PHLY Philadelphia Eagles Podcast - Bring it on: Jalen Hurts, Philadelphia Eagles prep for Week 1 rematch with Jordan Love, Packers

Episode Date: January 6, 2025

We have an opponent, a place and time. The 14-3 No. 2 seed Eagles will open the playoffs against the Green Bay Packers at the LINC on Sunday at 4:30. Will Jalen Hurts be cleared to play? And if so, can he shake off the rust in order to get the ball to A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, Dallas Goedert and, maybe more importantly, Saquon Barkley? Can Vic Fangio use Jalen Carter, Cooper DeJean, Zack Baun and Quinyon Mitchell to corral Jordan Love, Jayden Reed, Josh Jacobs and the high-powered Packers offense? Plus, as the NFL coaching carousel gets going, who might the Eagles lose this offseason?Zach Berman and Bo Wulf toss those questions around before Fran Duffy joins with a brief review of Tanner McKee’s star-making performance in the season finale. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Monday presented by Bet365. Download the Bet365 app and use code P-H-L-Y-365. When you sign up, whenever the moment, it's never ordinary at Bet-365. That's right. We got a new intro music for the playoffs. We're banging it hard. Zach Berman is here. We've got a lot to talk about.

The Eagles are ready to play the Packers next Sunday at 4.30 in the afternoon. We've got firings around the NFL. We're going to talk about that. We got a lot to talk about, Zach. How you doing? You got a fresh cut on a snow. day Monday. I'm excited for the week ahead. I'm excited for the playoffs. This is this is a fun time of year. If you, if you do this for a living like we do and you spend, you know, 48 weeks a year waiting

for these four. So eager to see what happens here. A lot of talk on the postgame show last night about the snow day plans. Zach, how did you spend it? I wrote it. I finished the Tandum McKay story this morning, went through some of the Eagles Giants game, didn't do that much of that. I went on Anthony's show at 930. I responded to some emails. I structured out the week. Chat it with the kids a bit. I went over and had a little father.

It sounds so formal. Like you went to the office water cooler and checked in and asked them how their weekend. I had a little father's son haircut. and then prep for the show. Wonderful. Well, we got a lot to get to. What about you? How's your morning, Ben?

It's been good. We had a, we had a case he had a friend over. That's good because then they're playing together. Got some work done. Send some emails. Opened up a file in WordPress that you were not allowed to open. I didn't open it. We'll see how it goes.

We're going to talk to Fran Duffy, the handsome, erudite, young, man to break down Tanner McKee's performance. We're going to do that towards the later end of the show. You don't believe that Franon's erudite? I saw you furrow your brow there. We don't need to do this. I don't understand.

You think he's a dummy? You think he's a football dummy? No, no, no. It was more, I don't like the descriptions of the way someone looks as like apt. Oh, you don't think he's handsome. You think he's ugly. No, I just don't think he's.

think it's a description that we should use for anybody. Like it's, it has nothing to do with, uh, with him on the show. So yeah, it's not worth getting into. Okay. Well, I think Fran's watching. Fran, I think that you're unattractive man. And, uh, I'm sorry that Zach doesn't think so. Uh, so we'll do that towards the end of the show.

Uh, lots of news and notes around the NFL to get to some of it with, with Eagles ties. And then, of course, we got to start talking about this Eagles Packers matchup. Now, just to set things up for the week, you know we've got those two o'clock. shows every day, but it's the playoffs. We got to add a little extra. We're going to add a bonus show Wednesday night, prime time, 8 o'clock. We know that Les Bowen is going to be joining us for that show.

Should be a good space filler in the week, I think, because Wednesday is when we're going to find out is Jalen Hertz practicing? What are the guys say in the locker room? So a good hole to fill there. We've got a nice primetime show. And we turn it up to 10, Zach, even though you and I are not playing in the playoffs. We're going to bring it a little extra hard. Yeah, absolutely.

We have to, you know, Nick or Chip Kelly used to say you don't rise to the occasion. You sink your training. But I don't think it's one of the other. Like I think when time calls for you have to step up and we need to step up here. It's a big week for us for the show for PHY. Since we last spoke, we know the egos are locked into their time window on Sunday. It will be the late afternoon window. The Fox game seems like Fox got priority there.

So the Eagles will be playing at 430 at the link against the Green Bay Packers. The line for that game has already moved a little bit on Bet365. Opened at three and a half in the Eagles favor. Has now moved to four and a half. I think some places have seen it go as high as five and a half. So early action on the birds, is that the way that you open the week yourself feeling, Zach? That the Eagles should feel good about this matchup,

especially now with the news that Christian Watson, the deep threat receiver for the Packers, expected to be diagnosed with a torn ACL, which obviously will take him out of the playoffs. Yeah, to an extent, right? I like the Eagles more than the Packers. I think they're the better team this year. That said, the Packers are a real good team.

I've been reading stories today about them having a down year. I don't see it that way. DVOA doesn't suggest as much. And then the other part of this is, and I use this line on Anthony's show, but this cannot be dismissed. The NFL playoffs, it's not the NBA, but you know, it's not a seven-game series.

If a quarterback gets hot on a given Sunday or your team doesn't show up and have your best game, you're out. Like all this is done. So the Packers are a team that can absolutely come in here and win. They are, they're well coached. They're tough. They have talent on both sides of the ball. They're experienced. So I see in the chat, someone's saying Patriots or I'm sorry, Packers or Frauds, I don't see it that way. I think the Packers are a legit opponent and the Eagles

are going to have to earn this win. It's an important thing to remember. I think the way you framed it is correct. There are two truths at once here. One is that, as we've talked about, everything that has happened in the regular season for the Eagles is going to be cast aside and washed away and we're just going to remember what happens in the playoffs. Like that is how this team is going to be judged. It is how they're going to be remembered. The 18 weeks were prologue for whatever comes next. Like the expectations for this team are to sniff the Super Bowl window, right?

At the same time, yeah, these are some coin flips. And football games are weird. and if the Eagles and Packers play 10 times or 100 times, I would expect that the Eagles would win the majority of those games. But we've all seen weird football games. And as you said, Jordan Love can get super hot. You know, the ball can bounce one way or another. And even if the Eagles are six-point favorites, you know,

one bounce of the ball is a touchdown the other way. And that's just an unfortunate loss. And so it is harrowing territory for a team and for, you know, all of these players. and coaches and front office people who have put in so much work to get this team ready for this moment that a little bit of it is out of your control. But I do think that just lining things up right now the way things are, the Eagles should feel good about the matchup. The news of the Christian Watson injury, how significant do you think that is? I think it's significant.

And I think the love thing is worth paying attention to as well. I mean, he's going to play, but who knows how hampered he will be. I think smarter football people than myself. myself might tell you that, you know, Christian Watson, while he himself does not have the craziest numbers, although on a per route basis, he is their top wide receiver on a, you know, yards per route run basis, the speed that he brings changes a little bit of the shape of the defense. They have to respect his over-the-top ability. And so to some degree that opens things up, whether that's over the middle of the field for Jaden Reed or for Romeo Dobbs. I do think that that Jaden Reed is like all of a sudden the player that the Eagles are going to be worried about.

And that's why I think that Cooper DeGine is a real player to watch this week and an interesting player for the Eagles. Obviously, he did not play in that week one game. He was not ready as deemed by Vic Fangio. That didn't happen until after the buy. So I think the Watson thing is significant. But I also think that they have enough players on the outside and they probably want to lean on Josh Jacobs enough that their offense is still dangerous. I mean, it's a top five offense by DVOA. Christian Watkins is

good, Watson is good but he's not changing them entirely. Yeah, for the Eagles fans who have not consumed Green Bay coverage today or only heard about it tangentially, you mentioned the Jordan Love injury. He heard his funny bone, basically.

