PHILADELPHIA - The excuse is baked in.
Distracted by multiple virtual head-coaching interviews on Friday and Saturday, Eagles offensive coordinator Kellen Moore ignores his job responsibilities causing Philadelphia to be upset by the locked-in Los Angeles Rams in the divisional round on Sunday.
Win and the sentiment gets kicked down the road until elimination arrives or is conveniently forgotten in the shadow of the Lombardi Trophy. Never mind that every other serious Super Bowl contender is going through the same thing with its hot coaching candidates.
Of all the lazy narratives around the NFL, the thought that [insert coordinator] is more Automatron than human being and needs to be hyper-focused on the next opponent 24/7 is ludicrous.
Between preparing the game plan for the Rams, Moore may have had to sweep snow off his car on Thursday or perhaps pick up dinner, or grab something at the grocery store.
On Friday the Eagles OC will interview virtually with the Dallas Cowboys and Jacksonville Jaguars. On Saturday it’s the New Orleans Saints tey magically Moore will have also gotten his work for the Eagles finished.
Out in Detroit Ben Johnson and Aaron Glenn will have done the same for Dan Campbell and the Lions against the Washington Commanders despite even fuller dance cards.
Eagles coach Nick Sirianni is already well-versed in other organizations coveting his coaching staff after losing both of his coordinators – Shane Steichen and Jonathan Gannon – to head-coaching positions after the 2022 season when Philadelphia lost Super Bowl LVII to the Kansas City Chiefs.
“I know you guys asked about Gannon, was he distracted? He'd been ready for that interview for 15 years. And he had been putting those things together for 15 years,” Sirianni told Philadelphia Eagles On SI when ow-deposed OC Brian Johnson was getting requests. “I think that's a silly narrative that people put out there sometimes because it can be a narrative because if you don't know what goes into all those things.”
Interviews are just business as usual for successful organizations during playoff runs and that’s always better than the alternative.
There is very little upheaval to game preparation and any interviews are done on personal time. Prep for the interviews is a constant process, not some all-nighter for an exam.
For Sirianni, he sees his job as not only coaching his players but coaching his coaches.
“You try to help him as much as you can prior to [the interviews],” said Sirianni. “And, two things, I try to help him as much as I can being the same person every day and teaching him what I know day-to-day, or bringing him in and saying maybe you'll have to go through this just like people have done for me.”
Sirianni was done with his season as the OC in Indianapolis when he interviewed with the Eagles in 2021.
“When I interviewed for the Eagles job, we [the Colts] were off,” Sirianni said. “We weren't playing anymore. So I was able to just sit there and write down a bunch of thoughts. But I wasn't struggling to write down thoughts; I knew exactly what I wanted to say; I knew exactly what I wanted to do. And that's how it goes.
“It's not like a pop quiz you don't know that's coming. It's not like a final exam where you're studying all these different things. It's just what you know and what you have done.”
For Moore, when he does open up a dialogue with the teams interested, it will be about his career as a coach and the things he's learned along the way.
“You don't just prepare for an interview in a week,” Sirianni said. “... So the preparation I guess to say has been done for these coaches. Now, that might take an hour or two of their time when they're with that owner or with the search committee or anything like that. But all these coaches who are going for interviews now, their preparation has been done through the past 15, 20 years of their lives.”
