December 31, 2015
Before heading out onto the practice field Wednesday afternoon, Eagles defensive coordinator Bill Davis stopped for a minute to chat with a small handful of reporters. He said that he does not think he'll be retained as the team's defensive coordinator in 2016.
Davis explained the fairly obvious -- that when a team fires its head coach, the coordinators usually go down with him.
While Davis' unit had more than its share of issues, namely an inability oftentimes to get off the field on third down, the defense far outperformed the offense both in 2014 and 2015, as we noted earlier this week. Additionally, Chip Kelly's fast-paced offense put the defense in an impossible situation, as they faced more drives than any other team in the NFL. As a result, the defense's overall game stats were wildly misleading.
Offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur did not seem all that optimistic that he would be returning either.
"At this point, my focus is on Sunday," said Shurmur. "You know, we all know change is in the air and we'll just have to kind of talk about those decisions as we move forward. I'm certainly excited to help finish out this year. It's very unfortunate that Mr. Lurie felt like a change was necessary, but we're going to do what we can to play the Giants."
And so, it isn't just the head coach that the Eagles will need to replace, and soon. It will be an entirely new staff, and possibly a general manager.
If I may make a suggestion to the Eagles – you guys should probably find a way to keep special teams coordinator Dave Fipp.
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