Eagles news: Kellen Moore, criticisms of Jalen Hurts and a special anniversary

While the rest of the NFL is traveling to Orlando, Florida for the Pro Bowl Games, the Philadelphia Eagles are staying at the Novacare Complex and prepping for the Super Bowl. It’s been relatively quiet since the Eagles annihilated the Commanders in the NFC Championship game. That doesn’t mean things haven’t been going on around the NFL though.

It’s been four years since Sirianni’s introductory press conference

Four years ago today, on January 29, 2021, Nick Sirianni had one of the worst introductory press conferences that the world has ever seen. He had the charisma of a fifth grader giving a presentation to their class after having pooped his pants, he couldn’t complete a sentence, and all he was talking about was systems being in place or something like that. Go back and watch it at your own risk, but if you’ve seen it once, you remember it correctly. It’s gnarly.

Luckily for us, the 2025 Nick Sirianni, who’s heading to his second Super Bowl in two years, isn’t that Nick Sirianni. And luckily for Nick, new coaches are getting hired every season and they have terrible introductory press conferences too. 

Enter: Liam Coen, the Jacksonville Jaguars' new head coach, had his introductory press conference this week. Honestly, he could’ve said anything for 99% of his press conference and it would’ve been a nothing-burger… unfortunately, there was that last 1%.

Coen decided to address Jacksonville and the people in Duval County and to win them over, he did their patented, ‘DUVAAAAL’ cheer (is that the right word for it?). 

The head movement. The unblinking eyes. The eyebrow jazz… woof. 

Sirianni’s whole, “...Because when we put that. Because when we can learn our system, and we can get good at our system, then our talent can take over. Less thinking equals talent take over…” doesn’t sound so bad now, does it? 

Nick hasn’t really changed his overall theme in the past four years despite everything he’s been through. Giving up play-calling duties, getting destroyed in his first postseason game, losing a Super Bowl in a heartbreaking fashion, the collapse, everyone calling for his job, to now — he still cares about his core values and letting the players’ talent win. 

Maybe Coen ends up being a good head coach and maybe he doesn’t. Clearly, bad introductory press conferences don’t mean they’ll be a bad head coach. At least it wasn’t as bad as Adam Gase’s intro as the Jets’ head coach in 2019.

That dude was on another planet.

Moving the goalposts

If this week (and it’s only Wednesday) has shown us anything, it’s that these next two weeks are going to be tough for haters. They’re going to be especially tough for haters who’ve had their takes recorded.

Chase Daniels v. LeSean McCoy

If you haven’t watched The Facility on FS1, everything Eagles-related is pretty much Chase Daniel being hyper-critical about everything Jalen Hurts does while Shady McCoy defends his guy. James Jones says some stuff too, but it’s incredibly ‘meh.’ Emmanuel Acho also sits at the table, looks at the camera, and talks over people. 

On Monday, Chase decided to turn into a Jalen Hurts guy after he had a phenomenal performance in the NFC Championship Game. That’s a pretty huge turn from where he was for the past 21 weeks.

Chase is right. He has never laid into Jalen Hurts for winning. He’s gone on record time and time again praising Jalen Hurts for winning football games. Instead, he goes in on Jalen Hurts for not being a big enough part of the passing game… a passing game that exists to supplement the running game.

What Chase is doing is disingenuous and disconnected from reality. That’s like ordering a California Roll from a sushi place, and sending it back to the kitchen because it’s not chicken. 

Like, buddy… we don’t do chicken here. This is sushi. If you want chicken, then go get chicken. This is the Eagles offense. The quarterback doesn’t make risky throws because he doesn’t need to. If you want a quarterback to gun the ball with reckless abandon, go watch Geno Smith and the Seahawks.

It’s still food and you can eat it. The Eagles still move the ball and win. Just because you have an idea of what you think a quarterback should do, doesn’t mean the way he does it is wrong.

No one actually knows what the definition of ‘gaslighting’ is, but it sure does feel like Chase is doing it. It’s totally fine to change your stance on a take, but you have to admit that you were wrong in the first place. For Chase to say, “I was saying facts. And the fact was, he did not throw the football well for most of the season… I wasn’t wrong because I never, ever, ever questioned his ability to win...”

Whatever, dude. Good for Shady for saying something when he heard the flip-flopping.

Chris Canty is unimpressed

Chris Canty was a defensive end in the NFL for 11 seasons from 2005 to 2015 and now he’s one of the people on ESPN’s Unsportsmanlike. On Monday morning’s show, he had an all-time performance when he tried to diminish the Eagles NFC Championship win, and then he got called out for lying about his preseason ranking of Jalen Hurts. 

We spent all of last week hearing people say that Jayden Daniels and the Commanders’ offense was some kind of powerhouse. They scored the fifth-most points per game and total yards per game, and the fourth-highest EPA per play. Then they came into the NFC Championship Game and ran face-first into the buzzsaw of the Eagles’ defense.

Chris Canty? He wasn’t impressed.

Jayden had the best rookie season of any quarterback ever and that’s all anyone talked about. All of sudden none of that matters after they lose in the second to last game of the entire season. Uh. Okay. 

That was really small potatoes compared to him getting put on blast by a producer for lying about his preseason rankings. 

Amazing. Perfect timing and delivery by the guy in the booth. 

The audacity that Canty has to dispute the claim is enviable. It would be awesome to be so headstrong and un-self-aware to have someone tell you that you’re lying and then come back with, ‘No I’m not lying. The information that only I can see and that I created is right in front of me. It says I’m right.’ 

In case you were wondering about Canty’s preseason rankings, he was emphatic about Jalen not being in his preseason top 10:

Should you care about Chris Canty’s opinion? No, absolutely not. Is it fun to see people flounder when they get put on blast? Yes. Absolutely, yes.

Kellen Moore is still a wanted man

By the time you’re reading this things could have changed, but as of Wednesday morning, there’s only one head coaching vacancy left in the NFL, and it’s with the New Orleans Saints. Right now, smart national reporters and news breakers think Kellen Moore is the most likely candidate for that job.

This is all because the former Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy has taken his name out of the drawing because he wants to aim for the 2026 hiring cycle. 

If that sounds familiar, it's because this is the same thing he did in 2019. He was released by the Packers in December of 2018, did interviews with a couple of teams before the 2019 season, then said ‘Actually, I’m going to sit out next season. I’m going to read a whole bunch of books and become an analytics guy. I’ll come back in 2020 and be a better coach.’ Then the Cowboys hired him and they won a bunch of regular season games and nothing more. 

The general thought about getting a head coaching position in the NFL is that there are only 32 of them and it’s foolish to not take one if it’s offered to you. We’ve seen that idea tested in a couple of ways over the past two seasons.

Ben Johnson was highly recruited after the 2023 season because of the success he had as the Lions’ offensive coordinator, but he ended up choosing to stay in Detroit and have one last ride before moving on. Now he’s the Bears’ head coach.

On the other hand, Bobby Slowik was interviewed for a handful of head coaching jobs after his 2023 season as the offensive coordinator for C.J. Stroud and the Houston Texans. He decided to stay in Houston where he had a terrible season and ended up getting fired which pretty much tanked any chance of him getting a head coaching job for a handful of years. 

So, Kellen is going to have a decision if he gets the Saints’ job offer. Does he want to go to a lame-duck franchise where he’ll have a terrible team and end up getting fired in three years, or will he stay with the Eagles to have a second year with Jalen Hurts and raise his value? That’s one hell of a conundrum.