Jeffrey Lurie Calls Eagles 'Colorblind,' Just Wants Best Coordinators

Jeffrey Lurie has been criticized in the past when it comes to diversity in his high-profile coaching hires.

The perception was that the actions often didn’t match the words of the Eagles' owner.

Months before the 2023 season, however, Lurie’s team is the only one in the NFL set to have three minorities in its coordinator positions, along with another minority as an assistant head coach.

Nick Sirianni’s current top lieutenants are assistant head coach/running backs Jemal Singleton, offensive coordinator Brian Johnson, defensive coordinator Sean Desai, and special teams coordinator Michael Clay.

The diversity record before the current sea change was sparse.

Lurie’s first head-coaching hire was Ray Rhodes back in 1995 and he hasn’t hired a minority since as a head coach.

Johnson is the first minority OC in the Lurie era. 

The last minority defensive coordinator was Todd Bowles, an interim selection in 2012 after Juan Castillo was fired. On the defensive side, Emmitt Thomas was also Rhodes’ DC from 1995-98.

Clay, who Sirianni hired as STC in 2021, is the first minority in that job during the Lurie era and the first in Philadelphia since Dave Atkins in 1991, the Eagles’ first-ever STC.

Of the core four on the staff for Sirianni, two are holdovers in the same positions from his Super Bowl staff of last season, Singleton and Clay, while Johnson got a promotion from quarterbacks coach to OC after Shane Steichen left to become the head coach in Indianapolis.

Desai, meanwhile, was hired from outside the organization to replace Jonathan Gannon, the new head coach in Arizona, beating out former secondary coach Dennard Wilson, also a minority candidate, as the two finalists, according to a team source.

Lurie didn’t want any praise, though, pointing out that his and the organization’s process hasn’t changed. The goal is to get the best candidates for the open jobs and they just happened to be minorities.

“I don’t want to take credit for the fact that we have three minority coordinators,” the Eagles owner said during the NFL owner meetings earlier this week. “They were the best each time they were being interviewed and we were doing our due diligence.

“... Brian Johnson is someone we see as being very talented, Sean Desai the same, and Michael we have worked with before and he is a very young and developing coach. We’re open to it, we are colorblind, and we just want the best. It just worked out that way. I don’t want to have us take any credit for it.”

Lurie spent some extra time raving about Johnson, noting the succession plan on the offense was already put in place by Sirianni, who understood losing Steichen was a real possibility.

The only concern was losing Johnson as well.

The timing could have been an issue because teams needed to wait to officially hire the Eagles’ coaches after the Super Bowl and often impatience gets in the way.

“[Sirianni] had made it very clear during the season that we have an outstanding, outstanding quarterback coach in Brian Johnson,” Lurie said. “And so he was going to go through an interview process but he was very, very hopeful that we wouldn’t lose Brian. Because there were several teams looking to sign Brian [as an OC] and we didn’t know if Shane was going to be a head coach.”

Johnson, of course, has a long-term relationship with Pro Bowl quarterback Jalen Hurts dating back to when Hurts was a child. Johnson also recruited the star QB twice in college, losing out to Alabama and Oklahoma when he was at Mississippi State and Florida.

While there are typically growing pains with play-calling shifts, the Eagles feel that will be kept to a minimum with Johnson inheriting an offense with proven playmakers around the QB and perhaps the best offensive line in the NFL.

“We were plenty concerned, very concerned that we would not have Brian to both promote and sort of have the benefits of somebody who’s worked with Jalen, and works great with him, and has the respect of everybody in the building,” Lurie said.

Moving forward, if Johnson and Desai turn into head-coaching candidates like their predecessors, the Eagles would be in line for compensatory draft picks if either was hired after a tweak in the Rooney Rule in an attempt to kickstart organizations to consider minority candidates more seriously.

-