A week after losing Ian Cunningham to an assistant general manager job in Chicago, the Eagles are losing his mirror in the personnel department to the same job description with the New York Giants.
The Giants are hiring Philadelphia co-director of player personnel Brandon Brown to be their assistant general manager under recently-hired GM Joe Schoen.
The Giants elevated their VP of football operations and former assistant GM, Kevin Abrams, to senior vice president of football operations and strategy.
Brown and Cunningham both served as right-hand men to Andy Weidl, the Eagles vice president of player personnel.
Cunningham was hired by new Bears GM Ryan Poles.
As far as actual job descriptions Brown's main focus was on the Eagles’ pro scouting department and Cunningham handled the college scouting department but both would also do crossover work as GM Howie Roseman continued his recent history of grooming top front-office talent in the organization.
Brown has previously interviewed for the GM job with the Minnesota Vikings this offseason as did VP of football operations Catherine Raiche before the Vikings settled on Cherry Hill native, Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, who finished his learning curve in Cleveland under former Eagles VP of football ops Andrew Berry, who is now the GM in Cleveland.
“We have a real strong nucleus with Andy Weidl, Ian Cunningham, [Eagles football operations/player personnel coordinator] Catherine Raîche, [Eagles director of pro scouting] Brandon Brown,” Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie said in Januray of 2021. “One of the jobs of the general manager is to attract really good people and executives around him because it's not meant for one person.”
As far as who will replace Brown and Cunningham in Philadelphia, if the Eagles take a similar path the next logical candidates would be Anthony Patch, the team's senior director of college scouting, and perhaps Max Gruder, the assistant director of pro scouting.
The organization remains well-stocked with veteran personnel executives to help, including former Jacksonville GM Dave Caldwell, senior football advisor Tom Donahoe and player personnel exec T.J. McCreight.
Brown joined the Eagles in 2017 as assistant director of pro scouting before being promoted to director of pro scouting by 2019 and finally co-director of player personnel for the 2021 season.
He joined the organization after two years of scouting for the Indianapolis Colts.
A former defensive back at Fordham, Brown earned a law degree from Barry University Law School before breaking into the NFL as a pro personnel intern for the New York Jets in 2012.
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