I think the ulnar nerve is the more technical term, but he heard his funny bone. And if anyone has ever hit their funny bone, you know it affects the rest of your hand. Matt Lafleur said he's going to play against the Eagles. He's like he's definitely going to play.

Jordan Love said he expects to play. So I don't know the nature of how that injury will affect him in the coming days. He did have a hard time gripping yesterday, right, because of what that nerve does. He did throw on the sideline, but it sounds like he's going to play. We're going to have now both these quarterbacks, obviously, there's injury, injury. We'll talk to Nick Siriani. He's scheduled to talk to him at 315. I doubt Nick's going to give us any tangible update on J-On Hertz.

He's stopped here before, but it's possible if it's good news, he'll pass it along. Sure. But like you said, Wednesday is the day to watch. Otherwise, the Eagles are the healthier team going into this than the Packers. You mentioned the Christian Watson injury. That's a devastating one for Green Bay in the sense that he's an important player. You mentioned how he stretches the field. They do have a lot of weapons on offense.

but it's one of those where they kind of, they thrive with the strength of the group. So you take someone away from the group, it's hard to replace a guy like that. It's not quite this easy. Yeah. But you do think in general, zooming out that part of the strength of the Packers passing game,

aside from Jordan Love, is that, as you say, they have four or so wide receivers who are all very competent and can all beat anybody one-on-one. And you would think about against most defenses. Most defenses do not have three or four guys who can cover all of those guys one-on-one.

That is the strength of the Seagull's defense to some degree. And so not to say that the Packers offense is not scary, but you would think from a secondary perspective, the Eagles defense is particularly suited to handle what the Packers' offense is throwing out then. Yeah, you're absolutely right. But to build on that, when these two teams played back in, September now, week one, as Cam Jergin said yesterday, it seems like a year ago. I know the Eagles defense has improved significantly since then.

The numbers back it up. You look at the yards per carry, they gave up that game. You look at the explosive they gave up that game. The Eagles are better since then. That said, Matt Lefleur, who I think has earned his reputation for being a high-level play caller, high-level offensive schemer, he's going up against defensive personnel that he doesn't know, right? The Eagles were at a different stage than they are now.

So the Eagles are better, but there's more film for Lafleur to dissect for this Eagles team. So I'm curious to see what that matchup is because, yeah, I would agree that they can spread the ball around. The bit that I've checked out, Tucker Kraft is someone who is better than I expected him to be. You know, I remember going into the year. I thought Luke Musgrave was going to have a big game. Luke Musgrave got banked up. But Tucker Craft's been real valuable for them this year at tight end. But the key from my perspective is Jordan Love, is can Jordan Love turning on?

Because look, I'll tell the audience now you can take a shot every time I bring up that Cowboys game last year. And I'll probably bring it up a lot this week. and the reason I bring up that Cowboys game last year is because to me there's there is it is comparable right the two seed real hot going in or a good team going in like the Cowboys were then and Cowboys were home legit Super Bowl aspirations and the Jordan Love came in and played the game of his life that day and the fact that he's that he's done it on that stage shows show you that he has it in him and I think that's the that's the variable that's the concern here Zach peckinus migrate for me what I would consider to be like the

three at home injuries okay so peck nest migrate a funny bone bang a paper cut and a stubbed toe um the stubbed toe

are we talking structural or just nail like our you know is there You don't know. You don't know going in. It's going to be it's going to be it's going to be a dealer's choice. Yeah. Okay. So. So if I'm if I'm nesting the injury, it means that that's the one that you're going to be you're going to be successful susceptible to the rest of your life. Oh, okay. I thought you meant like which one is like I'm least concerned about the funny bone injury. But that you can you can cast aside and say you'll never have to worry about that ever again. Okay. So then I guess I am, I'm nesting the paper cut because it's a nuisance, but it's not affecting your life, right? The, I'm pecking. I'm pecking the funny bone injury because it stinks when you have it, but after a few minutes. Does dissipate. Yeah. Yeah, it dissipates. And I guess I'm, I'm migrating the stubtoe because there's all types of ramifications that you could have from that, you know. I would venture to say the worst

pain of my life physical pain of my life was a severe stubbed toe okay toe just went like the nail just went black immediately like

yeah that's something that's what it was lost like and yeah that's my worry because there's long term ramifications the point of vomit you want to do it was so painful yeah it's like you hate you know I have a stack of printing paper here

and I always like shudder before I pick it up because you get that paper cut and it aggravates you, but that's more of like the annoyance and it's not like, it's not affecting your, your day-to-day life, a paper cut.

Depends where it is, potentially. You know, if you get up between the fingers or something like that, you know, you're typing, but yeah.

Yeah, but a stub toe. I mean, yeah, that three weeks later, you can get the, you know, you can get some type of infection around the, so there's,

yeah, you got to be careful with the stub toe. Do you have things, do you ever like, late at night, step on a kid's toy. You ever get that one? There's the house too clean for that to happen. Yeah, Emily's very organized.

Emily's very organized. No, there's there's not stepping on the toy. No, no, there's there's not that. Okay. I mean, sometimes they're all like, I'll kick something. Like, I won't, you know, like the door. or something like that. But no, not a, I don't step.

There's not typically toys. If anything, you know, what I do is I'll trip over like, if I come home late for my game and I don't put my shoes away and like the shoes are next to the bed and I get up and I trip over the bed. Wait a second. You wear your shoes up to the bed? Well, not in the bed, but yeah, I'll run upstairs and get changed.

Like, yeah, I don't. You don't take your shoes off when you go in the house? I'm supposed to, supposed to, but sometimes after a late game, like I'm running right up, not even taking the shoes off, and I should.

That's interesting to me. Yeah, that's not, it doesn't happen often enough that we need to spend any time on it during a... Julia in the chat says, whoa, I also,

I feel flabbergasted by this. Yeah. Yeah, I... No, because there's times when... The chat is going wild, A pair of indoor... I don't have a pair of indoor shoes. No, I do not.

You be the deviant. Yeah. All right. Let's... This is potentially somehow the most controversial thing you've ever said on the show. Yeah, seriously.

Seriously. I already share way too much of my life on the show. So no need to get into the vet. Yeah, this is fascinating. All right. In a minute, after the sad, after the ad rate that comes up next, we want to talk about the zoom out from the Eagles for a second,

talk about the things that have gone on around the league with potentially some Eagles ties, and then after that we'll get to Fran Duffy. But anything else on the Eagles front, Zach, that you think is worth discussing on this Monday before we hear from Nick Siriani. Yeah, I think from the injury front, the one to monitor this week,

other than Joe, and of course, there's Nikobi Dean. He's dealing with the ab injury. He did progress last week, but this is something to monitor. I know there's intrigue about the backup quarterback, performance aside. I'm expecting Kenny Pickett to be, to be fine. You know, he progressed. I'm expecting Kenny Pickett to be better for the postseason.

I still think Pickett's going to be the number two, I suppose we'll see. And then, no, if we just want to outline quickly, basically because we didn't know what the matchups would be last night when we spoke, the Eagles would play if the Eagles can't play Washington in the second round. Okay. So the Eagles play Tampa Bay unless, you know, unless Washington wins. Right. So the Eagles are the Eagles are the two seed.

