By Max Harper
Jeff Lurie didn’t have a football background when he become an NFL owner, buying the Birds for $185 million back in 1994.
But he has come along way since then.
Consider what SI.com’s Conor Orr says:
Almost one-third of all NFL coaches—Sean McDermott, Frank Reich, Todd Bowles, Jonathan Gannon, Shane Steichen, Ron Rivera, Reid, John Harbaugh and Doug Pederson—have come through Philly at one point or another.
All of these coaches were subject to the notorious and secretive hiring process of owner Jeffrey Lurie. If that doesn’t feel important to you now, it should.
Lurie is just one of four owners in NFL history to reach the Super Bowl with three different coaches. He’s also the only NFL owner that I know to have come out and said there’s something proprietary about the way he hires NFL head coaches that he doesn’t want people to know about.
He’s also hired a great deal of NFL head coaches from relative obscurity, with his only “miss” being Chip Kelly, who won 10 games two years in a row before being fired midway through his third season. Reid was an uncelebrated offensive line coach. Nick Sirianni was not Nick Sirianni.
