👋 Good morning! And bundle up.

And there is only one place to go this morning to warm up: Wawa!

Is there any better deal than Wawa’s Big $5 Deal? From 5 a.m. to 11 a.m., you can get a Sizzli, coffee and a hash brown for just $5. Wherever you are in the area, there is a Wawa near you. Take advantage today!

As always, you can reach me at [email protected]

We are officially one week into The Great Offensive Coordinator Search of 2026. And I am viewing all of the NFL hiring/firing news through that lens, whether it’s good or bad for the Eagles.

Tough one for La Salle College High School’s Sean McDermott. Gotta say, I did not watch the Bills and think that coaching was their problem. They have a really uninspiring roster around Josh Allen, seriously relying on Brandin Cooks in The Year of Our Lord 2026. And if Allen makes just one of those crucial throws down the stretch in Denver, maybe McDermott gets a Lombardi Trophy instead of a pink slip. The margins really are that thin sometimes.

All that said, McDermott had plenty of chances to win with Allen. And he can take solace in going out on his shield, spamming a play that he tried to ban and said was dangerous nine months ago.

Back to the Eagles, Buffalo’s head-coaching job now becomes an incredibly attractive opportunity for an offensive play-caller. Clearly one that, if we take our green-colored glasses off for a second, is ahead of Eagles OC. Dianna Russini said there is chatter about Brian Daboll being in play there.

And if the Bills do go outside of the organization for an offensive mind, current OC Joe Brady then becomes available. Brady, who broke out with that crazy talented 2019 LSU team, coached very good offenses in Buffalo that have won in different ways. Bo and EJ talked about Brady here. Maybe he ends up getting the Bills job.

I headed into the offseason thinking that the Eagles offensive coordinator job was incredibly desirable, and nothing about that specific job has changed.

The past four years tells us that you have an equal chance of getting a head-coaching job or fired. Those are good odds! For an NFL play-caller, a position that basically requires the ego to believe you can fix anything, the Eagles offer a ton of talent to work with. You also are following up a play-caller who fell on his face running Coward’s Draws, and will likely be given the keys to make the offense all yours. Turn this incredibly talented group into, say, the eighth-best offense in the NFL, we will build you a statue and you will be a head coach in 2027.

But as Bo pointed out, there are just so many openings this cycle. You gotta think that Buffalo HC and Baltimore HC will be more desirable jobs, and if those teams go defense at head coach, then the OC jobs in those places would be very in-demand as well. None of Las Vegas, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Arizona seem all that appealing to me, but they are all head-coaching jobs. There are only 32 of those!

My general thought, after listening to pods and reading articles all week: Can the Eagles get one of The Big Four?

(1) Mike McDaniel: The best Mike McD since Rounders.

This has been described by many as the highest-upside swing the Eagles could take. And it would be a bit of a weird marriage, since McDaniel’s Miami teams played football the exact opposite way of how the Eagles did the past few years. Then again, McDaniel had to tailor his scheme to a limited player in Tua Tagovailoa. Who knows how he would scheme it up in Philly?

Deniz made his past schematic case for McDaniel: Tons of motion, play-action, passes over the middle of the field, purposeful motion, very few hitch routes. That would be very much out of Jalen Hurts’ comfort zone, but I spent all year writing that Jalen Hurts needs to pushed out of his comfort zone. Scared money don’t make money.

Now, would it be funny that McDaniel and Vic Fangio are working in the same building after a supposedly acrimonious departure? Possibly, but honestly, Uncle Vic might not even remember that he worked there.

All things being equal, I want McDaniel. I would sprint in my Capris to go get him. But he might not be available.

(2) Joe Brady: The man has only coordinated top-three offenses over the past three years. Then again, the man has only coached Josh Allen the past three years. Hard to separate those two things, but the Bills’ rushing attack this season was really impressive against pretty much everyone but the Eagles. The Film Grinders all seem to think the 36-year-old Brady is pretty good at this play-calling thing.

I thought Brady ran some pretty cool stuff in the Bills’ loss to Denver this weekend, too. The RPOs in the red zone out of under-center were pretty sick. It is worth noting that Brady did not even last two years as Carolina’s offensive coordinator (you know, when he did not have Josh Allen), though.

(3) Kliff Kingsbury: We know that the Eagles interviewed Kingsbury during the 2024 hiring cycle that led to Kellen Moore, and according to our old friend ZB, he might have gotten that job if he was more willing to work with Jeff Stoutland and his blocking schemes.

Kingsbury runs a different type of system, one with a lot of tempo and a lot of shotgun. But it’s hard to argue with his success in Washington: great last season with Jayden Daniels, average this season mostly without Jayden Daniels.

I do not know what type of home he could purchase in the Delaware Valley that could live up to this, though.

(4) Brian Daboll: EJ had a funny line on Daboll: If he is the offensive coordinator next year, the Eagles need to put a clause in his contract that he has to call games from the booth. You do not want him and Nick Sirianni on the sideline together when they are both in a mood. Things could get ugly!

That said, the primary case for Daboll might be a relationship-based one. Daboll was the OC in Kansas City in 2012 when Sirianni was the wide receivers coach, and they have a good relationship. Ditto for Hurts, who Daboll called plays for at Alabama in 2018. And just to throw another connection in there, Daboll was Saquon Barkley’s head coach for two years as well.

The results with the Giants were not stellar, although Joe Schoen was not exactly setting the world on fire with the rosters that he handed over. Daboll fared much better with the Bills, but then again, Josh Allen was his quarterback.

