Eagles 'Hurt' After Firing Coach Brian Johnson; QB Jalen Hurts Ready for Change?
PHILADELPHIA – Jalen Hurts emerged from his exit meeting two days after the season ended and seemed encouraged.
“We plan on fixing everything that we’ve done and growing together, coach Sirianni, Brian, everyone,” said the Philadelphia Eagles quarterback.
Days later, Brian Johnson was gone, sacrificed for a 1-6 finish after what had began as a promising season.
Nick Sirianni will return, though there will be changes in his control of the offense. No longer is it his offense, as he said since he got here, but that of the Eagles, as he said on Wednesday.
“The new coordinator is obviously going to be heavily involved in not only - he's bringing in a scheme to be able to run, to be able for us to function in, and that scheme has to be something that our players can function, and our quarterback is going to excel at,” said a very sober Sirianni at Wednesday’s end-of-season news conference.
“I'm looking forward to whoever that is to come in and do those things.”
Jalen Hurts and Brian Johnson
USA Today
Hurts will remain the quarterback, obviously, and he will have a new offensive coordinator.
That’s nothing new. He had eight OCs in eight years before Shane Steichen who stuck around for two before leaving to be the head coach of the Indianapolis Colts, but how will he feel about losing not only another OC but a friend, too?
Sirianni didn’t want to speculate.
“Obviously they have a relationship,” he said. “You'll have to ask Jalen when you get an opportunity to talk to him. But anytime you have to let people go, we all hurt when we let people go. Every one of us. This is the worst part of the job, having to let people go.”
In Year 2 with Steichen, Hurts was an MVP candidate, finishing as the runner-up.
This year, the regression was noticeable. He struggled against the blitz, he threw 15 interceptions, he fumbled too often, and he didn’t run often or effectively enough.
“You want there to be comfort with Jalen and whoever is this new coordinator, and so obviously just like I talked to Howie about, just like I talked to (Eagles passing game coordinator/associate head coach) Kevin Patullo about it, I'll talk to Jalen about that as well," said Sirianni.
"You're in constant communication with your players, especially your quarterback, and so we'll talk through everything.”
How comfortable Hurts will be without Johnson remains to be seen. The two go back to when Hurts was 4 years old and Johnson was playing high school quarterback for his father, who coached Johnson and, later, Hurts as well.
Perhaps it will be a good thing to not have a friend as your coach. Perhaps someone is needed to push Hurts, to coach him hard, something he and Sirianni have both said he likes.
Maybe Johnson didn’t push hard enough.
Either way, it feels like Hurts may have some say in who the next OC will be, and the Eagles have $255 million reasons to keep him in the loop.
“I'll keep him aware of things that he needs to be aware of and keep him in the loop of that because he's our guy, and it's really important that those two guys are going to work hand in hand to make sure we're getting back to where we need to be,” said Sirianni.
General manager Howie Roseman seemed to refute just how deep in the loop the QB will be.
"That's not fair also to Jalen," he said. "He's 25-years-old. Jalen is continuing to grow and get better, and what we see at 25 is going to be different than 26 ... We don't ask the players to make these decisions. We don't ask the other people who work for us to make these decisions.
"We try to get information, and we try to make the best decisions we possibly can so that the confetti can fall on our head again, and we can be world champs again because that's the only agenda."
For his part, Hurts seems like he will be fine.
“I’m not the same player I was when I came here as a rookie, not the same player I was as a second-year player and first-year starter, not the same player I was last year,” he said. “You have to continue to evolve, not only as a player but as a man, as a leader.”
