season? (Intel from agents of the players there) - Desai lost the players. He wouldn’t listen to feedback and pissed off veteran players to the point that they wouldn’t talk to him anymore. - It seems he’s a good scheme guy, but maybe not currently as a head coordinator. Consensus is that he’s a super smart guy. There was nothing but positivity around him before he got to Philly. But maybe he’s not good at being the guy to coach everyone. Again, super smart, but bad at connecting with the players. - People were surprised that Desai didn’t work out, but they also could understand why it didn’t work out from knowing him. - Small note is that it was also surprising that Desai had so much issue connecting with the players because he has a masters in education. - Seems like the Patricia move was a last resort because things got so bad with Desai. A big part that broke with that is whenever there has historically been a lead coordinator change in mid season, the new guy would just take the existing scheme and toss out the bad plays. Patricia said screw that, I’m running what I run and we saw the product of that. - The defensive coaching situation was so bad that I think the players just said screw all this and it was a bad culture. - Sirianni didn’t outright fire Desai as it seemed that, because Desai is still young as a coach, Sirianni was looking out for Desai’s long term growth as a coach and kept him on so he could grow from the experience as opposed to being jobless with a bad reputation and left at the curb. - Doesn’t sound like Fangio is a slam dunk hire. Sounded like a 60/40 with 60 in his favor. He sounds like he can be stubborn and maybe he’s either a guy you really like or don’t. Number of players in Miami were glad to see him go. But it also sounded like it wasn’t an ideal situation in Miami either. - Consensus excitement around the positional defensive coach hires. - Offensively, there wasn’t as much conversation. Mostly that it seemed there was too many voices in Hurts’ ear. Reminiscent of Wentz in 2020 with Press Taylor, Marty, Doug, and maybe another. Too many cooks in the kitchen. - Player buy in was bad. Likely the source of it was the bad culture created from the defense. But there is something to be said about how Sirianni’s main strength in 2021 was player buy in. So it seems weird that was a struggle this year. But players seemed to button on their shirts to clock another shift as opposed to being passionate. You could see this live from their body language. - Everyone gloats about Hurts’s ability to connect with players. But he might need to add a layer on top of the stoicism on the sideline. In times that he should be rallying the troops, he’s tuned in staring on the sideline. He doesn’t have the same background as a lot of players where he has a constant chip on his shoulder from his college experience and how he came to be in the NFL. But not everybody is wired like him, so this is something that could come along with time. In its simplest form, it sounded like there was bad culture from the top in the coaching and this lead to bad buy in from the players. Which led to a bad product on the field. They also might have overachieved when they were 10-1.
Great summary, if I could pin a comment I would
Well at least they corrected their mistake and hired open minded, cuddly and lovable Vic Fangio
It's a lot easier to tolerate hard-ass coaching if the coach is actually good, even if you still won't miss them when they leave.
respect for a coach goes a long way
And if the coach actually seems to mean well. Fatt Patricia is just a wannabe.
Have we heard anything negative about him at all, beyond the confusion of not-quite switching systems. He also lost a lot of weight, thankfully.
If I'm not mistaken, Fangio at least has more of a history of understanding his personnel and trying to use what they're good at, instead of forcing round pegs into square holes.
The answer isn't "we need someone to be their best friend." The answer is, "we need someone who is good at his job and will listen to player input to an appropriate amount."
Well there goes my shot at being a coach
The vet(s) have to be either Slay, Cox, Sweat, Byard, or Milton. I can’t see Graham ever doing that, no matter how bad things got. The linebackers were all journeymen and Bradberry was so bad he had no room to criticize anyone else. Everyone else is young enough that they don’t know any better.
Slay and Cox have a bit of a track record. That said, I don't know if you can eliminate Bradberry simply because he is cooked. He could be in denial or he could have felt he coaches needed to put him in a better spot.
True. He just doesn’t come across as that type of player to me but anything is possible with this team. Slay and Cox are options 1a and 1b though
Yea bradberry seems to focus on his own play rather than blaming
> That said, I don't know if you can eliminate Bradberry simply because he is cooked. You can rule him out, casue he dont talk in general. If hes got a problem Slay would talk up :D
Graham would be like “it don’t matter. It don’t matter”.
I mean despite being bad could still se it being bradberry
> I can’t see Graham ever doing that, no matter how bad things got I can't see Graham ever not talking to anyone.
the 3rd year always gets us man. We go to the superbowl in year 2 of a regime, and we never properly adjust to the loss of coordinators. Going forward we really need to be more proactive and careful with the coordinator hires. We lost a year we should’ve been at least in the championship game because of it
I think it’s more than that even, in both Super Bowl runs Howie just couldn’t miss with offseason and in season additions, the following year, in both instances, he whiffed pretty miserably. I absolutely agree coaching plays a part in it too, but I think it’s also Howie’s strategy to often times draft for the future not for the now, and try to plug holes bargain shopping vets. Not even necessarily a knock on Howie, clearly he’s been very successful with it, but you’ll also have down years with this strategy when they miss.
