Nick Piccone
There’s been no shortage of opinions on Jeffrey Lurie’s decision to hire Doug Pederson as head coach of the Eagles after firing Chip Kelly. In fact, the coaching search looked to be really embarrassing after high quality candidates kept taking other jobs and one candidate, the highly respected Tom Coughlin, withdrew his name from consideration of the job due to the inability to bring his assistants from the Giants over to the Eagles.
Yeah, it turns out that story might be fabricated to make Coughlin look a little bit better. And if the story is true, we might owe Jeffrey Lurie and Howie Roseman an apology. Well, at least the people that wanted Coughlin to coach the Eagles. I wasn’t one of them.
According to a report in the New York Daily News, Coughlin came across like a petulant little kid during his interview with the Eagles and seemed hell bent on making the Giants look bad rather than taking this Eagles team under his wing and try to win a Super Bowl.
On Michael Kay’s ESPN radio show this week, Coughlin said, “Don’t think that there aren’t some hard feelings there. There certainly are. That’s just natural. But I try to control them when the moment is right.”
Apparently, the moment was not right when he interviewed with the Eagles one week after he left the Giants. Even though the Coughlin camp put a spin on the interview with the Philly higher-ups by saying Coughlin withdrew from consideration because he couldn’t bring the core of his staff with him after McAdoo was promoted to replace him and retained much of his crew, others have since said Coughlin was not going to be offered the job.
Why?
The interview was a disaster.
Coughlin acted like a 20-year old whose girlfriend had dumped him and he was trying to make her jealous by dating her No. 1 enemy on the rebound. NFL sources say his hard feelings for the Giants came through loud and clear in the interview with the Eagles brain trust, which included owner Jeffrey Lurie, and he was obsessed with how he felt wronged by the Giants. He was not forthcoming about his plans for his staff. He came off more concerned with making the Giants look bad than being consumed with coaching the Eagles.
So, I guess it’s a good thing Lurie decided against hiring Coughlin. Hiring a head coach that’s obsessed with his former team would only cause more headaches in the Eagles’ organization – an organization that needed some stability after Chip Kelly completely tarred and feathered it. Whether you like or dislike the Doug Pederson hiring, it certainly seems now like a more stable move than a Tom Coughlin-led Eagles franchise would be with the main objective being to “take the Giants down.” I mean, that’s all well and good, but what about the other 14 teams in the NFC? What about the teams in the AFC? Being obsessed with taking down the Giants is almost a turnoff if it means not worrying about your own coaching staff or any of the other teams in the league.
Now watch Coughlin go win a Super Bowl with the Cowboys.