If you watched or listened to Jeff Lurie’s entire 42-minute press conference Monday discussing Doug Pederson’s dismissal… I’m truly sorry.
Lurie’s chat was unfocused at best, incoherent at worst, and although there were some brief nuggets of clarity they were few and far between.
Here’s a look at Lurie’s five most absurd quotes from his Monday presser:
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“Did Doug deserve to be let go? No, he did not deserve to be let go.”
Usually, this is the kind of thing you hear from someone says who disagrees with a coach getting fired. Not from the GUY WHO FIRED HIM. Lurie was trying to make the point - I think - that he fired Pederson more because of philosophical differences than because of his performance, but as an owner, if you find yourself proclaiming that somebody did not deserve to get fired, he probably didn’t deserve to get fired.
“We have about five people in our organization that right now I could project that will be general managers in this league.”
Lurie was trying to defend Howie Roseman’s track record as a talent evaluator and the best he could come up with was that Roseman has surrounded himself with all these brilliant NFL personnel minds. Not that he’s drafted well, just that he’s built this amazing staff that’s helping him NOT draft well. Guess they’re a GM factory now, too. The Eagles don’t need a scouting department with five brilliant minds. They need a scouting department with ONE brilliant mind that has final say. As my colleague, Dave Zangaro said, “If you really do have five general managers in the organization, HIRE ONE OF THEM.”
NFL
“I think one-fourth of the time I've been owner in the last 20 years, we've appeared in an NFC Championship game. That's hard to do without really good talent.”
This was another deflection of a question about Roseman’s failure to stock the roster with talent. Lurie is correct that the Eagles have reached the NFC Championship Game about a quarter of the time over the last 20 years - it’s actually 30 percent, or six times since 2001. But that ignores one tiny teeny eensie detail. Five of those six NFC Championship Game appearances - 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2008 - came BEFORE ROSEMAN WAS G.M. The Eagles have reached one NFC Championship Game in 10 years under Roseman. That was an unforgettable season. But Lurie should save the “one-fourth of the time” nonsense for a conversation about Andy Reid and Tom Heckert.
“If we are identifying the best players, but they get taken two, three, four, five picks ahead of us, that's also part of the evaluation.”
This was another part of Lurie’s defense of Roseman. He actually said that Roseman and his scouting staff are correctly identifying the best players in the draft, but then they keep getting taken before the Eagles have a chance to pick them! THAT’S SO UNFAIR OF THE OTHER TEAMS! This is wrong for so many reasons. The whole idea of the draft is to identify the best players who are available WHEN YOU PICK. You don’t get a mulligan because someone else took them first. Plus it ignores the fact that Roseman’s two most prominent recent gaffes - D.K. Metcalf and Justin Jefferson - were taken AFTER the Eagles picked.
“If we find a head coach soon or it's early February, it's totally great. If we're the last team picking a head coach, that's great, too, because then you have all the opportunity in the world.”
Lurie apparently was actually saying that if the six other teams currently looking for a head coach hire someone first, the Eagles have an advantage because they won’t be bidding against anybody else for the best candidates. This conveniently ignores the minor fact that the reason you have this coaching search to yourself at that point is because SIX OF THE BEST CANDIDATES ALREADY GOT HIRED WHILE YOU WERE WAITING TILL EARLY FEBRUARY.
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