Why Nick Foles Is Better Than Ever (But Can't Stay This Good)

I call him SuperNick. The man who threw seven touchdown passes in little more than three quarters of play deserves such a cartoon moniker. But how did "one of the better backups in the NFL" become in one afternoon the guy who plays what "might have been the best three-quarters of a game we've ever witnessed"?

The simple answer is, he didn't. With the notable exception of four horrendous quarters against Dallas where he looked like he sustained a concussion before he ever got to the stadium, Foles has looked good all year. Andy Reid and Marty Mornhinweg may have the quarterback guru reputation, but Chip Kelly's offense has been much friendlier to QBs than he gets credit for. Why? Because his spread-option, up tempo, zone read running attack forces opponents to pick their poison. Kelly has repeated versions of this quote for years:

"They can't defend it all. I'm really happy with how we threw the ball. If you're going to devote nine guys and try to stop the run, God bless you, and we'll throw it."

Since early in the season, defenses have made their choice: plug the box with seven or eight players and keep just one safety back deep. That often leaves man-to-man coverage on the outside against DeSean Jackson and Riley Cooper. Those are golden matchups for a quarterback, but the Eagles haven't executed. As Sheil Kapadia wrote after the Cowboys game, "An average QB performance likely would have yielded 300+ yards and a score in the 20s." Unfortunately, Foles couldn't make that happen. Neither could Matt Barkley, as Derek Sarley showed last week.

Jump ahead to the Raiders game, and Foles finally started taking advantage of those one-on-one matchups, just as he did against the Buccaneers. Fran Duffy diagrammed all 7 TDs, and over and over you saw Cooper and Jackson beating man coverage -- and passes actually finding them. The gains were comical. Check out how Foles' numbers on long passes differ from last year (stats courtesy Pro Football Focus):

To start with, Foles is attempting about 50% more long passes than he did with Andy Reid at the helm. That's a big jump. His current rate of 16.1% is near the top of the league, after placing in the bottom half last season. This change is entirely about the offense; Michael Vick has also seen a spike in his deep balls, bringing him back to 2010 levels after declines the last two years.

But where things start to get crazy is the long ball effectiveness. Foles completed only 36% of passes 20 yards or longer in 2012. That's up to nearly 53% so far this year. Long ball completion percentage is a huge indicator of success. Look at the list of QBs who posted 48% or above last year: Kaepernick, Rodgers, P. Manning, Newton, Griffin, Brees, Wilson. That's elite territory.

Can Foles keep that completion rate up? Unclear. While there may be some regression to the mean, I'm actually bullish on this front. Kelly's offense seems to be giving his QBs a boost. Vick has also seen a double-digit jump in 20+ yard completion rate, so Foles' numbers may not be an aberration.

Touchdown and interception rates are another matter. Foles is averaging an insane four TDs for every ten long passes he throws. Eight out of his ten completions at that distance have gone for six points. He also has no interceptions at any distance all year -- the only quarterback with more than 75 passes who can say that. (No fumbles either.)

Even if the completion percentage stands, those most certainly won't. Last year, RGIII led the league in touchdown rate on passes of 20 yards or more -- at only 19.4%. Even if defenses don't significantly adjust their coverage schemes (although I expect they'll have to back out of the box more now), Foles simply can't count on the type of luck he's had so far with defenders falling down, receivers wide open, and more. He also eventually will start throwing interceptions. Last year he threw them on just 1.9% on all throws, but Football Outsiders' adjusted interception rate showed a more pedestrian 4.2% after accounting for defenders dropping would-be picks.

The first takeaway here is that SuperNick's current outsized numbers will almost certainly come back to Earth. He may be good the rest of the year, but he won't be that good. The second takeaway is more important, though. Foles' improvement is only over a small sample, but it may not be an anomaly. Kelly is putting his quarterbacks in a great position to succeed, and when defenses change to prevent that, it will only give McCoy more room to run. If the Chip's scheme looks this good with competent QB play from a limited upside guy like Foles, think about what it might do with a true top-tier talent at the position.