They play Sunday afternoon. If they win that game, they will then be watching the Sunday night game, which is Tampa, Washington. And they will know if they have won that have, that have Tampa. Tampa wins, Tampa is coming to Philly the next week. Yes. And that if Washington wins, they will then play the winner of the 4-5 game, the Los Angeles Minnesota game on Monday night. And because of that, they will also know when they're going to play, right?

If the league holds to what it's done in recent years, which is to split up one NFC game, one an AFC game on Saturday during the divisional round, one of each on Sunday in the divisional round. And if that is the case, the teams that play Monday, must play on Sunday. And so the Eagles will then know whether they're going to play on Saturday or Sunday. Sure.

And look, the Saints aren't on the the Saints aren't in the playoffs. But if they were, there could be a path where it's like, you know, you take care of all recent history in the NFC playoffs. Of course, Green Bay is the team that were to the Eagles in 2010. The Eagles lost the Tampa Bay.

twice here in the in the past three years in the postseason and then new Orleans is the only other energy team to beat them in the playoffs um in the past uh two decades okay that's well said now what did you what did you think of the game last night between the vikings and lions did that change at all your perspective on the road to the super bowl for the eagles it didn't change it i mean i've said all along and I stand by this, and I know our listeners won't enjoy this, but I think the Lions are the clear favorite in the NFC, even with the injuries. And I know they had another one with Terry and Arnold.

I said that going into Detroit, I kept talking about the value of the one seed, going into Detroit is going to be difficult. That's a talented team. That's a well-coached team. Now there's a lot of different, there's a lot different variables here. First off, I thought Minnesota played them tough last night.

I mean, it's the Minnesota missed some fourth downs near the goal line that that would have made that a different type of game. But I think Minnesota is better than Tampa Bay. And Detroit would have to beat Minnesota in the, you know, if Minnesota wins, Detroit sees Minnesota. And that's if Tampa Bay beats Washington. Yes, yes. If Tampa beats beats Washington, fair enough. So we'll, and, you know, Dan Campbell said to Kevin O'Conbell said to Kevin O'Connor. McConnell last night. We'll see you in two weeks.

So I'm curious to see how this plays out. I know there's Eagles fans who don't want to see Todd Bowles and that Bucs defense. I don't think the Bucks are as much of a threat as maybe their reputation would suggest. I think that, and look, clip this if the Eagles play them next week and lose, right? But, yeah, I think the Eagles can beat Tampa Bay, especially at home. I think Detroit was the game that would really concern. If I was doing a power ranking of teams that you don't want to see, it's really the NFC North.

Detroit's one. I would probably say Green Bay, 2, Minnesota 3. Interesting. Yeah, Washington 4, Tampa 5. Yeah, like you said that Minnesota played in tough last night, and that was true to some degree in the first half. And yes, there were some fourth down disparity there.

but I know that teams have sort of underestimated Minnesota and like nationally people have underestimated Minnesota all year long but if that team comes into the link I would I would not be super scared yeah that's fair and I think that the way that they play on defense maybe plays its way into the Eagles hand a little bit as for Tampa I think you know God forbid I don't want to take anything that that he's working on out of his hands and and risk potentially being accused of stealing takes.

But I think that EJ was sort of polling people on, I don't remember when it was at the end of last week, about which team you think the Eagles would least want to play? And I said, like, I know that there's, you know, the lions were fading, but to me, the worst matchup is still at Detroit, like having to go to Detroit. And I think that that's true. But as for Tampa,

I kind of think that I would feel worse about playing the Bucks this weekend. then I would next weekend, if that makes sense. Like if there was the unknown of, okay, here we go to the playoffs, and we've got to conquer that Bucks demon, and Jalen's coming off this injury, like, you know, we're a little bit worried about that. I think if the Eagles are able to come out and, like, win their wild card round game,

you can afford to feel a little bit better about, you know, whatever ghosts of bowls are dancing around in your head. That's fair. But we can both agree, Detroit. is like Detroit's worthy of respect. Detroit's a bona fide heavyweight. Absolutely. Yeah.

They played like a, a B game yesterday and won by, you know, free touchdowns or whatever it was. Yeah, well coach, tough. And especially in Detroit is that's such that that that that place, you know, I have respect for those fans. And that that place looks, looks absolutely rocking. I mean, I hope as a reporter as a, you know,

we get a chance to chronicle that. Like that'd be cool NFC championship game, Eagles, Lions, that'd be cool to cover. I want to do that road trip, man. You're a sponsor. Okay. Yeah, you love getting on the road driving up. Absolutely. You're more of a driving to a place guy than a flying.

I'm a man on the road. Absolutely. And why is that? No, no. I don't know. I don't know. I'd say how you see the world. I like driving.

It does. So, in a. It is like it is so inefficient. Do you see the story of the guy who got stuck in his Waymo at the airport circling around? Would let him out? I did not see that. Is there a punchline? No, that's a true story that happened.

So you're cherry picking one story as, yeah. I mean, I look, if you listen to our viewers and listeners who've taken Waymos, I bet they would swear by them. swear at them no swear by them swear by them we'll see all right let's take a break afraid what you can't understand isn't that about the own lyric

back back after this well it's time for me to tell you about our friends at game time that's right we got a game coming up on Sunday 430 you want to try to get in that building root on the Eagles

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Visit Ace Hardware Home Services online at www. www.aisehardware homeservices.com to get you started on your next project. All right, Zach, obviously today, a very newsy day in the NFL, although potentially a little bit less newsy than some people might have expected. Give me your, we'll get to all of the things that happened, but your number one. takeaway. What do you think was the most interesting decision made today? Jacksonville keeping Trent bulky. Absolutely agree. Outrageous. Insane.

Like, it must be a point where... What are we doing? I'm not one of these guys who's like, oh, he must have... He's like, Zach and Bo's hands coming together in agreement. I mean, come on. You can't keep surviving these head coaches. You can't keep making these questionable decisions. I don't know.

Yeah, I don't know what they're doing with Trent Balke. And the other part, too, is like even, let's presuppose or suppose for a second that Shot Khan believes he's a talented evaluator or there's things there. He's done a better than average job at bringing players in. that they, which I, yeah, have not been made the most of by the coaching staff. Yeah, which, which I disagree with. But, but let's for the, list for a moment.

It's just for argument's sake. Yeah, just for argument's sake. This is going to hurt your ability to get a head coach. A hundred percent. Because you, your head coach is going to want it. There needs to be some type of synchronization between the head coach and the front office. And if, if they're not on parallel timelines. And so if Trent Balky's fired in a year, then you have a head coach working for a GM,

who wasn't involved in hiring him. And that's how this friction gets created. And Khan has already said that the new head coach is going to report to him, not the GM. Yeah. You can't keep doing this dance, man. Exactly. Yes. So that's number one.

Number two. Totally agree. Absolutely insane. And the sign of a franchise that doesn't know what it's doing. Number two is the giant. Trent bulky. Yeah. Number two is the Giants.

