With Jeffrey Lurie deciding to fire Doug Pederson less than three years after winning the first Super Bowl in franchise history, who are the most intriguing candidates to fill the role of Eagles head coach?
The Eagles on Monday fired Doug Pederson and now they might replace him by picking another coach off the Andy Reid tree.
Minutes after the news broke that Pederson was out, a report surfaced from NFL Network about his potential replacement (there are plenty of options).
And it’s not really much of a surprise:
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The Eagles were interested in possibly hiring Kafka last offseason as they searched to fill an offensive coordinator vacancy that ended up staying vacant, but Andy Reid blocked the Eagles then. He wouldn’t be able to block the Eagles if they want to hire Kafka as their head coach.
Sure, the Pederson era ended on Monday but the Eagles reached the mountaintop with him as their coach. Picking an Andy assistant certainly worked the last time. And the last time the Eagles hired a quarterbacks coach, it was when they hired Reid himself back in 1999.
While Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy has risen to the top of the list of potential head coach candidates, Kafka is an intriguing name too. He has been the Chiefs’ quarterbacks coach since 2018 and was promoted to passing game coordinator for the 2020 season.
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Kafka is just 33 years old but is a fast riser in the NFL world and has familiarity with the Eagles, having played here as a quarterback from 2010-11 as a fourth-round draft pick out of Northwestern.
Kafka’s playing career wasn’t very successful but he was always considered to be a top and innovative offensive mind and that has held true as a coach. That’s exactly what Jeff Lurie wants in his head coaches. He wants innovative offensive thinkers.
Kafka’s coaching career began as a graduate assistant at Northwestern in 2016. He was then hired as a quality control coach in 2017 by Reid, who promoted him to QBs coach after just one year. It was pretty evident that he was going to rise quickly and under his tutelage Patrick Mahomes has become an MVP player.
It is expected that if Bieniemy gets a head coaching job, the obvious replacement for him in Kansas City would be Kafka. But it is also possible Kafka might end up getting a head coaching gig too. The flip side of this is that if Kafka waits a year, there’s a good chance he’d have even more coaching opportunities in 2021. That Chiefs offense doesn’t look like it’s to slow down any time soon.
But if Kafka is hired this offseason, he will be one of the youngest head coaches in NFL history. Just 12 coaches have been 33 or younger when hired.
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