Let's Party Like It's 1999

In 2012, according to Football Outsiders, the Eagles ranked 25th in offensive DVOA, 26th in defensive DVOA, and 23rd in special teams DVOA. That's remarkably bad. Some people, like Brent Cohen, have projected a big turnaround for the team this year that leans heavily on wishful thinking, Chip Kelly instant results, and large regressions to the mean.

I wanted to try to figure out what the chances of such a rebound season are, so I went through the Football Outsider archives and looked at every squad that, like the 2012 Eagles, finished 20th or worse in both offensive and defensive DVOA. Taking the overall adjusted DVOA for all 113 teams, I recorded how much it changed the next season.

What I found is that most of those teams did, unsurprisingly, improve. In fact, 79.6% of all teams in this group had better DVOA scores in year N+1, and 57.5% improved by at least 10 percentage points. The average delta was +11.9%.

This makes sense. Teams sink to the bottom of the heap for all sorts of reasons, including poor coaching, quarterback play, defensive failures, injuries, turnovers, and more. The Eagles had all of that. Just keeping the offensive line healthy, improving the defensive tackle rate, and recovering a few more fumbles should help this team get better. But the 2012 Eagles ranked 28th in overall team DVOA, at -22.4%. A +11.9% bump is average among the set I examined, but that only gets you to -10.5% -- good enough for a mere 25th place and only 6-7 mean wins on Football Outsiders' 2013 projections.

So if this year's Eagles improve at the average of their predecessor bad teams, we're still looking at a subpar squad. It's possible they improve more, though. 26.5% of all teams I looked at increased their DVOA by at least 20 percentage points. Beyond that, only 8.8% of teams jumped by 30 percentage points or more. That means there's approximately a 1/4 chance that the Eagles get back to what is essentially league-average form and less than 1/10 chance the team approaches the land of the top 10-15 NFL teams.

You can find hope or despair in these numbers. A (minority) chance to rebound to league average is appealing to root for on its own, although there's almost as large of a chance that the team's performance actually declines.

My takeaway is that improvement is likely, but a big swing isn't -- and that shouldn't be surprising. This is a long term rebuilding process, as Jeff Lurie indicated in his interview this Sunday with Zach Berman:

"I just think it's not in wins and losses... It's absolutely instilling a culture in the program that he brings to it, a sense of preparedness, a pride in being the best you can be for the fans and the team, and winning every day - winning the day, each day. And whatever happens, happens."

The Eagles probably won't win tonight in Kelly's debut. Nor are they likely to win many games the rest of the season. Lurie knows what's important is establishing a foundation for success going forward, the way Andy Reid did in 1999.

I don't remember much about the 1998 season (seeing as I was only 10 at the time), but the year the wheels came off the Ray Rhodes express was about as pretty as 2012. The 3-13 record reflected a horrible quarterback trio and 25th-or-worst DVOA ranks in all three phases.

Reid wasn't going to turn that mess around immediately. In 1999 he improved the team's overall DVOA +23.6% (from -34.6% to -11%). That's in the 23rd percentile of best turnarounds in the aforementioned group. The result was only a modest increase in wins, a 5-11 record -- but it laid the building blocks for what was to come.

With the important exception that the team doesn't have a quarterback of the future yet, 2013 is shaping up to be 1999 all over again, or at least I hope it does. Because wins matter much less today than that the losses fuel wins tomorrow.

More on Chip Kelly and Versatility

In honor of the Eagles Almanac kickstarter (pre-order your copy now!), Derek Sarley got back in the saddle to write about Chip Kelly, Eagles, Versatility or Something Like That:

When Reid’s offense didn’t work, it was usually for one of two reasons. Either the pressure was overwhelming his offensive line – giving the QB no time to hit those big plays – or the defense was playing sound, “contain-y” football and his guys just couldn’t execute the short/mid-range game consistently enough to sustain drives.

