Eagles: Turnaround Miracle or Reid Revived? Understanding the magic behind Philadelphia’s “1-year rebuild”

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By John Worrall

January 23, 2018

As the Philadelphia Eagles prepare to face the New England Patriots in a rematch of Super Bowl XXXIX, Redskins fans are left in the familiar position of watching another team chase glory while hoping their own beloved franchise can finally find the right ingredients to make a championship run of their own.

Several factors make this year’s Eagles run particularly frustrating to Redskins fans.  In addition to being the geographically closest division rival, the Eagles themselves appeared to be in a state of disarray after head coach Chip Kelly was fired mid-season a mere two years ago.  In the past five seasons, the Eagles starting quarterbacks have been Michael Vick, Nick Foles, Mark Sanchez, Sam Bradford, Carson Wentz and Nick Foles again… despite the fact that Foles had been traded for Bradford two years prior.

Even Philadelphia’s front office went through challenges as Kelly decimated key pieces of the roster that general manager Howie Roseman had built with the longtime Eagles head coach Andy Reid prior to Kelly’s arrival (including the Foles-Bradford trade and losing standout players such as LeSean McCoy, Jeremy Maclin and Desean Jackson).

How is it, many Redskins fans are wondering, that the Eagles could build a Super Bowl team from scratch in one year, while the Redskins haven’t managed to win a divisional playoff game since their last Super Bowl victory 27 years ago in 1991?

Part of the answer, of course, is that the Redskins franchise has been stuck in a vicious cycle of rebuilds and house cleanings since Dan Snyder outbid the late Jack Kent Cooke’s family for the team in 1999.  The other part of the answer is that what is happening in Philadelphia is not a rebuild so much as the resurrection of what was already a pretty good team.

Not a “Rebuild”

In order to understand the Eagles’ seemingly miraculous one-year rebuild of their team, we have to look at the franchise and understand where it was coming from.  The Eagles have not been a terrible team since the 1980s with the exception of a pretty ugly three-year stretch in the late 90s under head coach Ray Rhodes, which led to the hiring of Andy Reid (who was recommended to Eagles owner Jeff Lurie by Packers head coach Mike Holmgren, himself a disciple of Bill Walsh).

Reid was fired by Philadelphia after posting a 4-12 record in 2012.  It was only his third losing season in 14 years.  The Eagles went 130-93-1 under Andy Reid.  Under Chip Kelly, the Eagles went 10-6 back to back in 2013 and 2014.  Kelly was fired near the end of a 7-9 2015 campaign, and Doug Pederson’s first year record was also 7-9 in 2016 before leading the Eagles to a 13-3 record this year.

This is not a team that has been scraping the bottom of the NFL barrel – this is a pretty good team that was coming off of two mediocre seasons.  Part of the reason for this has been the retention and development of GM Howie Roseman, who joined the Eagles as a salary cap consultant in 2000, and was named GM in 2010 (the youngest GM in the league at the time), and the adoption of a stable partnership between Roseman and Reid that allowed the team to acquire players via the draft, free agency and trade that fit a pattern that lasted over a decade.

When teams go through an “overhaul” rebuilding process, the staff and player roster normally end up being a mix of the previous regime’s thinking and the new regime’s thinking for a few years until things get sorted out.  While this is also true for the Eagles, having Howie Roseman at the top has made recovery from the Chip Kelly era less onerous.

A Resurrection

While coaching the Eagles, Reid had majority control over personnel decisions, but worked closely with Roseman on those decisions.  Roseman is now taking a stronger role in the decision-making process than he was when Reid was with the team, but the lessons he learned in player acquisition were learned from Reid.

Similarly, Pederson is as close to an Andy Reid clone as one can find in the NFL, having played quarterback under Reid twice (in both Green Bay and Philadelphia), coached under him for four years in Philadelphia and was his offensive coordinator in Kansas City for three years.  Pederson runs a similar offense to Reid’s and is having similar results, in no small part because Roseman is already attuned to finding and acquiring players that meet Reid’s (and therefore Pederson’s) needs.

While there are obvious exceptions (DC Jim Schwartz, for example, and it never hurts to have a young phenom under center), the 2017 Philadelphia Eagles are far closer to the Andy Reid teams of the early 2000s than the recent Chip Kelly teams.  It’s not been an overhaul so much as a return to what already worked.

So what does this mean?

For Redskins fans, there is unfortunately little applicable insight to be gained by Dan Snyder and Bruce Allen trying to analyze the path Lurie and Roseman took to improve the Eagles over the past season.  The Redskins have no established, successful methodology to return to.

Rather, it is important to note that turning a mediocre-to-bad franchise around in the NFL is not something that happens overnight very often.  If it was as easy as nabbing a couple of free agents and hitting on draft picks, turnarounds would happen much more frequently.

Instead, what Philadelphia’s turnaround shows us is the importance of identifying and sticking to a philosophy over time.  The great teams – from the Packers of the 60s to the Redskins and 49ers of the 80s to today’s Patriots and Steelers – have all shown a consistency in team-building philosophy that has allowed those teams to build a foundation to fall back on – as well as simplifying the player selection process by immediately eliminating players that do not fit the established system.

For the Redskins, the priority needs to be the establishment of a team identity and the search for a successful front-office/coaching partnership that allows them to build a team around that identity – without abandoning the plan when a flashy player comes along.

Can Gruden/Allen be that combination?

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