A few words about the Eagles' pursuit of Adam Gase

Coaching candidates are like draft picks: the only thing anybody knows about them comes from one of two sources.

1) The subjective opinions of people who have first-hand knowledge of the candidate.

2) Statistics that require enough adjustment and context that they are nearly meaningless by themselves.

Both of these sources are flawed to an extent that most of us outside of the search committees themselves are no better than educated guessers in our attempts to evaluate the candidates a team is considering.

There is a reason the Eagles' interview with Adam Gase lasted a reported eight hours. It's the same reason Jeffery Lurie fired Chip Kelly despite a 27-21 record and the top two scoring offenses in franchise history. It's the same reason Bruce Arians - a guy who was considered perhaps fourth or fifth in the post-2012 candidate power rankings, a guy whom the Eagles did not even interview - is the only coach in his hiring cohort to establish himself as an unqualified success.

I mention all of that to emphasize that I do not have an opinion on Adam Gase himself, and anybody who does is probably just filling airtime (outside of the people who have worked with him or spent hours picking his brain about his philosophies on scheme, personnel, assistant coaches, and organizational dynamics). The guy could very well prove to be the next Arians, or Pete Carroll, or Mike Tomlin.

I do, however, have some thoughts on the process the Eagles are utilizing as they search for their next head coach, which seems to have zeroed in on Gase, provided their reported desire for a second interview turns out to be true.

I don't think it is a foolish thing to use the most stable organization in professional sports as frame of reference for the Eagles' process, and when I see them once again zeroing in on this year's most talked about Offensive Playcaller Du Jour (or whetever the French word is for "offseason), I can't help but think back to the Steelers' hiring of Mike Tomlin prior to the 2007 season.

For two-and-a-half weeks, the Steelers were portrayed as deliberating between offensive coordiantor Ken Whisenhunt and offensive line coach Russ Grimm, to the point that the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review ran a front-page story in their Sunday paper declaring that Grimm would be announced as head coach the following day.

Turns out, Art Rooney II was using the time to finish talking himself into Tomlin, who, in the words of Sports Illustrated, "blew him away" in two interview sessions with his passion and his philosophy on maximizing each of his players' talents. In addition to Grimm and Whisenhunt, the Steelers also interviewed Chan Gailey.

A few observations:

1) The candidates the Steelers interviewed covered a broad spectrum of backgrounds. Whisenhunt was the OPDJ of that offseason, eventually landing the head job in Phoenix. Grimm was more of a Pat Shurmur type, not a flashy candidate, but respected by the players and the organization after six seasons as the Steelers offensive line coach, which followed 11 seasons as a guard for the Redskins. Gailey spent two years as the team's offensive coordiantor in the 90's before moving on to head coaching stints with the Cowboys and Georgia Tech. Tomlin was a defensive coach who was an assistant under Tony Dungy before spending one season as the Vikings defensive coordinator.

2) Tomlin was the only member of the group without any connections to the Steelers, the only one who did not coach under Bill Cowher. He came from Dungy's Tampa 2 4-3 system, where he spent five years as a defensive backs coach, which followed a six-year stint at some smaller D-I colleges, which followed a playing career at William and Mary. He was just 35 years old.

3) I'm not sure the Eagles have interviewed a guy comparable to Tomlin since they interviewed a guy named Andy Reid back in 1999. Back in 2013, their list of candidates felt like it had been compiled from a Who's Who book: In addition to trendy names like Kelly, Gus Bradley, and Bill O'Brien, they scheduled interviews with Lovie Smith, Mike Nolan, even Brian Billick. Read this CBS Sports story from that time. Tragedy plus time does indeed equal humor.

4) The one guy the Eagles didn't interview the last time around was Arians. The notion that some sort of "Wow Factor" is important to Lurie would seem to be challenged by his hiring of Reid in '99 when he was a little known quarterbacks coach who had never before been a coordinator. Yet the front office has gone through quite a shake up since then, and given Howie Roseman's remarkable ability to still be where he is, one can only assume that he is the one who is at the controls, be it actively or passively.

If the Eagles do end up limiting their interviews to three guys from offensive backgrounds, two of them from in-house, it's hard to see how that offers them the broadest possible perspective in choosing a coach.

Mike Sielski and I spent an hour or so discussing the Gase, Howie Roseman, personnel vs. scheme and various other pertinent issues on our podcast, so if you feel like getting more in depth on the matter, I'd recommend checking it out.

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