Chip will have his own challenges to solve – number one being that no one’s going to give him a six-man box to whale away at for more than a couple of plays before they change things up. (At the NFL level, every team has enough speed to do more than sit back and hope.)

It’s this realization, I believe, that’s driving Chip’s desire for versatility. He doesn’t need guys who can add “bonus plays” to his regular offense – he needs guys who can force the defense to let him run his regular offense, even when that’s the last thing the defense wants to do.

Great stuff as always.

The Rise and Fall of the Andy Reid Era

​I know we've all moved on to the wonderful potential of the Chip Kelly era, but I wanted to take a moment to look back at the era that was, the 14 years of longstanding success and, ultimately, failure under Andy Reid.

​Building on work I started in 2011, and inspired by previous work by Derek Sarley, I put together a few graphs that I hope will illustrate one aspect of the Reid era's rise and fall -- as well as the core precepts of team building that the new regime needs to learn from. Below is a graph showing the Eagles starters each year, colored by years experience with the team. For example, the yellow demarcates starters for whom this is their first season in Philadelphia -- both rookies stepping right into impact roles and free agents signed off the street. Check it out:

​Hopefully the graph looks less like a jumble of colors and more like a series of patterns that you can follow. Look, for example, at those first year starters. It spiked in Reid's first season, when he drastically remade the roster. However, it fell off quickly and stayed low -- until the great free agent binge of 2011. Another piece to look at is the top of the graph. Green demarcates the culture-carriers, the players who have been with the team for eight or more seasons. Check out how after Reid took over, he eliminated any players with that distinction, only to have the group slowly reappear and grow from 2003 to 2008. 

Here's another, simpler version of the graph, in which I grouped some of the levels together:​

You can see the broader trends easier when you break it down into just three categories. In Reid's first two seasons, he culled the longstanding veterans and added a bunch of new players -- rookies like Donovan McNabb and free agents like Jon Runyan. But during the celebrated run of four NFC Championship games, Reid maximized stability and growth and minimized turnover. You can also see clearly the mini-rebuild he embarked upon following the disastrous 2005 campaign. However, you'll note that while first and second-year starters spiked, the number of starters who'd been in Philly for seven years or more stayed flat. Reid had kept longstanding veterans like McNabb, Runyan, Brian Westbrook, Brian Dawkins, and Tra Thomas while rebooting with youngsters like Todd Herremans, Mike Patterson, Trent Cole, Jamaal Jackson, and Sean Considine.

What's fascinating is ​the third wave, another rebuild that started in 2010 but never really ended. Before the 2010 season, the Eagles had moved on from stalwarts like McNabb, Dawkins, Westbrook, Runyan, and Thomas. The problem is that as they eliminated those players, the replacements never came into their own. Some young players stepped in, like DeSean Jackson and LeSean McCoy. But guys like Nate Allen and Danny Watkins fizzled. Free agents were brought in by the boatload in 2011 to shore that up, but they caused more problems than they solved. In Reid's last two years, half of the starters were basically new to the team -- more than double the amount during the 2001-2004 run.

Here's another related graph, showing the number of starters in each year who have either been with the team for two years prior or were actually starters for two years prior:​

​The same pattern emerges. From 2002-2004 the team had 11 or more returning starters, and 15 or more starters who had been with the team for a few years. For example, in 2003 Jermane Mayberry missed most of the year due to injury. Bobbie Williams, in his third year with the team, stepped up to replace him. In 2004 Lito Sheppard and Sheldon Brown took over full time from Bobby Taylor and Troy Vincent. The new pair were relatively inexperienced, but it wasn't their first year on the job either. That makes a big difference. Compare that to 2011. The squad had three rookie starters, three sophomore starters, and four new free agent starters. That kind of discontinuity was a recipe for failure.

The lesson Kelly and company need to learn from the Reid era is that you can't build a Super Bowl team in a year. You have a lot of turnover when a new coach arrives, but the front office has to quickly shape the roster and find a core of young players who can grow together. By the time you're ready to compete, 2-3 years later, the team should be stable. And if you're going to rebuild, half-measures and plug-and-play starters won't do. There are no shortcuts to success.