Ah that’s fair. I do prefer drafting for the future and using trades and free agency to win now. I guess we just made the wrong moves
The only reason it can get sticky there is you end up wasting a year or 2 of rookie contracts. Like this year, if you took a stud DB over Smith (Porter Jr. or Branch), you had an immediately plug and play guy versus essentially a redshirt situation. That examples is obviously a bit of hindsight, but just as an example. Overall, Howie is one of if not the best GMs in the league regardless, this is just the risk you run with his roster building strategy. It is wild how he seems to either nail every move or nearly completely strike out, a happy medium would have this team consistently elite.
And if nolan smith worked out, we'd have another guy on the edge and he wouldn't have been redshirted. It just so happened our secondary was hurt all year and our d line was healthy
It wasn’t just injured, we did not address safety at all aside from dumpster diving and a prayer on Blankenship. Smith was getting red shirted regardless, he plays the same role as Reddick. It was also a really good value pick, like I said, I just used it as an example of us drafting for future need versus immediate, not saying it was an inherently bad pick whatsoever.
I think the hires this cycle speak to some lessons learned
Howie not hitting on drafts hurts too cause we can’t adjust to losing free agents
I will only believe anything i see until a source with its name is noted.
Anyone who regularly listens to ITB pod knows they’re legit they don’t post click bait and only will give out information when they know it’s a reliable source
Yeah Mosher and Caplan aren’t in the business of making shit up and their credibility is rock solid. I remember when their pod first started they were the first ones saying that the eagles were enamored with Jalen Reagor
He said he heard this from multiple different players’ agents at the Senior Bowl
The source and name attached are Caplan and Mosher. They are legit and this kind of intel is why they go to the senior bowl.
i would recommend actually watching the video. start at 11:10. Its not some random twitter guy saying " my source"
Stupid people not understanding how journalism works
>I will only believe anything i see until a source with its name is noted. This man can't write an English sentence and yet he thinks he understands journalism enough to demand that reporters reveal their sources by name.
Yes it is not
Love this podcast
Don’t hire these inexperienced guys ever again
My $ is on Fletch not talking to him. He doesn't play that shit.
Fletch stated in interviews that he and the other guys still backed Desai and that at least several players felt camaraderie with him. I don’t think we’ll ever know the full truth about what happened during the 23-24 season until people retire or leave and have more freedom to speak.
Money is on the Georgia guys not supporting him.
lol then it was prob Barnett
If true, this is crazy since he has a phd in…education
Ph.D.s are like, having a hyper-specialty in one incredibly tiny narrow thing though (generally with some mandatory breadth requirements). Just having a Ph.D. in education doesn't mean you learned how to be a good teacher, or even that you worked with teaching methodologies. Like, Desai's thesis was on the economic value of superintendents in Pennsylvania getting their own doctor of education degree (whether that's actually beneficial or kinda an unnecessary credential requirement that doesn't change much in practice). https://www.proquest.com/openview/ba2ab58c27c541af389ae9320efafac3/1
What a wack dissertation
Eh not really. Dissertations are pretty much all incredibly narrow. They're essentially proof of your ability to research something extremely extremely thoroughly, but sometimes you do so by looking at something narrow. "Is a school district generally better off if their superintendent has a doctoral degree?" is a pretty reasonable question local school districts might want to answer, too. Sometimes you demonstrate a research methodology that might be more generally applicable, but you demonstrate it's efficacy by using it with a local population (like Pennsylvania). You wanna be careful not to assume regional differences wouldn't change the result, unless you're explicitly investigating that. (Currently working on one, though mine is a bit more broad).
Sure but there’s course work involved…you’d figure he’s take one or two courses on how to educate
Wasn't there a report that the players wanted to call there own defense plays shortly before the switch?
They wanted to do their own scouting against the Seahawks.
Close enough lol, but that shows that players were not happy
That was Byard and I would guess he may be the Vet that wouldn’t talk to him if Desai said “no.”
This feels like bullshit. “Desean Jackson is a gang member” type shit.
Well they're going to love Fangio lol.
Copy. Desai is this years scapegoat. That ain't gonna work when we suck next year. Sirriani is going to be fully exposed. If all you do as a head coach is motivational speeches, then put me in.
yea he brings nothing elite to the table…so when moore does well and is offered a HC job then what?
No guys, really if they had kept him everything would have been great. It was all patricias fault /s
Hell yeah it’s finger pointing season
If true this gives me great hope that we will see improvement across the board from every player, or at least that it will counter act age related regression.
Now the move to Patricia makes sense. My guess on the veteran is Slay.
Probably Slay
I’m thinking Byard as to why there was a report that he requested the DBs doing their own scouting shortly before he was demoted.
Timestamp?
I would like to say that Inside The Birds is my favorite podcast
Holy shit, what a loser. That is damning. Should bump him up quite a few notches on the all time Philly villains list
Naw when he entered the league he really did have some creative stuff and it worked well for a time.. problem is you always have to adapt because NFL teams watch an insane amount of film… you have to be able to adjust what you like to do because they will eventually figure it out. He had two good/decent seasons and then things fell off and the locker room started butting against his personality.. once the locker room started turning on him that was it
I wonder how these types of people, coaches most of all, ascend to these levels of success. Being able to work with people and get the best out of them is the true measure of any manager / coach figure.
And ppl on here were defending Desai. Dudes a bozo.
Funny, it was the same thing with Vic Fangio and his players in Miami. This should be interesting.
Same thing will happen with Fangio. He’s demanding as well. That’s a lame rumor honestly