Eagles Checked A Lot Of Boxes With QB Coach Hire

When it comes to positional-coach hirings in the NFL, no one on the outside can really know how things are going to work out.

Out in Indianapolis for the NFL’s scouting combine, Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni offered up the standard he’s shooting for with those kinds of moves days in advance of Philadelphia luring former Bowling Green head coach Scot Loeffler from the college ranks as the Eagles’ new quarterbacks coach.

“At the end of the day, in a position coach, I'm always looking for a good person,” Sirianni told reporters. “Because again, I think we just saw that there were many, many different reasons why we were able to win [Super Bowl LIX]. But a big one was teamwork, connection, selflessness.

“So I’m always looking for that.”

The second reasoning is of lesser importance and has become more of a trope for fans in Philadelphia. To be fair, however, it's been in the Jeffrey Lurie playbook for years when the Eagles don’t meet expectations: the idea of “fresh” or “outside voices” to keep things from getting stale.

Sirianni dutifully noted that aspect as well.

“Aso can (a position coach) bring new thoughts, new schemes, new ideas to the table to help the development of your offense,” Sirianni said, “... To continue the forward thinking while evolving your offense.”

What you can say confidently about the Loeffler hire is that it checked a lot of boxes for Philadelphia despite a smaller pool of candidates than a team that got bounced in the first round of the playoffs would have been working with.

Loeffler played the position at Michigan in the mid-1990s, has coached QBs for a quarter century and has worked with every style of quarterback from Tom Brady, who he counts as a close friend, to Tim Tebow. His obvious connection to the staff dates back to Virginia Tech with receivers coach Aaron Moorehead when Logan Thomas was starring at QB for the Hokies.

More so Loeffler, who replaces now-New Orleans offensive coordinator Doug Nussmeier, becomes the outside voice in the rare industry where innovation seems to trickle up.

In other words, the new ideas with offensive and defensive football generally come from the college ranks. And honestly, the college guys often get their ideas from high school football.

Meanwhile, Loeffler was able to turn a lesser program like Bowling Green into a competitive one with three consecutive Bowl appearances by scheming things up better than his usually more well-heeled opponents.

Success or failure will ultimately boil down to the relationships Loeffler forges with Jalen Hurts, and to a lesser extent Kenny Pickett and Tanner McKee. Betting on experience that already understands that landscape from a practical and figurative standpoint is as solid as a bet the Eagles could have made.

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