Photo from Getty.​

Will Andy Reid Trade For Nick Foles?

In scouting for possible locations that Nick Foles might end up, if the Eagles were to trade him, it's impossible to overlook the Kansas City Chiefs. Andy Reid knows Foles well, and presumably likes him. Moreover, he has stepped into a situation with a hole at franchise quarterback and few good draft prospects to fill it. Mike Garafolo of the USA Today reported Thursday night that a source told him Reid is considering a trade:

The Chiefs and new coach Andy Reid are interested in acquiring Foles if he becomes available, according to a person informed of the team's thinking. The person, who spoke to USA TODAY Sports on condition of anonymity because the Chiefs haven't discussed their thoughts publicly, said the team is working on plans to add a quarterback and considers Foles a possibility.

Kelly has said Foles and Michael Vick will compete for the starting job despite their differences in style. The person informed of the Chiefs' plans said the Eagles have not told Kansas City that Foles is available.

These kind of anonymous reports are often hard to trace. It seems to come from someone hooked in to the Chiefs, but why would they leak information like that? The Eagles benefit much more.

The Case For The Right Retread Coach

Sometimes the new shiny thing is the most attractive option. Sometimes it just seems that way.

In the Eagles head coaching search, most people are firmly against hiring a retread coach, someone who's been around the block once already. Sure, there are Jon Gruden supporters and Bill Cowher supporters, but most people would rather get Chip Kelly or Mike McCoy or some other new name. I think the Eagles probably agree with this philosophy as well. They've been strongly linked to college coaches and other coordinators, but Mike Nolan is the only retread they've interviewed so far.

Nolan is a poor candidate, if you use history as any judge. As I detailed on Thursday, Bill Belichick is the only example of a recently hired coach who went on to have great success at his second job after posting a losing record in his first. Trying to find the one diamond in the rough is a losing proposition.

But that doesn't mean that all second-chance coaches are bad. 32 have been hired since 1999 (not including KC's hiring of Andy Reid today). Many of those hires were predicated on the idea that the coach learned something from their previous failure. But I wanted to look at only the ones who earned their second shot with solid performance the first time around. I isolated 16 who had winning records and won at least one playoff game at their previous job. That list looks much more promising. Here's how they did (or are doing) in their second chance:

Let me break it down by color. Five coaches marked in blue are clear success stories. Dungy, Coughlin, and Gruden all won Super Bowls with their second team. Holmgren came close. I suppose Parcells in Dallas is more debatable, but he reversed three straight 5-11 seasons, posted a winning record, and formed the foundation of the reasonably successful Wade Phillips era. Then you have the four green coaches, who are current and relatively new hires. Three of the four — Carroll, Shanahan, and Fox — are currently in the playoffs and look to have bright futures. Too early to tell with Jeff Fisher in St. Louis.

I marked another three coaches in orange as special cases. Gibbs and Shell each came back to coaching after over a decade sitting on the couch. Hiring coaches who have been away from the game for that long is unlikely to ever work, and I doubt the Eagles are interested in any such candidates. Schottenheimer is also in this special category because Dan Snyder unwisely fired him after a single season in Washington. He won 8 of his last 11 games that year, and went on immediately to the Chargers, where he posted a solid .588 winning percentage over five seasons (although no playoff victories).

That leaves only four hires, marked in red, who really turned out poorly: Green, Seifert, Mariucci, and Mora Jr. Any coach could end up just as bad. But I look at the success rate, including three Super Bowl-winning coaches and three current up-and-comers and wonder if the Eagles could find a similarly successful retread candidate. If they avoided the Nolans of the world in favor of coaches with a winning background, they might have a greater chance of a favorable outcome. You would be looking at people who have already proven they can run an organization, win games, and get to the playoffs — even if they may not have reached the promised land yet.