First, you have to look at the past here. All four of those guys have past NFL play-calling experience in common. Ideally, the Eagles would be choosing someone who has done this at this level before. But if all four of these guys got head-coaching or better play-calling jobs elsewhere, then you might have to choose from someone unknown. Nate Scheelhaase anyone?

But then there is the future. At his end-of-season presser, Howie Roseman declared that having to find a new OC after the old one gets a head-coaching job is something the Eagles will live with. Basically, the price of doing business. But they are also 0-for-2 in replacing the OC-turned-HC. I would hope that this time around, there is a clearer succession plan in some way or another.

Until the Eagles land their new OC, we will be watching the rest of NFL hirings closely.

Flyers 2, Vegas 1: Just when I think you couldn't possibly be any worse, you go and do something like this... and totally redeem yourself!

Bill wrote this in the post-game: It didn’t matter how, the Flyers just needed to win a game and they did. Now, they can focus on actually playing a lot better. Now, did anyone think that the Orange and Black would find that win on the road against a loaded Vegas team? No, but that is hockey folks.

(The Flyers are actually 4-3-1 out in Las Vegas since the Golden Knights became a team. Considering the respective quality of the two franchises over the past decade, that is pretty good! What is the opposite of a House of Horrors?)

Two things that had not been going great for the Flyers over these past three weeks helped them get the unlikely win:

That shorty was scored by Travis Konecny, who put away both of the Flyers’ goals on breakaways. Three goals and four points in his last two games for TK. Charlie called it “a signature game” for Konecny on the post-game, and he is not one usually prone to hyperbole. Considering that Konecny created both goals basically by himself, and dragged the Flyers to an unlikely win when they needed one badly, it’s hard to argue.

Good to see Bobby Brink back in the fold. Now with Brink and Jamie Drysdale back on the ice, the Flyers can put that costly win against the Ducks a few weeks ago behind them.

Sixers 113, Indiana 104: Nice little day for Tyrese Maxey. Kyle’s observations are here.

Early on, Maxey gets named an All-Star starter for the first time in his career. Well-deserved. The All-Star starters are determined by a mixture of fan, media and player voting, and Maxey ranked in the top-five of the Eastern Conference in all three categories. Kyle has more here, free for all to read.

It’s just another step in Maxey’s remarkable career. Progress is rarely linear, but it’s wild that he keeps upping the ante a little bit more every single year:

Here is all I have left for Maxey: First-Team All-NBA, Olympian, MVP and NBA champion. He has pretty much done everything else.

Maxey said that VJ Edgecombe, who he got into it with on the bench on Friday, interrupted his mid-afternoon nap and delivered the good news to him. Well, Maxey must have caught up on his 💤 after the call because he sure was energetic in off-ball defense against the Pacers. EIGHT STEALS in total, which gives him 15 in his last two games. Call up Danny Ocean and Rusty Ryan, this man is a thief!

Maxey is really reading opposing offenses like a defensive back this year. On the pod, I comped Maxey to Ed Reed and Devon comped him to Asante Samuel. We also had a discussion about the comparisons to Allen Iverson, who was a little bit of a gambler but racked up steals in bunches for Larry Brown. I really think Maxey is becoming so intelligent about when to gamble, not hanging the Sixers’ defense out to dry if he misses. When T.J. McConnell turns his back to him here on a spin move, that’s a steal. When Jay Huff draws two and throws it to the open man, well, he is not open anymore because Maxey read the play.

And within Maxey’s pilfering is a greater philosophical discussion about Nick Nurse’s defense that only the sickest of sickos are having: The Sixers are starting to force a ton of turnovers, but their aggressiveness can lead to giving up open shots. This has been a hallmark of Nurse defenses dating back to his Toronto years, and it can be a tough balance to strike. But when the Sixers do it well, they win the math battle. Case in point: The Sixers shot like absolute crap last night, but when you take four more field goals and 22 more free throws because you force a million turnovers and take care of the ball, you give yourself plenty of margin for error. Something to keep an eye on.

VJ Edgecombe had a nice third quarter stint running pick-and-roll with Joel Embiid, and he also had a monster dunk on old friend Tony Bradley. Poor Tony, I was legit bummed back in the day that he had to be the salary match in The Cursed George Hill Trade. It might have been a thrunk in the Blake Griffin vein, but it was impressive for VJ nonetheless.

The Sixers are on a back-to-back, and Joel Embiid scored his 30 points last night. That means no JoJo tonight, but they held Paul George back presumably to play in this one.

And to close out last night’s show, I relived one of my favorite Sixers MLK Day memories: The Corey Brewer Game.

One more thing: Curt Cignetti, greatest coaching job ever.

The Sixers are right back at it in South Philly, this time against one of the league’s best stories in Phoenix (7:00 p.m., NBC Sports Philadelphia). The Suns mortgaged their future to put together an expensive “Big Three” that did not fit, they traded two of those three guys for seemingly underwhelming returns… and here they are at 26-17. They play incredibly hard.

And within the Suns’ resurgence is the great story of Collin Gillespie. This is a local kid who did not have a Division 1 scholarship until his senior year of high school, wins a PCL Title, goes to Villanova and has a great career at ‘Nova. You thought that was the end of the ride for Gillespie though, right? I sure did. Wrong! Gillespie is averaging 13-4-4 for the Suns and shooting 41 percent from beyond the arc. He is gonna get a really nice contract next season.

And this comes after T.J. McConnell made 100 mid-range jumpers like he always does. What a week for small white Pennsylvania guards with ties to the area!

Your tentative Tuesday schedule at PHLY:

Let's make it a good one.

Rich Hofmann
Daily Newsletter Editor
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