April 02, 2025
Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie held his annual "State of the Eagles" address, so to speak, at the NFL owners meetings in Palm Beach on Tuesday. We trimmed some of his quotes for brevity's sake, but if you're interested in watching the media session in full, you may do so here:
Chairman & CEO Jeffrey Lurie speaks with the media. #FlyEaglesFly https://t.co/tlAjXVEDiW
— Philadelphia Eagles (@Eagles) April 1, 2025
Here were my eight biggest takeaways.
"I'd almost like to say that, has there been a better NFL team than the 2024 Eagles? I don't know. I'd much rather say that. I'm very proud of that. I think we had an incredible roster. I think we'll still go into the next season with a superb roster."
#JimmySays: This was in response to a question about the team likely not being as good in 2025 after losing as many players as they did.
He was later asked a follow-up on the idea that they were the best team ever.
"No, no, no. I didn't say that," Lurie said. "What I'm saying is it was a damn good team.
"Just roster wise, incredibly capable. Very well coached, all sides of the ball. Really hard to pinpoint a weakness. And then the way it dominated the NFC Championship Game in the Super Bowl. There have been some other teams. It's right up there, I think, with those teams. That's something for you guys and everyone else to decide, not me. We just experienced a major win against Washington and a major win against the Chiefs. Those were not close games."
"I think for everybody, including myself especially, health and safety is the most important thing when evaluating any play. We've been very open to whatever data exists on the tush push and there's just been no data that shows that it isn't a very, very safe play. If it weren't, we wouldn't be pushing the tush push.
"But I think, first of all, it's a precision play. It's very practiced. We devote a lot of resources to the tush push. We think we have an unusual use of personnel because we have a quarterback that can squat over 600 pounds and an offensive line that's filled with All-Pro players. That combination with incredible, detailed coaching with Coach Stoutland, has created a play we can be very successful at. There's other ways of gaining that half yard, that yard. There's quarterback sneaks, other types, but we've been very, very good at it.
"It's a play that's available to every other team in the league, and I think it hasn't been used more than five times by almost every team in the league. Buffalo is an exception. The usage rate has gone down over the last year dramatically in the league. We're still very good at it. We're not as good as we were the year before. We've got to adapt.
"So I think for all of us that have followed NFL football over the decades, there's an ebb and flow to offense and defense. And typically one of the great things about professional football is that defenses adjust to offenses and offenses adjust to defenses every year. When we won the Super Bowl a few years ago, we really banked on the RPOs and were very, very successful. It didn't take long for defenses to adapt to the RPOs, and if you notice, we weren't as successful and we stopped using it nearly as much. As the passing game becomes more explosive, you see more styles of defense to prevent explosive plays that open up the running game.
"So the value maybe becomes more where there's an effective run game in order to balance against defending explosive pass games. So, there's an ebb and flow, and I don't ever remember a play being banned because a single team or a few teams were running it effectively.
"It's part of what I think I personally, and I think most of us love about football, is it's a chess match. Let the chess match play out, and if for any reason it does get banned, we will try to be the very best at short yardage situations. We've got a lot of ideas there, but I think it's a credit to using our personnel in a way. There aren't that many teams that have 600-pound squat quarterbacks and that offensive line. Listen, if there were any injury concern, I would be concerned.
"I want to know what data there is. I don't think there is any. If you want to say that it could be, it's hard to make rules on could be's and should be's. The quarterback sneak is one of the reasons we like using the tush push, we think it's a safer play than the quarterback sneak.
"The quarterback sneak, if you talk to quarterbacks about it, there's more spearing going on. They're less protected by players around them. One of the reasons we got motivated to develop an expertise in this play is it was more protective to the quarterback.
"It's ironic that people would bring up health and safety. We're at the top of the game in terms of wanting health and safety on every play. We voted for hip drop tackle and defenseless receiver. We will always, always support what is safer for the players. It's a no-brainer. If this is proven to be less safe for the players, we will be against the tush push. But until that's the case, to me, there'd be no reason to ban this play."
#JimmySays: Teams that want to ban the play are very clearly doing so because one team executes it well and the rest of them can't, so they're citing "health" concerns with no concrete evidence that it is a particularly dangerous play. Lurie called that out to some degree.
"I remember reading about the forward pass, and they said it really was an odd play that is no part of American football. It was controversial when the forward pass came out. I think aestheticism is very subjective. I've never judged whether a play looks okay. Does a screen pass look better than an in-route or an out-route? I don't know. To me, it's not a very relevant critique that it doesn't look right or something like that. I don't know what looks right. Scoring; we like to win and score."
