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Declan Doyle May be Just 29 Years Old, but I Bet He Won’t Call Four Verticals on 4th and 11 with the Season on the Line
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Eagles coordinator news:
Due diligence most likely. It’s the Eagles casting a wide net and doing their research and getting some face time with some of the up-and-coming names in the National Football League. There’s nothing wrong with interviewing a bunch of people, even a 29-year-old who has never called plays.
It’s funny to hear some of the chatter that the Birds’ OC search has thus far been a failure. Nonsense! Poppycock. There are a lot of job openings right now and it’s an employee market. It’s not an employer market. The candidates have options and leverage at the moment. Plus, we don’t know if the Eagles’ #1 target is still coaching in the postseason, or part of a current staff that might be flipped when a new coach is hired. So it’s a little premature for all of that since there is an abnormal amount of moving parts this winter.
The thing about guys like Doyle is that nobody knew who Nick Sirianni was when the Eagles hired him. Well, NFL types did, but he wasn’t some big name. He wasn’t a sexy hire. Doug Pederson was known, but he too was not a sexy hire. “Some clown named Mike Lombardi” famously trashed the Eagles’ decision to make him their head coach, and we all know how that worked out. Doyle doesn’t call plays, but he knows Ben Johnson’s offense, and Ben Johnson’s offense is better than Nick Sirianni’s offense at the current moment, an offense that worked in 2024 but needs evolution and tweaking.
Maybe the guy doesn’t have enough experience, but I know he wouldn’t call four fuckin’ verticals on 4th and 11 with the season on the line.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com