One of the biggest mistakes the Philadelphia Eagles made this season was replacing Sean Desai as the defensive coordinator with Matt Patricia.
Now, the Eagles' abrupt change of coordinator late in the season may be another team's gain. In this case, an advantage for the Buffalo Bills or Atlanta Falcons.
NFL Media has reported that Desai will interview with those two teams to be their DCs.
The Eagles moved away from Desai on the same day they clinched a playoff berth, making them the first team to replace their DC with someone else on the same day they made the playoffs.
That someone else was Matt Patricia,
The defense was a mess under Patricia, and players admitted how challenging it was to learn another coaching style that late in the season.
“Trying to find two identities of (two) coaches is tough,” said veteran cornerback Darius Slay. “That’s like having two marriages. You know how hard two marriages would probably be to a household? Two personalities of two women? That’s tough. No offense to the women.
“That’s crazy tough. One might want her feet rubbed. One might want her shoulders rubbed.”
Sirianni insisted then that decision to emasculate Desai and strip him of his play-calling duties while banishing him from the sidelines in place of Patricia. He double-downed on that decision earlier in the week.
I understand that anything that I do, any decision that I make if it doesn't work out, you can look at it and second-guess it," said Sirianni. "We are where we are right now. I'll say Matt was in a tough situation trying to - because you can't completely change the defense, so he was trying to make some things happen with, quite frankly, things that weren't his defense,
"I know I put Matt in a tough spot, and I know I put Sean in a tough spot, but at the time that I did that, I did it because I thought it was the best decision for the football team."
General manager Howie Roseman agreed - it was Sirianni who came to him with the idea of replacing Desai with Patricia.
He compared it to when Sirianni came to Roseman to tell him he was handing off play-calling duties to then-offensive coordinator Shane Steichen two years ago early in that season.
"Coach comes to me and tells me what he's thinking," said Roseman. "...I trust him with the coaching staff. That's his responsibility, just like he trusts me with my front office staff. That's how we're structured here. That's how the relationship works."
Now, Desai could get a fresh start elsewhere.
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