Fired Colts coach Frank Reich gets endorsement from top Eagles; Jimmy Johnson gets brush-off after Cowboys comments

When Frank Reich got fired in Indianapolis on Monday morning, it resonated in Philadelphia. Everyone associated with the Eagles’ run to Super Bowl LII after the 2017 season immediately assumed that Reich, the offensive coordinator on that team, would reconnect with Philly.

Literally, everyone.

“I’d like to see Frank come back here and mess around for us,” right tackle Lane Johnson, the Eagles’ best player, said Friday.

This comes on the heels of head coach Nick Sirianni saying Thursday, “I don’t know yet. ... You know how I feel about Frank; I’m always going to use him as a consultant, whether he’s in the building or whether he’s not in the building.”

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Sirianni is Reich’s protégé, having worked under him with the Chargers and the Colts.

Combine those endorsements with this. Three years ago, Jeffrey Lurie told me:

“Frank Reich might be the best man I’ve been around in the NFL.”

Late Friday, a league source said the Eagles are discussing reaching out to Reich by the middle of next week.

So it sounds, at the very least, like the good reverend could act as a long-distance sounding board; a Zoom-call guru. Super. The Eagles should take whatever he’ll give them.

He would be invaluable not only because of his acumen, but because four common opponents remain for the Eagles. In fact, the Birds should be bugging Reich right now.

The Eagles host the Commanders on Monday night, and, while Reich lost to the Commanders two weeks ago, he’ll have fresher intel than the Eagles have. They faced a very different Commanders team in Game 3, when they sacked Carson Wentz nine times, but Taylor Heinicke is the quarterback now.

The Eagles then visit Indianapolis next Sunday.

Their toughest remaining nondivisional game is against Tennessee on Dec. 4, a team that beat Reich twice this season. The Colts also have the Cowboys and Giants remaining on their schedule, and while Reich won’t have coached against those them, teams routinely do advance work long before facing an opponent.

Reich this week told Fox 59, a television station in Indianapolis, that he will “Take a couple of weeks and decompress,” and, that while his desire is to be a head coach again, “You keep all of your options open.”

Helping out his protégé and his old players clearly is an option.

Mightn’t Reich cast too large a shadow?

No, said Eagles legend and Hall of Fame coach Dick Vermeil.

“I think it’s a great idea. You can never have too many good coaches around you,” said Vermeil, who was known for loading his staffs with big personalities. “You allow a guy like that to coach you, and then you coach the team.”

Johnson’s comment was remarkable because it was entirely unsolicited. He’s just excited to have Reich’s hand on the tiller again.

Johnson actually was asked a general question about the way things unfolded after 2017 for the holy trinity of Reich, former head coach Doug Pederson, and Wentz, plus quarterbacks coach John DeFilippo, three of whom are newsworthy this week.

Reich was hired by the Colts in 2018 when Josh McDaniels reneged on a coaching offer. He was fired Monday.

DeFilippo had been hired by the Vikings as their offensive coordinator before McDaniels reneged, or he’d likely have been promoted to OC in Philly. He lasted 14 weeks in Minnesota, made it through one year as the OC in Jacksonville with Nick Foles in 2019, spent 2020 as the Bears’ QB coach and 2021 as the QB coach/pass game coordinator, then found himself purged with Matt Nagy’s staff and jobless in 2022. Then, on Thursday, he was hired as the head coach of the USFL’s New Orleans Breakers.

After Wentz’s catastrophic 2020 season, he got Pederson fired. Pederson spent 2021 out of football before he took the head coaching job with Jacksonville in February.

As for Wentz, after he got Pederson fired he still forced a trade to the Colts for the 2021 season. They quickly tired of him and sent him on to Washington. He has now managed to get Pederson fired in Philly, Reich fired in Indy, and he’s working on ending Ron Rivera’s time in D.C. His passer rating of 84.1 ranks 24th in the NFL, his more comprehensive quarterback rating ranks 29th, and he’s injured again. He has a broken finger and is on injured reserve, so he’ll miss Monday night’s game, his fourth in a row, which would have been his first return to Philadelphia.

To review:

Reich is unemployed; Pederson’s coaching the worst team in recent NFL history; Wentz is employed by the worst owner in NFL history, and he’s hurt again; and DeFilippo’s in the minor leagues. (In case you’re wondering, Foles, the Super Bowl hero, is a backup in Indy.)

“That just shows you the NFL’s a wild-ass league. It’s crazy how things unfold, and it can happen pretty fast,” Johnson said. “But, still, I really like Frank. A lot.”

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Jimmy Johnson just can’t help himself.

“I think this is the best Cowboys team that I’ve seen. … I’m still not 100% sold on Philadelphia. The NFC is down. I think the Cowboys have a better shot than most.”

That’s what JJ told 105.3-FM “The Fan,” a Dallas-area sports talk station, on Thursday.

Johnson, a Fox Sports analyst who won two Super Bowls with the Cowboys, went on to point out that the Eagles’ style of play is predictable, hence the specious second-half performances. Their 20.1-point average in the first half leads the NFL, but their 8.0-point average in the second half ranks 26th. Johnson believes their stoppable will work against the Eagles when they face NFC East teams a second time.

“I saw it. It popped up on my feed,” Brandon Graham said. “We’ll see.”

“I don’t really give a [bleep] about who said [bleep], to be honest,” said Jordan Mailata. In the next locker, Landon Dickerson blurted out, “Wow!”

Wow, indeed.

“Who’s this guy? Jimmie Johnson? The NASCAR driver?” asked Dickerson, who grew up in North Carolina and went to college at Florida State and Alabama.

Dickerson was born in 1998, four years after Johnson won his last Super Bowl with the Cowboys, and he was just 1 when Johnson retired from the NFL.

“No,” said Mailata, who is from Australia. “He’s a coach. How do I know who Jimmy Johnson is and you don’t?”

At any rate, Johnson’s identity is as irrelevant to the Eagles as his opinion. Right?

“We don’t worry about what anybody says,” Mailata said. “They don’t know what’s going on in this building every day.”

He paused to consider the vitriol of his response.

“OK,” he said. “I guess I do care, a little bit.”

Johnson has a point, but every team shares that second-time disadvantage within its division. Johnson knows that, but he clearly considers the Eagles’ attack particularly vulnerable. Will that aspect play out Monday night in their 2022 rematch with the Commanders?

Johnson’s most offensive observation might be that he’s “Rrrreally surprised” that Jalen Hurts’ accuracy has improved from 61.3% to 68.2%.

To be fair, ol’ helmet-hair isn’t the only one who’s surprised about that.

I am, too.

Johnson went on to say that the Eagles-Cowboys rematch on Christmas Eve could determine who wins the NFC East and gets the top NFC playoff seed.

Johnson seems presumptuous in his dismissal of the Eagles’ accomplishments.

The Cowboys are 4½-point favorites at Green Bay on Sunday. They’re 6-2, just like the Giants, whom they’ve beaten once. The Eagles play at the Giants on Dec. 11 and host them Jan. 8, and that season finale is just as likely to influence the NFC playoffs as what happens Christmas Eve.