2 minutes ago, Ace Nova said:

And I actually agreed with it. 

Maybe we should co-own an NFL team some time.

While everyone else hangs on every tweet and buys the most drastic version of the story the media can spin up to confirm their own biases that Howie is the bad guy here, its my suspicion that Doug, as an inexperienced coach when he took this job lacked the professional connections to build a very good coaching staff. 

Of course, hes a head coach... Big or small in comparison to other head coaches, candidates for the job nonetheless all come with an enormous ego. He surely had his convictions. But the eagles (Lurie and Howie) likely knew that he needed some help assembling a staff. To Doug, thats frustrating micromanagement by people stepping outside the boundaries of what their role should be. 

To the owner of the franchise, it probably feels like a necessary intervention. After 5 years, things could reasonably be expected to come to a head as Doug wants to do what he feels is right, and the eagles block him from doing what they know isnt good enough.

 

Did Doug have his toes stepped on repeatedly in coach hiring and firing? Yes that seems to be true.

Was Doug bad at evaluating his own? Yes absolutely. He didnt want to fire Greg Lewis. He could never find an adequate replacement for him through multiple tries. He wanted Press Taylor as his OC.... etc.

Consider the source, but...

 

1 minute ago, eagle45 said:

Maybe we should co-own an NFL team some time.

If I win the Mega Millions tonight, I'm in. 😎

Just now, Ace Nova said:

If I win the Mega Millions tonight, I'm in. 😎

I'll be your Howie.

1 minute ago, schuy7 said:

Consider the source, but...

 

I don’t think he’s ready to make that jump from Cincinnati to the nfl. I like fickell but seems like a big stretch. I guess if you believe he will grow with the job and you are rebuilding with young players. But i think there’s much better options at this point. 

 

I do want to acknowledge a few things.

When Wentz was the starting QB, many of us were all over him for every mistake he made, myself included.  And he was bad.  When he got benched, it was like crossing off one problem.  So Wentz' role in the dumpster fire was dismissed and the crosshairs settled on the coaching and surrounding personnel.  

Same thing with Doug and Howie.  Doug's gone and scapegoated.  Howie remains.  So there is now this tendency to dismiss Doug's hand in this.  Doug wasn't exactly an innocent passenger in this descent into darkness.  This horrible sequence of actions from the FO has made a martyr of Doug.  I'll tag along with that narrative just to pile on Lowie, but it's not entirely accurate.  

1 minute ago, Ace Nova said:

 

The browns and ravens are exclusively run first teams. The chiefs and bills are heavy pass. Also i think daboll controls that entire offense for the bills 

3 minutes ago, e-a-g-l-e-s eagles! said:

The browns and ravens are exclusively run first teams. The chiefs and bills are heavy pass. Also i think daboll controls that entire offense for the bills 

Right.  But it's either or.  To criticize a pass-first team for not running the ball more is nonsensical.  And that's the point. 

Just now, eagle45 said:

I do want to acknowledge a few things.

When Wentz was the starting QB, many of us were all over him for every mistake he made, myself included.  And he was bad.  When he got benched, it was like crossing off one problem.  So Wentz' role in the dumpster fire was dismissed and the crosshairs settled on the coaching and surrounding personnel.  

Same thing with Doug and Howie.  Doug's gone and scapegoated.  Howie remains.  So there is now this tendency to dismiss Doug's hand in this.  Doug wasn't exactly an innocent passenger in this descent into darkness.  This horrible sequence of actions from the FO has made a martyr of Doug.  I'll tag along with that narrative just to pile on Lowie, but it's not entirely accurate.  

Your last paragraph is exactly what I’ve been saying for a couple days. The front office comes off looking like dolts and pathetic in this.

 however Doug was not innocent in all this. We talked about it and there’s been plenty of people who have shown that Doug had not done a very good job this past year or with his coaches the past couple years after the SB. He’s done actually not a very good job the last couple years of maximizing the players he has had until December and playing to their strengths. It’s been something then on almost every podcast I listen to and people who watch the all 22 have said there’s majority of the time over the last 2 years they’re not planning to the strength of their team or the personnel that they have. That didn’t go away. He gets overshadowed by the fact that the front office is incompetent. That’s why the front office should’ve been blown up along with Doug. 

One good thing I'll say about Howie....

I don't trust Howie's eye for talent.  It's horrible.  BUT...this team is in need of an aggressive, ruthless knockdown and rebuild.  Half the battle is getting your FO to realize that.  And it's pretty clear Howie realizes that right now.  So there's that.

And the irrational, infuriating, impenetrable job security that Howie has...well, in a perverse way, it helps.  Howie's seat is so cold that he needs to wear thermal underwear just to prevent frost-bite.  I don't think he's going to hesitate to make long-term decisions moving forward, whereas another GM with his track record would be frantically making moves to salvage 2021. 

