So why did the Eagles lose to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and why did their season rapidly collapse upon upon them?
Why did the team that was moving through the air like a 737 MAX suddenly plummet to the ground?
Well, I am not a football guy, so I can’t necessarily answer these questions in terms of football.
Furthermore, I wasn’t there, so I’m not privy to all the ins and outs of what was going on with the team.
I can only go based upon what I see and hear in conjunction with experiences in my life outside of football.
Let me begin by stating that the keel of a ship is the indispensable structural element of a ship’s ability to perform its tasks.
The keel is the center board that goes down the ship in the middle from the stem to the stern. It rides principally underneath the water.
The keel is the spine of the ship.
If you break the spine of the ship, that ship is dead in the water. It becomes a useless ship whether you are using it for warfare, fishing, oceanography or anything.
In football, we don’t have a physical keel that we can see, but it exists nonetheless.
The keel of the football ship is the morale of the team.
If you break the morale of the team, you break the keel of the football ship, and that football ship then becomes doomed.
That is what happened to the Philadelphia Eagles.
The morale of the team was broken.
First, the team suffered two devastating losses to the San Francisco 49ers and the Dallas Cowboys. They got blown out.
This was enough to shake the morale of the team.
Then the morale of the team was destroyed after game 13 when the team stood 10-3 and then decided to demote the defensive coordinator Sean Desai.
That was a devastating blow.
You cannot humiliate your defensive coordinator in front of the team.
It is especially demoralizing when you no longer permit this individual to attend coaches’ meetings.
There is a tight working almost religious bond between the defense and its coordinator. They work hand-in-hand. As the season moves on, they become inseparable.
Buddy Ryan when he was the defensive coordinator for the Chicago Bears was more important to the defensive players than Mike Ditka the head coach. After their Super Bowl victory, the defensive players hoisted Buddy Ryan on their shoulders and took him off the field.
Humiliating the defensive coordinator is the same thing as humiliating the defense.
The air was taken out them.
Sean Desai’s loss and humiliation was the defensive players’ loss and humiliation.
You can’t do that to a team or a ship halfway through a voyage.
An old adage states that you don’t change horses in midstream.
In the movie, the Bounty starring, Mel Gibson, Daniel, Day-Lewis, and Anthony Hopkins, Captain Bligh, played by Anthony Hopkins, demotes his first officer played by Daniel Day-Lewis. And he does it in front of the front of the men in a humiliating way.
At that point, the Bounty was lost; it had no chance of ultimate success, no matter what port in which they landed.
The same goes for the Eagles or any team or organization.
Now, with that stated, there is a thought process out there, stating that the Eagles just weren’t that good of a team during the regular season, that they were putting out just enough to win the game.
Well, apparently, they had enough to win those games, and they were beating good teams that are still in the playoffs now.
The Eagles beat Tampa Bay during the regular season. The Eagles beat the Buffalo Bills during the regular season. The Eagles beat the Kansas City Chiefs during the regular season.
So clearly, the Eagles did have something during the regular season. These were and still are good teams.
So, what changed?
Morale.
***
With all this stated, there is one exception to firing the offensive or defensive coordinator mid season, and that is, if such coordinator is himself detrimental to the morale of the team.
Sincerely,
Archer Crosley
Copyright 2024 Archer Crosley All Rights Reserved
Cowboy Archer 
Leave a comment