And, And there's a few reasons here, okay? Because one, I think that John Mara does not want to be the guy who fires the coach every two years. He thinks that like stability matters. But this is the problem fundamentally. And I go back, look, I'll give Jeffrey Luricudos on this, is that when you put a coach on notice and a GM on notice, which they did in a critical, it's one thing if you do it in a year when like you, you, go all in like Nick Siriani last year, you know, you get to go all in. But if you're at a point where they need to build the roster up and it's like,

we expect you to win next year, they're going to start making decisions that are not best for the long. So like if you're, if you're, you know, Joe Shane and you love a quarterback, it's like you go get them because if it screws up, it's the next guy's problem that you traded all these picks or you give a bad contract. It's the next guy's problem. Right. Like you're going to do everything you can to maximize this upcoming season, which is so bad for the long-term planning. Zach, I feel very uncomfortable right now because you want to agree too much. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah, like I think it's, and again, I'm not trying to defend John Merritt. Like, I think it's noble if you believe instability. But I think there can't be a point where just because you fired Joe Judge and Pat Schumer and Ben McAdoo, that can't, like, you have to make this decision. independent of that decision. To choose stability for stability's sake is not the right choice. It's like, oh, well, everybody tells me that the best teams are the stable teams. Like, well, so let's stay the course.

Like, you know, if evidence tells you that that's not the right move, you shouldn't do it just to be stable. And for a lot of the reasons you said, like, they're going to have a high draft pick. The timelines, the incentives are not aligned. It's a little bit silly. I like I could be talked into it makes more sense to keep both than to fire one

potentially because of some of the things we talked about with Jacksonville because then the you know they're not on the same page but yeah I mean I think I think I think I mean as as as Shield tweeted out like over the last decade the Giants have like the worst record in the NFL over 10 years It's the Jaguars and then the Jets have one game better than the Giants. Like they are, they think of themselves as this Paragon franchise.

They have been an absolute dumpster fire for a decade now. So they don't know what they're doing. I thought that his, I thought the Mera press release was very funny. And I was especially tickled by the parentheses around Tish, Steve, parentheses, Tish. Like it really made me laugh. It felt very passive aggressive to Tish, but also like out of place from The rest of the thing, I just, it's, for Eagles fans, it continues to be a blessing.

Yeah. I just, I think, the reason I'm hesitant here is because you hear the term deserve. Like, this guy doesn't deserve to be fired after, after three years or two years. And deserves a hard word to use because you, like, for instance, Jared Mayo doesn't deserve to be, you know, doesn't deserve to be fired. But, yeah, but at the same time, I don't think you keep someone just for, like, just because it's like, it's, it's, you feel bad firing him, right? Now, this is the thing. And Mike Vrable might be the best coach out there. By the way, shout out to Zach Rosenblatt did a great story on Mike Vrable last week.

I enjoyed that. But the Patriots didn't have a search last year, okay, because it was in Mayo's contract for him to take over. and then if you if you fire mayo ostensibly to hire rable once again you're you're not doing due diligence on a search again and so that that process there i don't love but i still think i just don't think you hire gerard mayo if you're expecting a one year turnaround like that that didn't yeah now they were kind of they were kind of locked into it like they could be on contractually locked into mayo last year uh but yeah that's a that's a that's a tough situation for for me for for for for meo because i That's a bad, that's a bad roster. Now, I don't think he helped himself out this year, but that's, that's a really bad roster. But I just keep going back to what Jacksonville did as ridiculous because, look, Doug Peterson. I'm not here to defend Doug Peterson. I don't think Doug probably deserve to be fired.

Yeah, yeah. But Doug was brought in to, like, clean up the Urban Meyer mess, okay? And you're keeping the GM who is there for the Urban Meyer mess now. Yes. Right. It's like, uh, maybe that's why. Maybe he knows what really happened. Yeah. If like Trent Balky's whole defense was, well, those were, you know, that was urban doing that, right? Uh, I really didn't get a chance. Well, now you, you hired a coach. You had these, you had all this draft capital. You had all this money. I just, I just don't get it. I'm curious to see what happens in

Vegas. I'm curious to see what happens. Uh, no official decision in Dallas, yeah. Yeah, curious to what happens in Dallas. I got to think McCarthy's not coming back. Oh, you think so. Yeah, I don't think so. Do you think he's coming back? I was leaning towards he is coming back, but it is interesting that there's no word yet. Yeah, I mean, it's, and by the way, this is like, this is exactly why

Nick Siriani, there's going to be a decision for him after the season, because having a lame duck coach is, like, the oddest thing, you know, like if they just don't make a decision, I think a lame duck coach is okay. It's a limb duck general manager makes no sense because it's a person who has to be working on parallel timelines A coach's job is to try to win every week and so the incentives aren't messed up there necessarily Yeah, it's just it's like it could come to a point where they don't fire McCarthy they just let the contract latch

Yeah, right? So let's do this. So surprisingly right now only five jobs open Stack rank for me and and let's go ahead and throw Dallas in there and we'll say that we'll say that Antonio Pierce stays for whatever reason so let's say Dallas New Orleans Chicago Jacksonville the Jets and the Patriots how would you are Zach Berman the hottest not I'm not talking about your looks I'm talking about like people want you to be hired you're the number one perspective head coach on the market how are you stack ranking those six and I'm not looking at it from like a living perspective from my family. I'm looking at it purely from football perspective, right? Okay.

I put Chicago number one. I like Caleb Williams. I think they have talent on that team. Now, you need to understand what's going on with the front office. Is Ryan Poles a lame duck, or I shouldn't say lame duck, but it's like Ryan Poles general managing for his job this year. And then they could bring in a new GM or something like that.

But the Bears would be number one to me. Um, I would go Jacksonville number four. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Number two. What a weird thing to go one. Yeah. No, no, no.

No, sorry. I'm looking at a little. Number two. Yeah. I would go Jacksonville number two because I like, I, well, you got to work with Balchie. So probably not. Yeah.

I guess the Patriots number two. I like Drake May. I just, there's a lot. There's a big talent void there. Once again, you're, you're going in with a GM in place. So you got to be comfortable with. with Elliot Wolf. The Patriots haven't shown a proclivity to spend.

So I say Jacksonville because, like, I think, I just keep thinking Jacksonville's like, they should be better than they are. I mean, a year ago, a year ago, they were sitting at seven and two, right? Or seven and three and Trevor Lawrence gets injured. I mean, if you're the kind of person who thinks that you can go in and out in politic, Trent Balkie.

Yeah, that's the thing. Yeah. And like and muscle your way in and then get him whacked next year. You're a good, you're a good inter-office player. And potentially Jacksonville is interesting. But yeah, I think it's tough to want to work with Bulkie. And I mean, that franchise has just been so bad for so long. Yeah, I mean, they have a great new practice facility.

They're building a new, you know, they're doing a major stadium constructions, although they're going to have this weird two-year period where they don't have a stadium. that's always tough for the players. But yeah, I would try to force Bulkie out. I actually think New England might be number two. Because I think you could argue number one. Interesting. The bears have been so, like the ownership with the bears,

they've just been so bad for so long. Sure. I like Caleb Williams too. But I don't think that there's differentiation necessarily between how sure I am that Caleb Williams is going to be a superstar versus Drake May going to be a superstar. are. And so I might rather take the infrastructure in New England. And you're not the guy replacing Belichick.

And what's your view on the Jets? I think the Jets were probably dead last of those six. I think the Saints are. I don't think so. All right. Sell me on New Orleans other than living in New Orleans. Stability. It is actually an organization that pays money. Like they're cash forward. They're always willing to push the salary cap down the line. now Mickey Loomis I don't love

but he's not the worst and they're patient and it's an easy division yeah that's our cap spot now you can just take it on the chin for one year which is if they hired me that's that's what I would say to do I would be like let's stop playing for 10 wins

and let's take it on the chin for a year their quarterback situation is tough I don't like the quarterbacks in this draft class coming up. And I don't know what they're going to do at quarterback. I don't like the talent on their roster. I actually, I don't like that, that, that New Orleans situation. I actually think the Jets, the Jets have a lot of talent.

