Eagles news: Combine press conferences and rule change proposals

It’s combine week. That means we got to hear a sober Howie Roseman and Nick Sirianni for the first time since the Philadelphia Eagles won the Super Bowl. That also means that we have to hear from the other 31 head coaches and general managers whose teams didn’t win the Super Bowl. Unfortunately, their opinions matter, and boy do they have some bad opinions. Let’s look at some of the news that’s come out of Indianapolis so far this week.

NFL teams are looking to ban the Brotherly Shove

When Frankie Luvu jumped over the Eagles' offensive line in two consecutively and hilariously failed attempts to stop the Brotherly Shove in the NFC Championship game, we all kind of knew that there was going to be another movement to outlaw the play. What we didn’t know is that teams were going to be cowards about it. 

On Monday, there was a report that an unidentified team had submitted a proposal to ban the Brotherly shove. Then on Tuesday, it came out that the Packers were the unidentified team. To be fair to them, it makes sense that they wanted to be unidentified because Mark Murphy, the Packers’ President and CEO for the past 17 years, complained about the play in the lamest way possible.

I guess he does a mailbag column that gets published on the Packers' website. Jon from Kenosha, Wisconsin wrote: “What are your thoughts on the Brotherly Shove or the Tush Push? It seems that the Eagles have perfected it.”

That’s an innocent enough question. He paid homage to both of the names of the play and then simply complimented the Eagles and their triumphs. The ol’ Murphster answered:

“I am not a fan of this play. There is no skill involved and it is almost an automatic first down on plays of a yard or less. The series of plays with the Commanders jumping offsides in the NFC Championship Game to try to stop the play was ridiculous. The referee even threatened to give the Eagles an automatic touchdown if the Commanders did not stop it. I would like to see the league prohibit pushing or aiding the runner (QB) on this play. There used to be a rule prohibiting this, but it is no longer enforced because I believe it was thought to be too hard for the officials to see. The play is bad for the game, and we should go back to prohibiting the push of the runner. This would bring back the traditional QB sneak. That worked pretty well for Bart Starr and the Packers in the Ice Bowl.”

What are you doing? You simply cannot put out such a whiny take like this. 

His only argument against it is that it requires no skill, which is an argument that has killed, buried, and decomposed for three years at this point. If the play requires no skill and your team can’t do it successfully, then you should fire everyone for being skillless hacks. That should be the only recourse—none of this crybaby stuff.

Then he brought up that he wants the rule to be changed back to what it used to be in 2004:

“Rule 12, Section 1, Article 1: No player may assist the runner except by individually blocking opponents for him… [or] push the runner or lift him to his feet.”

The best part about him saying he wanted the rule changed back, is that he acknowledged why the rule was changed in the first place — because it was too hard to officiate. The guy wants the refs to have more things to pay attention to when they’re not even good at paying attention to the things they have to pay attention to right now. 

And then he brings up Bart Starr and the Ice Bowl? That game was in 1967. The goalposts were still in the front of the end zone. Bill Belichick hadn’t started coaching yet. The Vietnam War was still going on. Life Expectancy was 70 years. We hadn’t been to the moon yet. 

You know what else worked for Bart Starr in the Ice Bowl? Playing against defensive linemen who weighed 250 pounds.

Unfortunately, this whole thing has become a topic of conversation at the combine and now coaches are giving their input during their press conferences.

Atlanta Falcons head coach Raheem Morris said, “There’s just no other play in our game where you can absolutely get behind somebody & push them, pull them off, do anything,” while completely forgetting every play where the ball carrier is being shoved by his offensive linemen. 

Buffalo Bills head coach Sean McDermott went in a different direction with his criticism. He’s worried about the health and safety of his players when it comes to the Brotherly Shove. He thinks (and apparently has thought for the last few years) that it’s a dangerous play… he didn’t mention that his season ended on a failed one though.

Fortunately, Nick Sirianni has heard every bit of the criticism toward the play and he’s ready to fight for it.

It’s not a case of ‘Everyone v. Tush Push’ though. Todd Bowles, who’s on the Competition Committee (the committee that drafts rule changes) is against banning the play.

I never thought I’d say this, but: Hey Todd, you’re right. Thank you.

It sounds like Howie Roseman is changing

It's important to remember that general managers, and specifically Howie Roseman, are never going to give full and real answers in their press conferences at the combine. This is the unofficial start to the offseason, and any GM worth a lump isn’t going to give away their plans for the next six months. 

That being said, there might’ve been a few takeaways from Roseman’s press conference on Tuesday afternoon.

Near the beginning of the press conference, he was asked about his philosophy on paying linebackers because it’s not a position that he’s normally spent a whole lot of resources (draft or salary-wise), and how that’ll affect what he does with Zack Baun as he enters free agency.