Who might that be? Well, Jon Gruden is an obvious example. He did this once already, and is widely hailed as one of the smartest football minds around. Lovie Smith is another potential candidate. I've heard few rumors about where he might end up, which is surprising considering he had only three losing seasons in nine years in Chicago, and has built top defenses everywhere he's been. Both have weaknesses as candidates, but as cool as it would be to snag a hotshot like Kelly, history suggests a retread like one of them could be just what the Eagles need.

Photo from Getty.

Revenge of Old Friends

Last June, Joe Banner left the Eagles after 18 years as Jeff Lurie's trusted confident and shadow CEO. We were told the parting was amicable, that Banner had simply departed to pursue other interests, like buying a NFL team himself. While he did end up part of an ownership group in Cleveland, Banner's exit was much more complicated than it appeared in the press releases. There were rumors of a power struggle between Banner and Andy Reid. Meanwhile, Banner's former protege Howie Roseman was gaining his own brand of influence within the front office — something Lurie confirmed on Monday.

Whatever was said at the time, no love was lost between Banner and the Eagles executives who stayed. He sniped at the team from afar, blaming both Roseman and Reid for the decline in a petulant display of anonymous mudslinging. His words clearly got under Reid's skin toward the end (he purposely snubbed Banner's mouthpiece at an after-practice press conference). And I would be surprised if Lurie wasn't annoyed as well. Whatever else they were, Lurie and Banner were friends first. I wonder if they sent each other holiday cards this year.

Complicating matters further, Lurie has essentially assumed Banner's job within the Eagles organization. Banner used to run the entire organization on a day-to-day basis, overseeing everything from stadium operations to salary cap management. Now Lurie has injected himself more into the process. On the football side, without his (former?) friend, Lurie is the direct report for both Roseman and the head coach. At the same time, Banner is trying to replicate his Philly model in Cleveland, where he can execute complete control.

All of this is just inside baseball stuff until you get to the key issue of the day: hiring a new head coach. Banner and Lurie collaborated to pick Andy Reid. You can assume that over the years they discussed coaching a lot, including qualities that make the best NFL coaches, and certainly who those candidates might be. Now they're both looking for a coach at the same time, and reportedly (and unsurprisingly) are looking at the same guys.

Apparently Chip Kelly and Bill O'Brien both rank at or near the top for both organizations, and the Eagles and Browns seem ready to fight it out. Where friendship once stood, it's hard to see anything but personal rivalry, and perhaps even vengeance on the horizon. If I were advising Lurie I would tell him to be sure to approach this process in a logical, organized, and emotion-free way. Rushing to hire one of these coaches simply to beat the other guy is a foolhardy way of conducting business.

Let's hope these men — or at least Lurie — have more sense than that.

Photo from Getty.

Parsing Jeff Lurie's Words on Andy, Howie, the Future

Maybe it's because Jeff Lurie so rarely speaks to the media, but he always surprises me with his eloquence and thoughtfulness behind the podium. Last year, Lurie expressed anger and disappointment about the 2011 results, but gave Reid one more chance to turn things around. It turned out to be the wrong decision, one that made Monday's announcement fait accompli. 
There was a lot to digest in his remarks about firing long time coach Andy Reid and the future direction of the Eagles franchise. Let's get to it.

"His work ethic was incredible and his ability to work with others was incredible. He had the love and respect of every individual in this organization. And I don't say that lightly because I think if you were to interview owners and other franchise operations around the league, not everybody could say that. This man is amazing to work with, smart and dedicated himself, and the record will speak for itself. History will focus on exactly what he's been able to accomplish and what the team has been able to accomplish. I look forward to the day we all welcome him back and introduce him as  a member of the Eagles Hall of Fame, because that's inevitable."

Lurie went out of his way to praise Reid for all that he's accomplished, as well as simply who he is as a person. He's right, most firings in the NFL aren't nearly as respectful as this one. You can't say the Eagles organization failed to do right by their all-time winningest coach.