I still feel their quarterback situation has been an absolute mess. Aaron, I mean, they. I think there's a pretty good case to be made that with Daniel Snyder out of the league, it's the worst owner in the league. Yeah, true. That's the, there's the most. Now, the thing is you can come in with a GM, so there's going to be synergy there if you're the coach. Yeah.

Name I would, I would watch out. Yeah. Yeah. Good facilities. If that matters to you. No quarterback. No quarterback. And again, that's like, what's your, how are you going to get a quarterback?

That's the big question you're asking everybody. I'm curious to see if Tennessee opens here. I mean, Calahan would be one and done. I think that'd be interesting. The teams having the number one pick, a new stadium opening in 2027. But yeah, I would. Why is the stadium a consideration for you as the head? No, the practice facility more than the stadium.

The practice facility. Yeah, because that's where you're going into work every day. I do think that matters. I mean, these guys spend 18 hours down the list. How really different is one practice facility from another? That feels like so far down the list of important things. I disagree with you there because I think. Yeah, because I think that that matters a lot.

One place has a, they have equally bad owners, but one place has a quarterback and one place has a better practice facility. You would take the practice facility? I would take the quarterback. But first off, I think it'd be in the top 10 things that matter. All right. So I'm going to push back on this, bow. First off, I think a practice facility is representative of things that you're talking about here. Well, that's fair. I mean, that's the right argument. Is that it's indicative of the owner's willingness to spend? Yeah. Of organizational investment, number one, taking care of the players, number two.

I think that's been waiting to join the show and we were just filibustering. I'm practicing. So it's, yeah. But Chicago would would be the number one for me. Okay, let's take a break hear from our sponsors, bring in France, see what he thinks, and then we're going to get to Tanner McKeehan, some other stuff, some other Eagles ties in the news from today.

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whether Zach says it or not. How you doing, Mr. Duffman? like looking up words in the start of the show. I'm like, I don't even know what this word means, but no, I'm happy to be with you guys again. How do you, as a prospective head coach, friend, how high up our practice facilities for you? It wouldn't be in my top five.

I was shocked how high it'd be, but no, I thought you were on the right track in terms of like the quarterbacks. I think that is certainly the area I'd want to focus on is like, what is the structure from like, GM like ownership like reporting and then after that I think after that I think it's quarterback. Fran, as someone who's worked in college facilities and in NFL facilities, would you agree that the facility can often be representative of the or of the of the institutional investment like the investment in whether it's the coaches, the players, the organization? Is that a fair statement

to make? I think so. That said though, I mean, when you walk through the doors of the Novocare complex. You're not like in awe at like the beauty and the sheer like, you know, you're not like awestruck by the construction of the Novacare complex. It was a building that was built in, you know, 2000, 2001 at this point. So obviously, you know, I think that there's plenty to like about the building and the facilities. But, you know, I don't think that that's a representative of the impact that Jeffrey Lurie, you know, has any, you know, one of the best owners in sports. I don't think that's it, you know, representative of that, All right, I want to do an import.

Wait, real quick, I could just tell you anecdotally, when Jeffrey Lurie talks about the turnaround of the franchise, one of the first things he points to is the construction of the practice facility and what that meant for the organization. I think that's true. It's also they didn't have a practice facility. Yes.

And so they went from zero to one. I don't think there's a huge difference between what they have and what the rest of the league has. if anything, they're trailing behind at this point. They are. It's something that they'll look at. Yeah, and the stories that you hear from working in the vet. Pretty crazy where they went from there to Nobuquer.

All right. We're going to do an impromptu draft here. Okay, the three of us is going to be a two-round snake draft. And what we're drafting is the people in the Eagles organization, whether it's front office or coaching staff, who you think are most likely to be hired for, promotions elsewhere this offseason. Now, part of the reason for this is it has been reported that Alec Hallaby, the Eagles assistant GM, is going to interview this week for the New York

Giants or the New York Jets general manager job, which I believe is the only open GM job in the league this offseason. Is that correct? So far? Correct. I think so. That will change how we feel about this draft process. But I think it's a fun way to go about it. Zach, I want to let you have the first pick Fran, you want to go second or third? I'll take second. Okay. And we're just talking, we're just talking people from the organization who would get hired for a promotion elsewhere, not a head coach or a head coach or a coordinator.

Or a position coach being hired as a coordinator or a front office person being hired as an assistant GM or a GM, something like that. I'll go Christian Parker. Your number one pick, Christian Parker. Parker. Interesting. Yeah, I was debating between Christian Parker and Clint Hurd. Clint Hurd has been a coordinator. I was hoping I could get Christian Parker, the three spot.

Nice spot. No, yeah. I think that, like, I- As a defensive coordinator is your expectation. Yes. Yeah, a young ascending coach coming from the number one defense in the league is with, you know, young corners in the secondary. Owners love, you know, the like 30-year-old ascending coach, right?

and Christian Parker fits that description for sure. I actually thought it was interesting that Nick Siriani specifically did not mention Christian Parker the other day. Did you notice that, Zach? I did not. That's good point. Jeff McLean asked him a question about who behind the scenes, like maybe he doesn't good enough credit. And he named both Clint Hurt and Jeremiah Washburn specifically among the position coaches, but did not mention Christian Parker. I was wondering if there was maybe something to that. He doesn't want to lose that guy.

Maybe. It's a good point. I think that's a good pick. I don't know if I would have gone number one overall, but I think it's a good pick. Over to you, Fran. It would have been my number one pick. So, well, I think that that's a good pick there by ZB. I was hoping to get him at number two.

Just looking at my store crankings here. Your big bird board. I think I'm going to go Bobby King. I think I'm going to go Bobby King, linebackers coach at number two. Bobby King. Yeah, because I just feel like there's going to be more defensive coordinator openings. And so I think there's more opportunity there, whereas, you know, those GM jobs are harder to come by. And I think that obviously we already know that Al Caliby is interviewing for one GM opening,

but like how more of those are going to open up? I think that's a question. Okay. All right. Well, I didn't want to take him number one overall because there's only one opening. But I will take Alic Calibah here. We know that he is in the GM interviewing circuit. I think he's a very strong candidate.

I think, I mean, we already know that the jets have tried to steal from the Eagles pipeline before from one silo of the building. maybe this time trying to borrow from the other. Brick Johnson is a Harvard man, so there's connectivity there. I think Alex Hallaby has a as good a chance of anybody to help turn that Jets team around. And then...

The name I would watch with the Jets' GM job is Mike Greenberg from the Tempey Buccaneers. The ESPN guy? No. That actually would track. That would be the kind of thing they would do. No. Sweeney and Rex Ryan.

Here we go. Yeah, now front office exec with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Pay attention to Mike Greenberg and the Jets. Okay. A real quick thing, the person who's running the jet search is Mike Tannenbaum, who obviously has strong connections to the Eagles organization. So you don't want to hire a Mike? Is that here?

Oh, no. Well, actually, Mike Greenberg did intern for him back in the day. But I had, you know, something that I had a little birdie back. a few weeks ago say pay attention to Mike Greenberg. Wow. Yeah. All right, I guess I'll take Mike Golick with the next pick then. I'm going to go.

