Philadelphia Eagles should heed Hall of Famer’s thoughts on McDaniels

Well, if you’re a Philadelphia Eagles, you shouldn’t be surprised. At the time of this story being published, we’re a little over a week into Philly’s search for Doug Pederson‘s replacement, and, as you might imagine, the fan base is split on several ideas.

Some want Duce Staley to lead this team (if he has two strong coordinators). Others are firmly behind continuing this search or waiting for Eric Bieniemy to be available for an interview. Some of our staff has even thought outside the box (or at least the box that the Birds are thinking in). Where’s Jim Caldwell’s interview? How come the Philadelphia Eagles haven’t taken the time to reach out to him?

At the time of this story being published, nine days will have passed since Doug Pederson was unceremoniously given the ax, and the only people we’ve seen emerge as ‘serious’ candidates are Duce and Josh McDaniels.

Like the former, the latter has created an exorbitant amount of conversation, but it’s in times like these where we should probably defer to people who are closer to the conversation for opinions that are truly of the ‘expert’ nature. With that being said, our staff went back and dug up the wise words of a Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee.

Philadelphia Eagles fans, meet Champ Bailey.

Ever since the first time he stepped onto an NFL surface, we all knew that Champ Bailey was headed to the Pro Football Hall of Fame when his playing days were over. In 226 career games with 222 starts (if you include the 11 postseason games he played in), Champ racked up 966 total tackles. 863 of those were of the solo variety.

He also tallied for 54 interceptions. That includes an astonishing ten-interception campaign where he racked up 162 return yards on those picks in 2006 to go along with three sacks, 13 pass breakups, seven forced fumbles, and four fumble recoveries. The guy knows a thing or two about football.

Once upon a time, actually it was around 2015, Champ sat down with controversial radio host Colin Cowherd, and Josh McDaniels’ name came up. Though he stated McDaniels was ‘probably the smartest coach he ever played for’, he also shared something else about New England’s offensive coordinator’s personality, something we’ve heard a time or two and something that we can still see exists in his personality today. Here’s a quote:

"He didn’t come in trying to earn respect. He demanded it, and you have to earn respect. He rubbed a lot of people the wrong way in the building (and) in the organization, and (then there was) the whole thing in London. I don’t know. Something about London gets coaches fired. I have no idea what’s going on over there… He definitely deserved to get fired for what he was accused of over there… I mean it was unfortunate for the team, but we felt very relieved when he left the locker room."

Take that with a grain of salt if you choose to. Sure, it’s a clip that’s almost six years old, but still, you can see some of the validity in that today. McDaniels still comes across as a guy who demands respect and didn’t earn it. Sure, he accomplished a lot in New England, but he also had the greatest coach of all time in his upline, and he had Tom Brady on the field. There are a lot of offensive coordinators that would have killed for an opportunity like that one.

Can you imagine what Kyle Shanahan would have done there? What about Sean McVay or Matt LaFleur? We’ll never know of course, but here’s what we can see. No team, other than Philly, seriously considered McDaniels for their head-coaching gig, and that respect that he thinks he deserves? Well, Duce has actually earned his within the Philadelphia Eagles’ organization. We’ll have to wait and see where things go from here as Philly’s coaching search continues.