What 2 Super Bowls With 2 Coaches and 2 QBs Says About the Eagles

What two coaches, two QBs, two Super Bowls says about the Eagles originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

It’s hard enough to reach a Super Bowl once. So many things have to go right. You need superb quarterback play, an elite head coach, playmakers on defense, skill guys who come up huge in the clutch, a mighty o-line and d-line.

The Eagles reached two of the first 51 Super Bowls, one after the 1980 season, one 24 years later. Lost 'em both.

They had four coaches and 17 starting quarterbacks in between those Super Bowls. And after 2004, it took another 13 years to get back.

Now here we are. This is getting to be a regular thing around here.

What’s most remarkable about two trips to the Super Bowl in just years is that 2017 was Doug Pederson and Nick Foles and this year it's Nick Sirianni and Jalen Hurts.

There are quarterbacks and coaches who’ve reached multiple Super Bowls. Brady and Belichick. Bradshaw and Noll. Montana and Walsh. Kelly and Levy. And that’s a remarkable achievement.

What the Eagles are doing is incredibly rare and speaks volumes about where this franchise is, how effective Howie Roseman has been building rosters and what sort of organization Jeff Lurie has built.

The Eagles are only the third team in the 57 years of the Super Bowl Era to reach two Super Bowls in a six-year span with a different quarterback and head coach.

The 1976 Raiders did it with John Madden and Stabler and four years later with Tom Flores and Jim Plunkett.

The Patriots did it in 1996 with Bill Parcells and Drew Bledsoe and then five years later with Bill Belichick and Tom Brady. 

And that's it. 

The 1968 and 1970 Colts had different coaches and different QBs in Johnny Unitas and Earl Morrall, but Unitas was the starter both years, Morrall just finished the deal in 1970. I'm not counting them.

So the Eagles are the third team in more than half a century to reach a Super Bowl and then get to another one within five years with a different coach and QB.

Pure magic. And it just tells you what a high level this franchise is operating at right now.

It starts with Lurie, who has the magic touch when it comes to hiring coaches. Three of the last four coaches he hired have gotten to a Super Bowl (and the one who didn’t was Coach of the Year) and the last two have gotten there in Year 2.

Neither Pederson nor Sirianni – nor Reid, for that matter - were anywhere close to hot candidates when Lurie and his search committees identified them as the ideal leaders for the franchise, guys who could build a winning culture, get players to buy in totally, prepare them for game day and then make all the right calls on Sunday afternoon.

It’s so hard to find the right coach. Lurie has never missed.

And Pederson and Sirianni have so much in common. Unfailingly positive personalities. Aggressive mentalities. An office door that’s always open so there’s terrific communication between player and coach. A knack for bringing out the best in their players.

And the most important piece of this whole process is Howie Roseman, who built a Super Bowl roster out of an imaginative mixture of youngsters and veterans, draft picks and free agents, superstars and guys nobody else wanted in 2017. 

And then did it again five years later.

The common denominator of the 2017 and 2022 Eagles is world-class line play, and all-time Eagles Brandon Graham, Fletcher Cox, Jason Kelce and Lane Johnson have been the heart of both teams. Isaac Seumalo, Jake Elliott and Rick Lovato are the only other guys on both rosters. Jeff Stoutland, too.

Just finding ways to keep B.G., Fletch, Kelce and Lane in Eagles uniforms in the salary-cap era was a masterwork. It’s just rare to keep those sort of building blocks together these days. 

And then to almost completely overhaul the roster around them with even more talent? That’s next-level stuff. 

And reaching the playoffs in 2018, 2019 and 2021 as well in the middle of a rebuilding process while navigating the whole Carson Wentz situation and extricating the team from his contract?

This just doesn’t happen. 

It’s impossible to run a franchise any better than Lurie and Roseman have over the last several years. 

And five years after a historic run, we’re one win away from another historic run with an almost completely different cast.

And best of all, this story is nowhere near its conclusion. This team isn't going away anytime soon.

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