I think in life, whenever you have either a downturn or a problem or something that you've got to face (like a) challenge, it should, if you are healthy about it, make you stronger. That's exactly what's going to happen here. We're used to winning and we're used to winning big. It's rare that we're not in the playoffs or playing in the (conference) championship game, and that's what we've got to return to.

Like other owners, Lurie isn't content with mediocrity. It's why so many coaches and general managers were fired on Monday. But I think this was also the first salvo in Lurie courting the next coach. Arizona, Jacksonville, Buffalo, Carolina, Kansas City, and (most importantly) Cleveland can't claim a winning tradition. Whether that really matters may be debatable, but Lurie is going to milk it for all it's worth.

"I think, as you know, I stood up here last year and went through some of the arguments for making a change, and decided not to. One of the key arguments, for me, for not making a change at the end of last year was that every time our team under Andy Reid was 8-8 or less, and it wasn't very often, but every single time after that the next season we were a double-digit playoff team. (We were a) double-digit and playoff team (or) advancing to the NFC Championship."

Lurie said he doesn't regret keeping Reid on for another year, but I think he learned a valuable lesson. Hope is not a viable managerial strategy. You can't assume that things are going to turn around just because they have in the past. Make decisions for the future.

He was very excited about the future of this team and this franchise. He wanted to stay. We spent some time on Friday going over exactly what his plans would be for the team, knowing that there was a very good chance that he was going to be let go.

When asked directly, Lurie denied that Reid was informed before Monday that he would be fired. But they clearly had an interesting end-of-season conversation. What I wouldn't have given to be a fly on the wall of that conference room...

"I think if you had to point to anything, it's when you had as much success as we had and are so close to winning a Super Bowl, (that) at some stage you have an opportunity to think that the next move, even if it's not consistent with all of your previous moves, will be the one that gives you the chance to win the Lombardi Trophy. I think that in the last couple years we've done things that have not been as consistent. They've been more scattered in terms of decision making. You notice it with any organization that has had a lot of success that you will start to reach thinking, ‘That's the thing that's going to (get us over the top), that's the player, that's the method, that's the mechanism, that's the coach, that's the thing that is going to put us over the top'... So I think we lost some of the exact nature of the method that we've all shared that created the success, which was discipline, strategic thinking, and don't do necessarily what is popular but do what's right."

This was the money quote. Lurie knows that Reid wasn't the same coach who lorded over the Linc a decade ago. Instead of drafting for the long term, letting veterans walk before they slowed down, this front office has been reaching in the draft, grabbing free agents willy-nilly, and re-signing veterans to long term extensions. It seems like you're just a step away from getting back to the pinnacle, but really you're going in the wrong direction.

"While you're trying to decide what you're going to do with your coach, at least the way I operate, is doing a lot of research over the past month or so. That is done meticulously and in great detail. We do have a very, very defined list of candidates. We hope to be able to meet with some of them as soon as possible. I think it's better to find the right leader than it is to make the fastest decision."

Lurie's quote here, combined with the news that he's going to interview three (!) candidates from the Atlanta Falcons this week, leads me to believe that he's got a long list of people he wants to talk to before he makes his decision. Sometimes teams interview two or three coaches as a formality before picking the one they wanted all along. Doesn't sound like that's the route Lurie's headed.

"I keep voluminous notes on talent evaluation on not just who we draft, but who is valued in each draft by each person that is in the organization that's working here. I came to the conclusion that the person that was providing by far the best talent evaluation in the building was Howie Roseman. I decided to streamline the whole decision-making process for the 2012 draft and offseason and that's the first draft and offseason I hold Howie completely accountable for. The mistakes that were made in the 2011 draft have little or nothing to do with Howie's evaluations and I think it was important for me to own up to the mistakes that were made and understand where they were coming from and it was awfully clear."

