Howie and Nick try hard to say very little

There was a time, less than 15 years ago, when the NFL Scouting Combine was not nearly as much of a blazing bright star in the sporting firmament. From an Eagles perspective, this meant that the Philly contingent consisted of a few reporters from the Daily News and the Inquirer (not yet merged), the Eagles’ website folks, and maybe a camera crew from what was then Comcast Sportsnet.

The print reporters (as we once called ourselves) would meet with Andy Reid at some point in the proceedings. Andy would not be shielded by a lectern, there would be no cameras present, no social media documenting his every utterance. The session would be a quiet discussion of where things stood.

The Eagles always stayed at the Westin back then, a hotel connected to the convention center by one of those glass-enclosed pedestrian walkways, in this case over Washington Street. Andy made sure he always returned to the same exact corner suite; I don’t know if the Westin folks were allowed to change the carpet or the color of the comforter on his bed from year to year, but I am pretty sure that Andy liked things as they were. No surprises.

I can’t say that these sessions produced a bevy of revelations. We were talking with Andy, after all. Even in a relaxed setting, wearing a windbreaker and shorts, perched on a sectional sofa that was gamely striving to meet the task at hand, he was not a fellow who was going to confide his deepest thoughts. In fact, that’s what I remember most — thinking, “It’s nice to get some facetime with the coach, talk about the family, but geez what am I gonna write off this?”

Like so many things in life, we didn’t appreciate what we had until it was gone. Tuesday afternoon, Howie Roseman and Nick Sirianni met with reporters at the 2024 combine.

“Met with.” Ha, ha. I joke! They climbed onto one of a row of podiums set up in a corner of the vast convention center floor, and stood behind an official 2024 NFL Scouting Combine lectern, in front of an official 2024 NFL Scouting Combine camera background. Dozens of reporters milled about, several feet below and in front of them, shouting questions.

Roseman and Sirianni were so nimble, the combine should name a drill after them. The three-cone question-dodge shuttle, maybe.

Their previous media session, at NovaCare a month earlier, didn’t really delve into my key end-of-season concern: What the hell happened? How can a team almost win the Super Bowl, start the next season 10-1, then suffer a complete, historic collapse?

This time out, the scribes really tried. The first question to Roseman touched upon this topic.

“Obviously, the end of the season didn’t go the way we wanted it to,” Roseman disclosed, as the assembled throng struggled to contain its amazement at this frank confession. (I made that last part up.) “At the same time, making the playoffs six of the last seven years, being in two of the last six Super Bowls, I feel like we’ve developed some sort of winning culture.”

No question, the Eagles have been good much more than they have been bad, the entire 21st century so far. Roseman enjoys a deserved reputation as one of the NFL’s better general managers, Jeffrey Lurie is far and away the most competent owner in the long history of the franchise. But that doesn’t speak to the reality of what we saw in the final two months of the 2023 season, the complete dysfunction that had set in by the time the Eagles encountered a mediocre Tampa Bay team in the playoffs and ran up the white flag, losing 32-9.

Something was deeply wrong by then, it had seeped into the team’s bones. The Eagles weren’t losing just because the defensive back seven was undermanned, it sure looked like they were losing because players had stopped believing in their coaches, in their teammates, and maybe even in themselves.

The collapse got the offensive and defensive coordinators fired, Sirianni’s clout diminished by the hiring of Kellen Moore, but if you are uneasy with the idea that those changes are going to fill such a gaping hole shot through the very soul of the team, well, join the club.

Sirianni, asked about the end of the season, said he and his staff were still going through the film. “Obviously, there was a dropoff of how we played down the stretch and how we coached down the stretch,” he said. He didn’t want to give us “a premature answer” as to how that happened.

Maybe it’ll be like those secrets from the Cold War, some papers will be declassified in 2074 and we’ll discover that Kevin Byard was a double agent, covertly doing the bidding of Jerry Jones. For now, answers elude us.

A.J. Brown went on talk radio last week to try to clarify some things about his perceived petulance down the stretch. It was good to hear that he still wants to be here, but I was exasperated by his contention that the coaches weren’t to blame, that the problem was players executing.

“Poor execution” is football jargon for “we didn’t play good.” What does it mean? WHY did you not execute? Did you forget how? Suddenly? WTF?

As Mike Sielski pointed out in The Inquirer, management did not agree with Brown’s assessment, since it replaced the coordinators and most of the defensive position coaches.

What else did Howie and Nick talk about Tuesday? As is often the case, the rest of their remarks required some tea-leaf reading. Roseman was asked about the Haason Reddick contract situation. He disclosed that Reddick is an excellent player who is from Camden and played at Temple. A follow-up questioner asked what the best-case scenario would be.

Here was an opportunity for Roseman to say that the best case scenario would be a pact that would keep Reddick in Philly, at a figure that would fairly compensate him while allowing the team enough cap room to deal with its other priorities in the coming years.

Is that what Howie said? Nah. “I think honest communication is the best-case scenario with all your players,” Roseman said. “Understanding where you stand and not being afraid to have open doors of communication and hearing where they feel and where we feel.” (Yes, that last clause doesn’t quite make sense.)

My take after hearing that: The Eagles are going to trade Reddick, if there is a team out there that will give them whatever they think is adequate compensation, while giving Reddick the deal he seeks.

Roseman talked about young players needing to play this coming season, more than in the past. It’s not clear he meant the Eagles aren’t going to sign top-of-the-market free agents, but it is clear they recall the lessons of 2011 and aren’t going to focus on free agency alone as the path back to contention. Nolan Smith, come on down.

Roseman was asked whether new defensive coordinator Vic Fangio will have personnel clout. The answer there seemed to be a qualified yes.

With Sirianni, there were two important focuses: His relationship with Jalen Hurts and the workings of the new setup with Moore.

I liked Sirianni’s answer about Hurts. The QB can’t change his personality — teammates would see through that, he would be perceived as a phony. At the same time, he needs to know when stoicism can come off as aloofness, and that showing up early and working hard isn’t all there is to leadership.

“Just like he has done in other things, he’ll get better at that part of his game,” Sirianni said.

The takeaway on Moore was that Sirianni doesn’t intend to just hand over the keys to the offense and walk away. This was implicit in the way the Eagles retained Sirianni’s hires at passing game coordinator, running backs coach, wide receiver coach and tight ends coach, instead of bringing in people Moore picked. (Of course they kept offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland, that was never in question.)

“He’s been highly successful, and we’ve been highly successful … I’m really looking forward to meshing what he’s done really well with the things that we’ve done really well,” Sirianni said.

Rest assured, control of and focus of the offense will be tracked relentlessly through the spring and summer.