I didn't necessarily want to land here. I think I'm going to lose this game, but I'm going to go, I'm going to go killing more. I think there's a shot that if the Eagles make some real noise in the playoffs, that Kellenmore gets hired somewhere as a head coach. So I'm going to go, I'm going to go Kellen Moore. Bo, can you rephrase the question at hand? Somebody from the Eagles who gets hired to a higher job title elsewhere.

Higher job title elsewhere, okay. All right, yes. Hmm. I think we're going to go Brandon Hunt. Yeah, I think that would be. Yeah, assistant GM job somewhere. Yeah, assistant GM job somewhere. Or, you know, I think that you look at his background, highly respected.

I think that he's another pipeline there with the Eagles that, we'll get those looks. All right, Zach, close us out. Go Jeff Scott getting an assistant GM job somewhere else. I think strong from the administrative side has worked. You said you were considering Clint Hurt one-one. Yeah, I wanted one front office and one coaching person. So what I found interesting about your approach, Bo, is you swung big.

You swung for GM and head coaching spots. You didn't go for coordinator assistant spots. Well, I'm just playing odds. One guy we already know is actually interviewing for a job. So that's possibility. Yeah, true. Yeah, I think Alex. I expect Kellyn Moore to get some interviews.

So. Yeah. I think Alex's a bright guy. I think Alec is, but I am always curious. Like the Colts did it. By the way, we didn't get into the Colts with the weird decisions. I think I think Ballard's had enough time to build that roster. So that would be one point.

I think Howie's really been texting everybody in the league. But, no, but you know how the Colts like hired the Eagles offensive coordinator both times, right? Yeah. With both their searches. I always wonder if like if there's any type of, you know, bias against going back to the well. You just now I know how I'll be, I don't want to say from different side of the building, different background than Joe Douglas. But, but I always wonder if the owners like, we just hired one of Howie Roseman's. executives, why are we going back and hire another Howie husband executive?

But, Zach, what you don't understand about the cult, that they just, they really struggled after Andrew Luck retired surprisingly, you know, that summer. They just, you got to give them time after that. It is, yeah, like, you look at the, the Chris Bower year by year. It's like, come on, man. I mean, at some point, you've got to win the division, you know. I do, I do think that, I think Ballard is a good G, like a, you know, a fine GAM. In terms of like talent valuation, he goes about things the right way. Like the results haven't always been great. But the water carrying from that standpoint, I always find it very funny.

All right. Zach, let us know when you want to hop off for Siriani. I love this. So, and the great thing about doing it virtually is that I can literally just exit out. Yeah. So. Okay. And I'm just going to get ahead of it.

I'm going to hop on this early. This is unprecedented at the 58 minute mark. I'm going to tell the people on fast. Thanks for watching. You're going to get a couple, you're going to get like another 90 seconds of this show. But if you want to catch the rest of it as Fran breaks down Tanner McKee's star making performance in the regular season finale, check out this bad boy on all p.gloi.com. All right, Fran. We're not going to do a full review of this game.

as normal this week. Tomorrow we're going to focus on the Eagles defense against the Packers' offense. On Thursday, we're going to do the Eagles offense against the Packers' defense. We want to get heavy into this matchup. But since you did the work today to quickly, you know, go through the tape from yesterday, we do want to hear what your big takeaways are. And obviously, we want to start with Tanner McKee. What did you think?

And how soon before he's a starting quarterback? I mean, I was surprised that he didn't make our power rankings that he could have got hired as a starting quarterback at some point. That's off season. How about head coach quarterback? Right. Yeah, exactly. No, McKee was really good. I think that, look, he had a couple of misses, some throws. I think he would like to have back.

I mean, over 40 passes, so they were bound to be in there. But I also think that he had some drops and some throws they put like on the money that, you know, counterbalance those. So I think when you look at McKee overall in the aggregate, the ball came out on time. The ball placement was really good. I mean, some of the outbreaking throws he made, like to hash, deep cornerouts on third and long. Now, they did a good job in terms of really getting like the run game and the play action pass going and a lot of the play action booth. They're really like cut the field in half, make the reads really defined for them.

But I thought that McKee played really, really well. And I know that internally they were impressed as well. Do you go ahead, Zach? No, I, yeah, out the purgeet, this is interesting to me about 10. What was what was most impressive to you as a guy making his first start? I would say, honestly, some of my favorite throws from him, you know, necessarily, they weren't necessarily. Look, that third and 15 of Jahan Dotson on the corner route was awesome.

There were some throws that were really impressed and nice, like, anticipation throws on like just one read routes, like good timing to get the ball out the dots and outside the numbers. But to me, like my favorites were the throws that he made underneath to Will Shipley. there was one where he just knows exactly where Shipley is. And it was just, hey, you know what? Like I'm looking to my, I'm looking to my left. I want some kind of downfield throw over this side.

And but you know what? My left guard got beat and defensive tackle screaming at me immediately because he doesn't have the athleticism that Jalen Hertz has. He doesn't have the even like creative flare that Kenny Pickett has. Like pick it in that situation. Jalen in that situation, they're going to try and make that defender miss and roll out of the pocket and make a play, Tanner McKee doesn't have that tool in his bag. He doesn't have that club.

So he's like, I need to know where my answers are. His eyes immediately go to Will Shipley in the flat and he dumps it off. And there was one play, a couple of plays earlier where he did something very similar. So I just think when you look at a quarterback in that situation, making his first start, his first extensive action in the NFL, the poise really stood out. There was another throw where he steps up in the pocket. He takes a hitch up. And he took a shot in the helmet from the defensive tackle from the from the Giants.

Like the guy came up with his hand. hit him in the helmet, but he kept his eyes downfield and delivered. Like those kind of plays to me, those were the most surprising and the most pleasant to see. I think when you're looking at a guy making his first start. To that point, eight different players were targeted and caught passes. Obviously, they don't have AJ and Devonte Smith, so ball gets spread around. The yards per attempt were fairly low, not necessarily what you're looking for there. So because he didn't go deep that often.

see. There was a big, there was also a big difference. You can speak to it more, friend, between the first half and the second half in this game. Yeah, I mean, the staff, everything was was very crisp, you know, balls coming out fast. It was more of an uphill battle. I think once the Giants kind of said, all right, like, this is their game plan, this is what they're doing. Let's let's, you know, kind of put the clamps down some of these things. You know, it became a little bit more difficult into the second half. There were only a couple drives in the South where they were even able to get a first down. There were a number of three and outs there through the third and fourth quarter.

And obviously, too, the run game was basically a non-factor for the entirety of the afternoon. That's where the offensive line depth really kind of showed out in terms of, you know, losing against the giant starters up front. But I do think when, you know, you make a key overall, I think that there was a lot of positivity to take away from that performance. To me, the command stuff and the knowing the game plan so well and where everybody is supposed to be is especially impressive in this game because it was such a mismatch. cast of characters, right? Like, it's not like he's ever played with these guys before,

and this unit had never played together. You know, it's not even like this was his preseason group. Like, yeah, he throws a touchdown pass to E.J. Jenkins, and that was his guy in the preseason, but like, it's not like he's worked with these guys before. And for him to know the playbook well enough and to know exactly how to process was super impressive. And we talked about the time to throw on the postgame show.

I mean, it's one game. and four passes in the game before it. But over the course of the season, his average time to throw, 2.39 seconds, according to True Media. That's the fourth quickest of any quarterback in the league. That doesn't necessarily equate to good. I mean, Tua is number one,

but then it's Tim Boyle and Cooper Rush, right? Andy Dalton's right after him. So, like, getting the ball quickly doesn't necessarily mean great. But for him, with his particular skill set, and if he were to play in an offense that has AJ Brown and Devante Smith. Yeah. I think that's,

I think those are all very positive things. Yeah. And just it's going to look and feel so much different than what we've come to expect, you know, from the Eagles past game. That's why it was almost jarring, you know, watching early in that game because, you know, that's not the way that Jalen plays.

