After 14 seasons with the Philadelphia Eagles, Andy Reid, the longest tenured head coach in the NFL, was fired after the Eagles 4-12 season.
This firing comes on the heels of the Eagles being considered Super Bowl contenders in 2011 and finishing the year 8-8. This season, the preseason football community felt that this team had enough time to gel and expected vast improvements on both sides of the football. Owner Jeffrey Lurie felt the same coming into this season and expressed that he felt another .500 season would be unacceptable.
The Eagles got off to one of the most awkward 2-0 starts in NFL history. While they were winning games, things never seemed quite right. The defense had a propensity for giving up big plays while the offense seemed predisposed to turn the ball over. Despite these facts, the Eagles won their first two and were expected to work out their kinks.
Instead, however, the defense continued to give up those big plays and the offense continued to turn the ball over. The Eagles offense finished with the second worst take away/give away ratio (-24). There were two weeks this season where the Eagles didn’t turn the ball over — a Week 4 win over the Giants and Week 7, their bye week.
The Eagles offensive line was battered the whole season. Four of their five guys who they expected to start going into Week 1 either missed the whole season or a significant amount of time this year. This resulted in Michael Vick suffering a series of injuries which sidelined him for a few games, and in the games he did play, he was left scrambling for his life.
The Vick problems mounted, and he was eventually replaced with Nick Foles — who struggled in his starts and ended the season on injured reserve.
There was little good about the Eagles season, and the culmination of all these things led to Andy Reid being canned after nearly a decade and a half of service in Philadelphia.
Reid did have some great years with Philly. He led the Eagles to three straight NFC Championship games, and went to the Super Bowl in 2005. However, in the “what have you done for me lately” culture of the NFL, those are just distant memories that preceded such and unsuccessful season.
There is no word on who the Eagles will look to replace Reid at the moment.
