With former Philadelphia Eagles head coach Chip Kelly ‘outta’ there like last year’, NFL odds bettors and fans across the globe want to know who the most likely candidates to replace Kelly in the City of Brotherly Shove are.Thanks to this expert look at the top six candidates to land in Philadelphia as Kelly’s successor, you’re going to have a great idea of who the Birds’ coach will be in 2016 and beyond. With that said and the 2016 NFL postseason set to get underway in a mere matter of days, let’s get started.
The current Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator is my No. 1 choice to land the job in Philly for several reasons. First off, Pederson is a longtime Andy Reid assistant that spent four seasons as an offensive assistant in Philly from 2009 to 2012, so he’s quite familiar with Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie and the Birds’ rabid fan base.Pederson also spent 10 years in the league as a quarterback including the 1999 season in Philadelphia. Seeing as how Pederson has helped Reid and the Chiefs make history this season, the timing certainly couldn’t be any better.
The Bears offensive coordinator is one of the hottest head coaching candidates on the market base on his work with cry-baby Jay Cutler and prior work with the cerebral Peyton Manning. Philly will reportedly be in the hunt, along with Miami, and Cleveland among others.
Carolina defensive coordinator Sean McDermott has helped the Panthers become one of the most suffocating defenses in all of football. McDermott also has ties to the Eagles and Lurie.McDermott grew up in the Philly area and went to La Salle High School in Springfield before landing with the Eagles in 1998 as an intern in the scouting department. McDermott would eventually rise all the way to defensive coordinator where he held the position for two years.
The Cincinnati Bengals’ offensive coordinator is one of the more popular names going right now and his reputation as a players’ coach certainly helps Lurie in his search for the anti-Chip Kelly. Jackson led the Oakland Raiders to an 8-8 record in 2011 before getting fired after his first year on the job.
The Eagles reportedly offered Sumlin a head coaching job back in 2013, so I suspect that Lurie is still at least intrigued with the Texas A&M head coach. Sumlin is 36-15 since taking over Texas A&M in 2012 and certainly isn’t the worst name being thrown around at this point, though he’s certainly not the favorite either.
Eagles’ offensive coordinator and interim head coach Pat Shurmur has coached under both Chip Kelly and Andy Reid and was formerly a head coach in Cleveland in 2011-12. Shurmur is in the mix and recently said, “I’ve sort of looked at every day of my life as an audition.”
