The Eagles are a little late after the late launch of Doug Pederson, so they don’t have time to waste while advancing their unexpected coaching quest. We’ve heard that they are interested in attracting Lincoln Riley from college ranks, they requested interviews with Todd Bowles and Arthur Smith, and now we have another candidate on your radar.
Philadelphia requested an interview with the 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh, ESPN.com’s Adam Schefter tweets. Saleh has been a hot name, being linked to virtually all open jobs. He’s one of the top candidates for the Jets job in particular, as we just heard this morning that he has moved on to the second round of interviews with New York. Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie he indicated at his press conference on Monday that he usually prefers a quarterback guru as the head coach, but he is clearly not married to that idea.
To that end, we also have some additional details about what a potential Saleh technical team would look like, through this tweet by Peter Schrager of the NFL Network. Schrager writes that the belief around the league is that Saleh would bring an offensive assistant 49ers with him to be his CO wherever he went, and that they would seek to implement a “Shanahan” attack style.
That would mean a heavy schedule of racing and action. Schrager specifically highlights Mike LaFleur and Mike McDaniel as names to watch on that front. McDaniel is the coordinator of the 49ers’ racing game that he trained under Kyle Shanahan for most of the past decade, while LaFleur is the coordinator of the passing game that has been with Shanahan since 2014 with the Browns, when he was an offensive intern. He is also the younger brother of the Packers coach Matt LaFleur.
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