Making Doug out to be some innocent victim who ''lost to Howie'' is laughable and incorrect. Howie needs to go but the Doug situation has nothing to do with him. Since 2017 the franchise QB has regressed, the offense has regressed and gotten stale, and the coaching staff despite numerous attempts to fix has gotten worse. This year everything went to crap. Was it all Doug's fault, Howie's, Carson's, no. Everybody had a hand in it. Doug was a huge reason why this season was a dumpster fire though and those making him a martyr are morons.

13 minutes ago, schuy7 said:

Consider the source, but...

 

To get Luke Fickell, but not Marcus Freeman, would be so disappointing.

1 minute ago, eagle45 said:

One good thing I'll say about Howie....

I don't trust Howie's eye for talent.  It's horrible.  BUT...this team is in need of an aggressive, ruthless knockdown and rebuild.  Half the battle is getting your FO to realize that.  And it's pretty clear Howie realizes that right now.  So there's that.

And the irrational, infuriating, impenetrable job security that Howie has...well, in a perverse way, it helps.  Howie's seat is so cold that he needs to wear thermal underwear just to prevent frost-bite.  I don't think he's going to hesitate to make long-term decisions moving forward, whereas another GM with his track record would be frantically making moves to salvage 2021. 

Howie made the mess, but theres no one Id rather have here to fix it either. 

6 minutes ago, Ace Nova said:

Right.  But it's either or.  To criticize pass-first team for not running the ball more is nonsensical.  And that's the point. 

all those teams play to the strengths of the personnel which is something we’ve complained about for three years with doug. It could show that all those teams know the personnel that they have and adjust and adapt to the personnel they have to get to where they were. Also that their front office gives them good personnel instead of giving them lousy personnel

we’ve posted stuff where he doesn’t adapt to the personnel he has until December last 3 years. Even this year he decided to run a trick play with ward as a passer. So for 20 games until week 17 in a meaningless game he decided against it.  So you’re telling me with playoffs on the line the last couple of weeks prior to week 17 and last year in the playoffs where they could’ve used a spark he decided to not use that but in a meaningless game he was willing to do so. There’s multiple instances I could give you were doug decided to not utilize guys like reagor or sanders or others to their strengths in each of the last three years for the first couple months of the season then miraculously figure that out with three different QBs in December

 So is the new norm we don’t know what we’re doing with our personnel until December and then we finally adjust to the personnel that we have in December? Because that’s not good enough to win big in this league just being able to adapt and adjust in December. And this December he didn’t do that great of a job because in the second half of games their offense had hollow yards or they just didn’t do anything and had an average of 4.3 points in the second half over the last month for the season

5 minutes ago, HazletonEagle said:

Howie made the mess, but theres no one Id rather have here to fix it either. 

Wouldn’t that be like getting an arsonist to be Fire Chief?

Just now, Alphagrand said:

Wouldn’t that be like getting an arsonist to be Fire Chief?

Its more like having the Chief put out the fire. 

Yup. 

I have some questions that I know we'll never get answered, but I'm dying to know.  And for the record, it's also not impossible that Doug and Howie did actually agree on some of these things.

1.  Tops, for me, is who pushed for the 12 personnel? 

2. Who was behind the Torrey Smith -> Mike Wallace -> Desean Jackson lineage of old fast guys forced into the role of the token spacer in the offense?

3.  Who was behind the concept of the offense having ONE token "spacer" at Z with the "power forward" X?

Problem #1 led to investing in a #2 TE (I really don't want to hear it about how Goedert is a stud) over a WR who could have broken the chain of futility in problem #2.  

Combining problem #1 with #3 is what led to 2019's horribly un-explosive and slow offense that lived at the LOS.  And that led to the overcorrection and reaching for multiple unprepared speed WRs in 2020.

I always thought it was inconceivably irrational to combine problem #1 with #3...and I think the reason behind it is that, in this tug of war, there were different people behind each one and we got the worst of all their ideas.

 

Just now, ManuManu said:

Yup. 

It may not be necessary to interfere with the next head coach's staff picks. Biased media is acting like Lurie interfered with Chip, and Reid's staffs. Didnt happen... 

 

1 minute ago, ManuManu said:

Yup. 

Expect the FO to take a page out of their own book and assemble the staff first so that it's a moot point with the incoming head coach.  They'll just get whomever is OK with it.

2 minutes ago, HazletonEagle said:

Its more like having the Chief put out the fire. 

 

20 minutes ago, e-a-g-l-e-s eagles! said:

I don’t think he’s ready to make that jump from Cincinnati to the nfl. I like fickell but seems like a big stretch. I guess if you believe he will grow with the job and you are rebuilding with young players. But i think there’s much better options at this point. 

Agreed, but then you have the other side of things...the better options, do they really want to deal with Howie?  Maybe a guy like Fickell sees this as his chance at the NFL and will deal with it to get to the league.

La Canfora is always wrong. Dude somehow gets paid to be wrong all the time. I could do that for half the cost.

6 minutes ago, ManuManu said:

Yup. 

I think they'll overcorrect here just like they do everything else. Wouldn't be surprised if the new coach picks his staff AND has a greater say in his personnel.