Eagles' Brass Need to Stay in Their Lanes
PHILADELPHIA - Few have seen all sides of the NFL in a clearer fashion than former league executive Andrew Brandt.
Once an agent, Brandt moved over to management in the late 1990s when he was named vice president of player finance and general counsel with the Green Bay Packers where he negotiated all player contracts, managed the salary cap, and basically handled all the business operations for one of the league's most successful franchises for a decade.
Recently Brandt spoke to SI.com's Eagle Maven when it came to the politics of NFL front offices, a hot button issue in Philadelphia in advance of Thursday's kickoff to the 2021 draft.
The angst surrounding the Eagles' brass stems from Jeffrey Lurie's imprint on the last two selection meetings, most notably steering the ship toward J.J. Arcega-Whiteside in the second round of the 2019 process and doing the same with Jalen Hurts in the second round of the 2020 draft.
"I mean one thing I'm appreciative of my time in Green Bay and other teams tell me, 'man, you don't know how good you had it,' is that we stayed in our lanes," said Brandt. "You know we had great personnel people like John Schneider, John Dorsey, Reggie McKenzie, Ted Thompson, you know, Elliott Wolf, and I didn't want to or get involved in the scouting side and they didn't want to or get involved in the financial side.
"We stayed in our lanes."
Brandt is well aware of what is going on in Philadelphia currently where those lanes have been washed out.
Brandt teaches law on the Main Line at Villanova University and once worked for Lurie and Howie Roseman as a consultant, helping to negotiate contracts in 2009-10 where he got an inside look at what went on at the NovaCare Complex during the tail end of the Andy Reid regime.
"I've seen all the reports about Philly," said Brandt. "I was a consultant for two years. I think I only was in one draft run by Andy [Reid] and yeah the owner was involved and in the room but I don't remember any bogarting of the picks or any decisions that Andy had to run by him. I remember some huddling and maybe a lot of communication with Howie and Andy."
Times have changed with the Eagles, though, and former coach Doug Pederson didn't have the same power that Reid did. The same is almost assuredly true for rookie head coach Nick Sirianni in 2021.
Lurie trumps a collaborative process where the scouting staff, coaches, and analytics department funnel information to Roseman before the team's board is assembled.
The disconnect comes with the filtering process where there have been reports of analytic chief Alec Halaby having a direct line to Lurie and Roseman meeting with others in a one-on-one fashion before getting the information to Lurie.
The problems in recent years have come from the organization's board being ignored.
In 2019 that turned into Arcega-Whiteside, who has struggled over his first two seasons, over Parris Campbell and last year resulted in Jalen Reagor over Justin Jefferson and Hurts over Jeremy Chinn and/or J.K. Dobbins.
"I think when you have a lot of cooks in the kitchen it does create for potential problems," Brandt assessed. "... we were autonomous [in Green Bay]. Yeah, we had a board of directors and some of those guys were in the room but Ron Wolf and Ted Thompson after him had complete autonomy."
Getting the player right or wrong is just the first layer of the onion when it comes to ignoring or dismissing the organizational flow chart en route to the pick, according to Brandt.
"You have a scouting staff out there for seven months bird-dogging every player," explained Brandt. "In a normal non-pandemic year, they're traveling that whole time and the worst thing you can do it when you set up the board - I mean everybody stands on their table for their prospects, area scout says this guy should be a second-rounder and maybe he ends up on the second round of the board or maybe ends up in the third round but it's set.
"The worst thing that can happen to a staff is for a decision-maker or an owner to walk in and say we're going to go here. You know, jump the board. It's the worst and not the worst for the future of the franchise - maybe the player turns out to be All-Pro - but that scouting staff you can almost feel the air go out of the room."
-John McMullen contributes Eagles coverage for SI.com's EagleMaven and is the NFL Insider for JAKIB Media. You can listen to John, alongside legendary sports-talk host Jody McDonald every morning from 8-10 on ‘Birds 365,” streaming live on both PhillyVoice.com and YouTube. John is also the host of his own show "Extending the Play" on AM1490 in South Jersey. You can reach him at jmcmullen44@gmail.com or on Twitter @JFMcMullen
Ed Kracz is the publisher of SI.com’s EagleMaven and co-host of the Eagles Unfiltered Podcast. Check out the latest Eagles news at www.SI.com/NFL/Eagles and please follow him on Twitter: @kracze.