First of all, that's smart ownership. Lurie isn't out front making personnel decisions. But he sure is keeping track of who makes those moves. Accountability is vital. It's the conclusion from those notes that is more surprising, though. Lurie essentially said that Reid and Joe Banner were the ones making poor decisions over the last few years, and that Roseman was consistently right behind the scenes. He absolved his GM of all responsibility for the abysmal 2010-2011 drafts, as well as the 2011 free agent binge (which we were told at the time was all Roseman), while crediting him for the great early returns from 2012's biggest moves. I don't know if such faith is deserved, but it looks like Roseman will be the key player in the front office going forward.

"But my goal is to have the coach and the general manager work hand-in-hand and work collaboratively and work in a very, very terrific way together. But there's no question in my mind the head coach will report directly to me as every head coach has and that's important. It's important in terms of attracting the right coach, it's important in terms of the autonomy that coach will have and it also fosters an owner-coach relationship that I think benefits a football team in many, many ways. That shared responsibility with the coach and the ultimate support for a coach when it's coming directly from the owner and you build an organization that is supportive and give the coach all the resources possible and have the G.M. collaborate very, very moment-to-moment and day-to-day with that coach, that's a great support system and that's what we have here."

This is going to be an important question in attracting the right coach. Many candidates will insist on complete control. But, paired with his earlier praise of Roseman, Lurie doesn't seem willing to give it over. He described having the GM and coach work together with each reporting directly to the owner. Roseman won at least partial control in the last year, and that won't be relinquished, a fact which could eliminate a few of the most prominent candidates.

"Good question. I think the most important thing is to find the right leader. I'm not one who wants to buy schemes, wants to buy approaches that are necessarily finite. What you've got to find is somebody who is strategic. Somebody who is a strong leader. Somebody who is very comfortable in his own skin. That, to me, is probably one of the one or two top traits because players today see right through if you're not. If you're a salesman coach, that's not going to work. Somebody who is completely comfortable in his role and in who they are as a person, that's the most important thing. But there's a lot of other characteristics that go into it. How well does the person hire? Is he going to surround himself with strong coordinators and good assistant coaches? ... I'm looking for someone that's innovative. Somebody that is not afraid to take risks. Somebody that looks (at) and studies the league and studies the college world and decides what the best inefficiencies are on offense and defense and special teams and can execute it with their coaches so that you take advantage of trends and take advantage of, again, inefficiencies in terms of where the game is at and understand where it's going. So, a student of the game who is obsessed and who absolutely and, on his own, is completely driven to be the best, that's what you're looking for."

Innovative leader, not scheme champion. Sounds more like Bill O'Brien than Chip Kelly to me.

"I think to be really successful in this league, you've got to be able to have the freedom to make short-term plans, mid-term plans and long-term plans and if you feel like you're under the gun where you're going to be given two years and that's it or this year has to be absolutely the panacea to every problem you have, you're not going to get the best coaching."

So, what you're saying is that it might not have been such a good idea to give Reid a public ultimatum for 2012? Oops.

"I think the new coach will have a big factor in evaluating Nick. Nick is obviously very promising. I think when you bring in a new coaching staff, you have the opportunity to really get to know him and evaluate him. He has only played six games behind an offensive line that's been really battered. I think they're going to have a great opportunity. I know Andy was very excited about Nick and that's an understatement."

Interesting that Lurie describes Reid's excitement about Foles but not Roseman's. Obviously there's some organizational momentum behind the young QB, but we'll see what the next head coach says.

"I feel the pain. I feel the pain so much that I sometimes wonder, it's harder for me to lose than it is to win a game. I still play over, just to give you a feel for it, I will go back and go through a red zone series in New Orleans in a playoff game and I can't get it out of my mind. It could be a pass that is underthrown in a playoff game here against Green Bay a few years ago, or an early pass in the Super Bowl with a guy open that got intercepted. Things like that. I don't get it out of my mind. When we have a season like this year, it's embarrassing to me and it's personally crushing. Really, it's terrible."

Whatever else you want to say about Lurie, this team is his entire life. Let's all hope he makes the right decisions going forward.

Photo from Getty.