#JimmySays: Would people rather see a field goal attempt or a punt and then five commercials instead of a tush push? Because really, what the play does is extend drives and the parts of the game fans want to see.
Also, is a QB sneak without pushers more aesthetically pleasing than with them?
"We want to win and we want to win big. The way to win consistently and to win big is to plan for the contracts you're going to have to give to your best young players, and we want to retain our best young players as we go forward. It's impossible if you draft well to do that. We want to make sure we're aggressive at being able to sign players early that we think are core players for the future.
"In the NFL, the way the salary cap system works is it's based on a certain percentage. The average team should not have a surplus of players they have to sign. When you're an excellent team, you should certainly have a surplus of players that you have on your roster.
"So my hope is we will always draft well, we will always have a surplus and we will always continue to figure out who and who and what opportunities you need to try to sign players 12 months out, 24 months out and prepare for that so that you're never in a situation of drafting an excellent young player and preferring to keep them and have no way to keep them.
"Howie and Nick, they've done an outstanding job of drafting and developing and I think we're all really excited about the players that are going to be playing that. Milton Williams, excellent young player, Josh Sweat delivered so much for us. These are the kind of players that in the salary cap system and you're a really good team, you better be prepared for what's next.
"So we want as many draft choices as possible and we want as much salary cap space as possible to plan for who we're going to have in the core now, 12 months from now, 24 months from now. So the goal is win big and that's really the theory behind the whole thing and I trust Howie."
#JimmySays: The reality is indeed that because the Eagles have drafted so well in recent years they have had to make tough decisions on other players on their roster.
"I mean, Nick's going to be our coach and we don't talk publicly, never have you guys. I'm sure we'll find out soon enough that Nick will be our coach going forward and he's done an outstanding job.
"When we were 2-2, we went 16-1 after that, and the one was when Jalen Hurts, we were winning the game, got a concussion. So it's not easy to go 16-1 in the National Football League, four of which are against playoff teams, one of which was the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl. So, outstanding job.
"Everything that I had hoped for with Nick, he embodies. Whether it's connection, intelligence in so many ways, from football intelligence, emotional intelligence, managing of people, hiring of assistant coaches, growth mindset at all times.
"It's one of the reasons Howie is so good, incredible growth mindset. Neither are risk averse.
"These are all the things that we embody, appreciate and are a big contributor to the culture we have. So everything that I had hoped for early on, identifying Nick as the next head coach has come to pass and great to work with and he has a growth mindset, he'll get better."
#JimmySays: This time last year Lurie was fielding questions about why he didn't fire Sirianni.
"We just felt this is a time honored tradition being invited by the White House. So there was no reticence whatsoever. To be celebrated at the White House is a good thing. There were special circumstances back then that were very different, and so this was kind of an obvious choice and look forward to it.
"When you grow up and you hear about, ‘Oh, the championship team got to go to the White House,’ that's what this is. And so we didn't have that opportunity and now we do. I think we're all looking forward to it."
#JimmySays: When asked what he would say to the fans who take offense to embracing the current president, Lurie said, "This is really just an invitation from the White House. That's all this is, and we're not politicizing it in any way."
Lurie also noted that it's an optional event that Eagles players can choose to attend, or not.
"It's hard for me because I’m so – I think you know – really obsessed with the team, the culture, getting to know the players. I take them all out to dinner from time to time. This is not a distant relationship.
"And so whether it's C.J. Gardner-Johnson, or it's Dallas, or it's Milton Williams, or whoever it is, we’ve got to do what we think is best for the franchise in terms of winning big. But it's for all of us.
"These are not names. These are human beings that we’ve really, really been through battle with, been on the big stage with, and enjoy.
"No different than Zach Ertz. It's the way it is. You've got to balance it all out. And the one thing is, we’ve got to do what we think is best in terms of roster construction, planning, and winning big. Winning big."
#JimmySays: Really, all three of the Eagles' main decision makers — Lurie, Howie, and Nick — all more or less hinted that Goedert won't be on the 2025 roster.
"I mean Lane is already there. Lane is one of those guys, great respect for Lane.
"Yeah, I mean you can see it already. It's an incredible group. I give the older guys credit for evolving and continuing that, but the young group is both exceptionally talented and [has] outstanding leadership potential. And I think you all probably can tell who they are. And led, by the way, by Saquon and Jalen Hurts.
So it's a great situation. You can pinpoint many of these young players as potential leaders already.
#JimmySays: Saquon for sure is a player poised to step into a leadership role.
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