And to your point, like, into the point that we've talked about, you know, well, I guess there's dead last in the league in average time. Right. That's what I mean. And we, when I did that deep dive into Jalen and some of the struggles, you know,

when I say that, like average time to, throw to the point you were just making like that alone is not bad you know when you look at who is the bottom of that list like it's jalen but it's lamar jackson it's josh allen it's patrick my homes like those guys are all going to be at the bottom of that list too it's what you do in the situations when you do hold the ball long are you able to to strike fear in the heart of the defense in those plays and again that's not going to be tanner mckees is tanner is holding the ball for four seconds like typically not going to go well it's honestly it's very similar to nick foals in that way. That's how Nick

played Nick Folt as well. You know, he, the longer he holds on to the ball, typically the worst things are going to go. Speaking of Nick Foles, one of the things I saw you tweet out was the benefit of Tanner McKay's height on certain plays. How, I guess if you can't explain that to me and the end, the audience, the benefit of him being six foot six

yesterday, how that appeared. Aside from him being ready to die sooner. I mean, look, you're more willing to make some of these yolo throws if you know, like, hey, life is short. Life is shorter than, no, there was that throws act that I pointed out. And it was like the outbreaking route to Dallas Goddard early on opening drive. I want to say it was his second completion of a day where, you know, look, Fred Johnson is, he's one of the bigger offensive tackles you're going to have to deal with. He's getting pushed back into Tanner McKee's lap. and Tanner is able to see over Fred Johnson and then deliver the ball over Fred Johnson where, you know,

that's to me like that is why you look at a quarterback that has that kind of size and say, yeah, like that's advantageous to be able to make that kind of a throw. Now, some quarterbacks also are able to overcome that by throwing around a guy. You know, we've seen John kind of change up the arm angle. You look around the league and quarterbacks are able to do that. You know, I think that when you have that size, it is important to also be able to make those kinds of throws. and so seeing Tanner McKee make that on the opening drive, I think was big.

And to me, like, that's why after watching it and buzzing through all the throws, this more, you know, I got through like the first cup of coffee and was like, all right, like, let me just buzz through all these throws. It's like, man, like, you're just seeing lots of little things that for a guy making his first start, it's just, it's really good to see, you know, and that's why I was almost like, I'm just going to put him out in a big thread. And it's different things you're pointing at with all of the different creations. But again, it's just, it's good.

And to your point, too, Bo, like, some of the, pleasions to Dotson, like anticipation, balls coming out before Dotson reaches his break. Like those are the throws that we see Jalen Hertz making with A.J. Brown. Jalen and AJ have been working together for X amount of years, right? And so for for Mekita made those kind of plays with Dotson, who he's not familiar with working with. Because while Taryn has been the scout team quarterback for the majority of year, Dotson has not worked with the Scott team, right?

So just showing that timing and rhythm there, I think was very impressive. On the topic of quarterback hype real quick, just a quick. old anecdote. Something I heard back during that 2012 draft was Andy really loved Russell Wilson, right? Like Andy was the biggest proponent for Wilson in that building. It wasn't universal. And there were people on that coaching staff who, like, after working with Michael Vick for two years, it's like, oh, do I want another, you know, short quarterback, right?

And they really liked what appealed to them about Nick Foles was, was for the reason Franches said, like having, having that tall quarterback who can, you know, who you don't need to build a scheme for him to be able to see the receivers. I thought there were some. Yeah. Go ahead. No, I was going to say, I feel like the, the sport, the league, coaching staffs around the league of evolved in that way. I mean, for Baker Mayfield to go number one, for Bryce Young to go number one, you know,

Kyler Murray to go number one since that point. I think mindsets have mostly changed that standpoint. I was just going to say, like, on the McKee front, there were some, to your point, some sort of subtle pocket movements that were impressive for me. And even like there was one play he got sacked, but like he ducked under the outside rusher before the inside guy came in. It was just impressive to see. Give me the sober next day. You know, this is a second year player who turns 25 in April. You project him moving forward.

Like, how good do you think that Tanner McKee can be? Can he be a league average starting quarterback in your eyes? I think I think that he is capable of being a starting quarterback. I do. I think that with with time and, you know, with a little bit of, you know, obviously the opportunity, right? I do think that there's a skill set there you can work with. I think that also there's an understanding of what the ceiling is. You know, he's, he has to play a certain way, right? Because he doesn't have those athletic gifts. And so if you're going to play that way, then you have to be good in certain areas. And that's why seeing those things, the timing and rhythm, the understanding where you're answers are against pressure, like seeing those aspects, like, okay, this is a player that is self-aware of what he is and how what he needs in order to win. Now, in the game against that defense, the Eagles were able to be able to move the football, you know, he's not as gifted from an arm talent standpoint as Jared Gough, right? So he's not going to make all the same throws that Jared Gough can make in the structure

of an offense. But when you think of other quarterback have that skill set, you know, could he be, like, would he be, would he be better that what Kirk Cousins was for Atlanta this year? You might, you might make that argument that he was better, that he'd be better for what than what Kirk Cousins was in Atlanta, right? And I think that, look, cousins coming off the injury, you know, and there's all, there's layers there. But you get to, you get kind of what I'm saying is that you have to play a certain way when you have a quarterback with that skill set. The run game would be a big part of that. But I think that he has that skills.

Yeah. quarterback like that. Yeah. Yes. You need other things to be working in his favor as well. All right. We don't want to spend too much time on the game from yesterday. But quickly on the defense,

I'm just going to ask you about who I think were the three most interesting players from an English perspective for yesterday. Bryce, I'm going to hop off here then if you're talking defense. Okay. All right. Guy hates defense. No.

He doesn't want to hear anything about you. No, no, no, no. No, no. No, no. I didn't want to jump in the middle of a. conversation so this was a natural transition that we'll talk about buildings where practice buildings were i could talk about all the different practice facilities around the league but no i love talking defense i'm going to listen to this after the press conference i just didn't

want to interrupt fran in the middle of an answer thank you zach we love you friend quickly what did you think of zach's shoe bombshell i mean shocking like the most surprising thing since Trent Bockey being retained. Yeah, unbelievable. It's not every day, but I will admit that under my desk here right now, yeah, I do have a pair of shoes. So, yeah, probably not the private thing. I can't believe Emily abides this.

No, she does not like it. I get in trouble for it. I'll put it that way. All right, guys. See y'all later. I'll put it that way as if there's something more to it. I'll leave that there. Good stuff.

Okay, three players I want to ask you about. You don't have to go crazy. Bryce Huff, Jeremiah Trotter Jr., Sidney Brown. Let's start with Jeremiah Trotter Jr. I thought he did a nice job playing in the area that you would imagine that he's going to stand out, right? So playing downhill, playing within the box, I thought he did a nice job of triggering fast, avoiding contact, finding the football. He had a couple of mistackles in the game.

But when you got him outside of playing in that tight confined area, you saw some athletic limitations show up. But with time and experience, you hope that he looks a little bit more comfortable in those situations. But I thought that it was a solid showing from him. I think he played every single snap. He and Oren Berks were around the football a lot. New York wanted to try and run the ball.

