Stung by Personnel Department Losses, Eagles Propose Change to Hiring Practices

The Eagles submitted two rules proposals that will be considered later this month at the NFL’s annual league meetings in South Florida, including an overtime tweak that will be high-profile from a league-wide perspective.

The other proposal, however, is likely the bigger deal at the NovaCare Complex after Philadelphia lost its co-directors of player personnel, Ian Cunningham and Brandon Brown, earlier this year.

Let's start with the sizzle, an addendum co-signed by the Indianapolis Colts, which would alter the league's overtime format.

The current OT rules guarantee just one team a possession if they score a touchdown and became a major topic of discussion during the playoffs last season after an exciting divisional-round playoff game between Kansas City and Buffalo ended with Bills' star QB Josh Allen never touching the football.

Backers of the status quo will point to the fact the Buffalo special teams and defense only had to drain 13 seconds off the clock in regular time to win the game and the stop unit had another opportunity after losing the coin toss in the extra frame to at least hold the explosive Chiefs to a field goal, something that would have afforded the Allen and the Bills their own possession in overtime.

Bolstering that further is that Cincinnati faced the same uphill climb in the AFC Championship Game the very next week after losing in the coin toss in OT but then stopped Kansas City and went on to win the game and become AFC champions.

The proposal from the Eagles and Colts was made, “to allow both teams an opportunity to possess the ball in overtime.”

One strange caveat involves the unlikely scenario that the kicking team records a safety which would result in a sudden-death win.

"After each team has had an opportunity to possess the ball, if one team has more points than its opponent, then it is the winner,” the proposal says.

If neither team scores on their guaranteed possession, the next score wins.

The Tennessee Titans also submitted a tweak to the OT rules which would define both teams getting a possession in OT unless the coin-toss winner scores a touchdown and converts a two-point conversion.

Maybe the bigger shift the Eagles are trying to push through, with the help of Baltimore, Tampa Bay, and Buffalo, is more arcane but perhaps of greater importance after the organization lost Cunningham and Brown from its front office this offseason.

Brown was of particular concern for Howie Roseman because he left to become the assistant GM of the New York Giants, a divisional rival.

“It's hard for me because you see these guys and they have an opportunity to kind of help themselves and their families,” Roseman said at the NFL scouting combine earlier this month. “But at the same time, it doesn't really help the Eagles.

"Especially the timing of this, which I think it's something maybe that we have to talk about going forward, about losing guys during this draft process, especially in your conference, one in your division. That's not ideal.”

Roseman's words weren't lip service.

The new rule would address "secondary football executive positions" by enabling current employers to deny permission for a front office staffer to interview for those types of roles until after the NFL draft.

Personnel department contracts are typically a little different than coaches, players and higher-level executives from a calendar perspective in that they usually run from draft to draft, not season to season so the rule tweak would make at least some sense from that perspective.

The downside is that new GMs would not be able to hire key people until after they've been hamstrung for one draft cycle.

"In terms of how we're going to address [the losses of Cunningham and Brown], I think that we're in the middle of this process right now," Roseman explained. "To stop this process and really get the right people and get the right structure in place, we probably have to take a step back, which we're not going to do right now. We're just not in that mode.

"We have a lot of good people in our building. We have a lot of people ready to step up. We've been in situations where back in 2016, we had a decimated personnel department, and we were able to have a good off-season. So, there are no excuses for that. We’re very confident and, obviously, we had all the reports, so we know what they think. [The Giants and Bears] may know a little bit about what I think, too, which isn't great."

-John McMullen contributes Eagles coverage for SI.com's Eagles Today 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 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 Eagle Maven and co-host of the Eagles Unfiltered Podcast. Check out the latest Eagles news at www.SI.com/NFL/Eagles or www.eaglemaven.com and please follow him on Twitter: @kracze.