Just look at that guy. Doesn’t he scream “leader”?

With today’s official hiring of Doug Pederson, Peter King gave a little insight into what seemed like a bungled and slow-to-a-fault coaching search:

I think if you follow the logic, it’s quite possible that the speed of the owners’ decision regarding the Los Angeles franchise shift last week played a role in the balance of power of the NFC East. So the NFL scheduled a two-day meeting to determine which team or teams would move to Los Angeles, on Tuesday and Wednesday, in Houston. But the meeting lasted only one day, and the owners, most of them, flew home late Tuesday night. On Wednesday, with one of the six NFL L.A. Committee members, Giants CEO John Mara, back in the office, the Giants could pay full attention to the coaching search. Mara told GM Jerry Reese to schedule a second interview with offensive coordinator Ben McAdoo for Thursday. Reese called McAdoo, who was in his home office in New Jersey preparing for his second interview on Thursday with the Eagles. You know what second interviews mean — usually but not always they mean a job offer is forthcoming. McAdoo had a strong feeling that was going to be the case. He told Reese he would be in Philadelphia on Thursday morning. Reese then told Mara the news, and Mara said they should move the second interview for McAdoo with the Giants up to Wednesday — like, in a matter of a couple of hours. McAdoo came in, they worked out the deal, and he was the coach of the Giants, not the Eagles.

So essentially, Jeffrey Lurie, savoring the process like a fine wine, lost McAdoo to the more nimble and decisive Giants. It helps the Giants that McAdoo was physically close and already worked there, but if the Eagles had reached out and bumped their interview up to Wednesday, maybe they could have had the man they wanted.

And then, there’s Tom Coughlin:

I believe the Eagles would ultimately have been fine with either Tom Coughlin or McAdoo as coach, and neither took the job. Coughlin, I’m told, wasn’t enthusiastic about forming a brand new coaching staff at 69 (70 next August) and wasn’t sure how his working relationship with Eagles football czar Howie Roseman would go. So the Eagles chose Andy Reid disciple and former quarterback Doug Pederson. At the end of the process, Mara said: “I’m not going to lie. It would have been like watching Bill Parcells walk out with the star on his shoulder. [Parcells coached Dallas years after leaving the Giants.] It was tough to see at the time and that would have bothered me. I want Tom to be happy, but I certainly didn’t want to see him happy in green.”

Sure, Mara wouldn’t have been too thrilled to see Tom Coughlin in that green/blue amalgam we call “midnight green.” But the big takeaway here isn’t Coughlin not really wanting to form a new staff from scratch. It’s that an established – maybe over the hill – coach didn’t want to work with Howie Roseman. It’s far from crazy to think he’s the only coaching candidate who felt that way.


Kyle: Not sure when Jeffrey Lurie returned from the owners meetings. But the only private flight from Houston to Philadelphia last week (at least that I can find) was a NetJets – what the Eagles use – flight on Thursday afternoon. The Giants swooped in and grabbed McAdoo on Wednesday. Totally possible this wasn’t Lurie’s plane, but it’s also possible the Eagles couldn’t grab their guy on Wednesday because Lurie still wasn’t back from the owners meetings. Either way, result is the same.