So you saw plenty of Trotter in this game in that standpoint, certainly. So relatively encouraging, think he could be a third linebacker. Yeah, I think that he showed enough there. And look, Danes has brought up the point about the special teams. And I do think that it's valid. You know, I think that when you look at, if you're going to stick as that third linebacker, you know, as that four, you need to be present on special teams. It's honestly, it's similar to the Tanner McKee thing.

Like if you are going to be this kind of player, if you're going to be linebacker three, if you're going to be linebacker four, then you've got to be a core special teams guy. That's part of the job description. And so if he's not going to hit that benchmark, then he has to make up for that in a lot of different ways. And so time will tell if he can continue to expand his role there. Okay, well, the flip side to that is Sidney Brown, who does make an impact on special teams.

Yes. A little bit concerning that he was far enough down the pecking order to be like the fifth safety in this game, but he did obviously get a lot of work because when they were a nickel, Avanti Maddox moved from safety to this slot, Sidney Brown played a lot, got the interception, had the hit down here the goal line. What did you make of his overall performance with getting to see the eye in the sky? Yeah, I think that when you look at Sydney, I mean, he's an explosive athlete.

He plays with his hair on fire. He's going to deliver those huge hits. He plays a little bit reckless at times. He had some friendly fire on Isaiah Rogers on that deep off the sideline. But I think when you look at him, I think the injuries certainly set him back from that standpoint, from like a mental side and the trust standpoint with Vic Fabio. coming into this season. And I think I don't want to say it's like a red shirt year,

but that's kind of what this has turned into for him defensively. And you hope that, all right, you get a full off season. You get a full allotment of reps in the spring. And in the summer that now he becomes kind of that backup safety. I know that we've talked about him in the past in terms of like, oh, he can do like big nickel stuff because that's how they used him last year. I'm going to be honest.

I never really liked him in that role. I do think that he is primarily like a top down safety on him playing as a too high player. I don't want to see him as like Avanti having that flexibility of being able to go back and forth between nickel and safety. I don't think that that's Sydney's best role. I do think that him being more of a deep safety is best for him. But the point that you made at the top of it,

the fact that he can be an impactful player on special teams now gives him the grace, gives him that runway to develop into a potential start down the road. And if he doesn't hit that, then all right, well, he's got the pathway to be able to stick as that backup. Can I ask you an off the wall one on Cudney Brown? Always. Let's say he puts on like 15 pounds. Do you think he could play linebacker? At that frame, probably not. Because he's already pretty small for safety in terms of like height and length. That would be a concern for me. I think

that you could to like some specialized type of roles for him, but I don't think it would be a full time type of position. Okay. And then Bryce Huff, if the Eagles want somebody to be their fourth edge rusher after Nolan Smith and Josh Schwett and Jailix Hunt at this point, you know, can Bryce Huff do that? Not a great thing. Yeah, he could do it. Like, how well is he do it?

Like, that's the question. Yeah, I didn't see a ton from him yesterday. I think that, look, he's primarily a speed rusher and he's going to try and win on the outside. you need to do more than that to hit by NFL tackles on a consistent basis. Like if you're not just like, you know, race car, like, win off the ball and like that's it, you've got to do more to win at the top of the rush. You have to have some kind of compliment, some kind of a change up.

And he hasn't consistently shown the ability to be able to hit with that change up yet. And so, you know, I was hoping that we'd see a little bit more from him. Some of the pressures that, you know, came on like, like, like, stunts and things like that where it was like kind of like laid up for him. But again, like didn't come over the sack. no big hits on the quarterback, anything like that. So, yeah, I think you're still kind of waiting here on the Bryce Huff experience. All right.

I think this game will do a lot of work for us content-wise come like June. And we can talk about some of these roster bubble players and how they performed in this game. But for now, let's put it to bed, push forward. And we will close this show quickly. But just to check in with you on Monday as we look ahead to Sunday and the big game against the Packers, you feel any differently than you did yesterday about this matchup, knowing now that Christian Watkins is at, Watson is out. I keep calling Watkins.

Yeah. You know, I figure once I saw the injury on tape, because I just kind of heard about it during the game yesterday. So I didn't see it. But after seeing it, I was like, yeah, he's, that, he's definitely not going to be playing this week. And it's a shame that's a torn ACL because obviously that's going to impact him through the midway point of next year or two.

But that's a huge loss, you know, for that offense in terms of the way that they want to play because, you know, the way that that we're seeing course build, it's kind of like a Frankenstein where it's like the hole is greater than the sum of the parts where it's like, all right, everybody has their defined role. This is what this guy does is what this guy does, and he is their vertical stretch player. And, you know, we know that Jordan Love likes to go big game, big game hunting and he's going to lay those throw for Watson. And he's going to also create opportunities for others underneath, you know, where, you know, maybe that intermediate dig route's going to be open because he's the guy taking the top off. And so they're going to have to

find someone else to kind of step into that role. Luckily for them, you know, Watson has faced injury not just this year, but also last year as well. He's missed spurts of time here this year. And so I will honestly go back probably tonight, go through some of those games in their totality just to kind of say like, all right, what was their plan without Watson? What are some things that they will try and bring to the game on Sunday? But one, honestly, like one of my big takeaways, I don't think people are talking enough about Jordan Love here this year. I know he's he's gone through this like this high streak of not turning the ball over these last several weeks. Honestly, a lot of the narratives around Love are going to sound pretty familiar because it's like,

oh, early on in the year, he threw a bunch of interceptions. You know, he's taking too many risks. So now he backed away from it. Now he's thrown like one pick in six games, seven games or something like that. But fans in local media are now complaining that, oh, he doesn't, he doesn't push it enough. He's got to, he's got to push the ever very similar to. to Jalen from that standpoint. I would say this, like watching through the film, he is outstanding. He is really, really good. And there are, they're second in league and drop rate, some heartbreaking drops on

big time throws from Jordan Love. They don't put a ton on him because this is a team that runs the ball as as much, if not more than the Eagles. They're the other right up there with the Eagles in terms of run rate and, you know, how often they want to give the ball to the back. But this is a really good scheme offensively, run game, past game, the use of motion, use of play action, the use of window dressing, how they mix and match guys. They do a really, really good job schematically.

It's going to be a big test. I'm excited to see this defense up against Packers' offense. All right. Well, we're going to get into that tomorrow. That's why you're a pro, Fran. You're teeing it up. You're teasing it. You're fantastic.

That's what the sex is still comes from. All right. That'll do it for the first of seven, eight, if you count the kickoff show, nine if you count the halftime show episodes for this week we're going to before we go though you know it's the playoffs got to get ready for the playoffs get some new swag got the sayquan barclay swag on the all-city store can't miss out on that look at the beautiful philadelphia skyline just put up nicely there for saquan as he returns to action for the eagles after his rest in week 18 that'll do it for this episode of the p hilly eagles

podcast back tomorrow, 2 o'clock, to talk about the Packers' offense against the Eagles defense. And then we've got two shows on Wednesday, the 2 o'clocker with Jamie and Rich. We got a primetime show on Wednesday, Thursday, 2 o'clock, Friday 2 o'clock. And we push forward for the Eagles and the Packers in the wildcard round. Right now, Eagles favored by four and a half points. Thanks to everybody for watching live and commenting alongside us, the sickos. that's all we got. We'll talk to you tomorrow for Julia, Zach, Fran, and all of us at PHOI. I'm Bo. We thank you for listening. We'll talk to you tomorrow. And as always, we love you.