Roseman said, “Everything really is player dependent… it depends on the quality of the play of the player and the person… You have a vision of how you want your team to look in the salary cap era. You have a certain number of resources that you can allocate… and so whenever you do something, you’re taking it away from somewhere else…”

That all makes sense. What he’s essentially saying there is that he doesn’t have the ‘infinite money’ cheat code on, and he’ll have to prioritize what makes the team the best given what he has. The next thing he said was the more important part:

“To put us in a box and say… 'We're not going to pay because we historically have not done that,’ part of what we do is evolve and look at things, see how things are affecting our team, how things are affecting the league, and seeing our place in that.”

That’s good news. To me, that sounds like the Eagles are open to throwing some money at Baun. It sounds like Roseman understands that he’s an important piece of the defense and he needs to prioritize having a strong spine of the defense. Just because he hasn’t thrown money at linebackers in the past, doesn’t mean he’s not willing to do it now, and that’s great. 

He was also asked about the core of the team going forward.

“…We have to get creative to make sure that we’re keeping as many of our good players as we can. I sat up here last year and said that’s going to include playing young players. I think that’s going to be a huge part of what we’re going to be going forward because we’re fortunate enough to have a lot of good players who are making a lot of money.”

This seems like it’s coming from the general idea that if you pay guys like Jalen Hurts, A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, Landon Dickerson, Jordan Mailata, and Lane Johnson it’s going to add up. A lot of times you can say that the salary cap isn’t real, but this is the proof that it is kind of real and it does make some pretty real limitations.

You paid your world-class core world-class money, which stops you from paying everyone everything. That means the team needs to focus on getting the most out of the guys that they drafted because they’re really cheap right now, and it sounds like that’s exactly what his plan is. 

He’s probably not lying about all of this, but he’s probably also not being 100% genuine. It feels like Roseman knows he’s going to lose guys, but he’s not going to try to fill every position through free agency, and that makes sense. Why draft guys if you don’t believe in them?

I would imagine that the Eagles are going to be a little less active in free agency than they have been in the past, but that doesn’t mean they’ll pull a Jerry Jones and do nothing at all.

Nick Sirianni got his swagger back

It was incredibly clear that Howie Roseman and Jeffery Lurie hired Kellen Moore to be the offensive coordinator after the 2023 season. That made a whole lot of sense given that the team had just had a collapse under Nick Sirianni (that we don’t need to talk about or think about ever again).

The Eagles hiring Kevin Patullo as the OC really seems like that was Sirianni’s doing. Again, that makes a whole lot of sense because after winning the Super Bowl, you get a lot more freedom and benefit of the doubt.

This whole thing feels like it could be important down the road because we need to know who to be mad at. There’s nothing worse than yelling at Jalen Hurts to throw the ball, and then the next camera shows that none of the routes allowed the receivers to be open. 

It wasn’t Hurts' fault that no one was open, it was the coordinators’... but then who hired the coordinator? Is it actually their fault? This whole thing goes deep, and this is just an attempt to try to find answers.

If Patullo was a Sirianni decision, and he doesn’t work out, then we know who to yell at. This is a healthy way to live. 

I went back and looked at how Sirianni presented the two hirings between his combine press conference in 2024 and the one this year. The differences are incredibly clear. Look at this video (he talks about it at 4:30).

Now this is the video from this year:

The more glaring this is how Sirianni looks physically. He’s typically a pretty sleepy-looking guy, but in 2024, YIKES. He looks rough. That is the face of a man who is absolutely going through it. Then you look at him this year, and even though he’s wearing a hat that throws shadows in his eyes, he looks soooooo much better. Winning is a hell of a way to stay healthy.

Now, as far as the actual words Sirianni said — and there’s a chance that I’m looking too far into this because after all, he is not exactly known for his succinctness or his press conference charisma — but there’s a little bit of a difference in how he addressed the hirings.

For Moore, he said, “I hired Kellen because I felt like he was the best guy for the job. Kellen’s been successful every place that he’s been, and I know it’s been a relatively young career, but he’s been successful as a player he’s been successful as a coach…”

For Patullo, he said, “I picked Kevin out of the people that we interviewed because I thought he was the best man for the job, first and foremost. Also, I think that when you look at good organizations in college football and professional football, continuity is very important. And we had a guy in-house that is so ready to do the job that he is asked to do…”

Again, the caveat here is that he had just recently started working with Moore at that point in 2024, and he’s been working with Patullo since 2018.

It’s notable that he said he “hired” Moore and he “picked” Patullo. Human resources hires people, but a boss who likes you picks you for a promotion. It’s a small difference, but it’s a difference. 

Then there's the way that he talks about each guy: it’s almost like he was showing a sense of approval for Patullo and he was defending the hiring of Moore. That’s not to say that he didn’t like hiring Moore, but maybe those were the conversations that he had with his bosses, or they were the conversations that he had in his head.

Again, maybe this is an over-analysis (it definitely is). When Sirianni soliloquizes at press conferences, it gets weird, and it gets weird quick, so this could be nothing… or my amateur psychoanalysis of a Super Bowl-winning head coach could be on point.

So, if things ever go wrong (they won’t) it sure feels like an educated guess would be to point the finger at Sirianni.