The Philadelphia Eagles didn’t leave Andy Reid unemployed for long, as he will be introduced as the Kansas City Chiefs head coach on Jan. 7. Despite how his Eagles career ended, Reid has quickly gotten another chance to coach again anyway. However, this is not surprising, given how Philadelphia head coaches usually tend to get second chances.
In the last 30+ years, the Eagles have been coached by Dick Vermeil, Marion Campbell, Buddy Ryan, Rick Kotite, Ray Rhodes and Reid. Yet after they were all eventually fired, all of them got picked up to coach another team, although it didn’t always work well.
After Vermeil retired from the Eagles in 1982, he took 15 years to return to coaching with the St. Louis Rams. Eventually, he won the Super Bowl that he never could with the Eagles, but he is the only Philadelphia head coach to have that kind of success with a new team.
Once Vermeil left Philadelphia, Campbell had a mostly ugly three-year tenure as his replacement. Nevertheless, after the Eagles fired him in 1985, he took over the Atlanta Falcons in 1987 and had three even worse seasons with them.
Ryan fared better as an Eagles coach, but he couldn’t do much better in his second head coaching stint with the Arizona Cardinals in 1994 and 1995. As for Kotite, his seven-game losing streak that ended his Philadelphia career in 1994 carried over when he coached the New York Jets to a 4-28 record in 1995 and 1996.
Rhodes was fired in 1998, which left room for Reid to leave the Green Bay Packers and come to Philadelphia. Ironically, Rhodes then went to coach the Packers in 1999, but was dismissed after one 8-8 season. He couldn’t survive as Mike Holmgren’s replacement, and the Eagles have to hope that Reid’s replacement doesn’t falter under a similar shadow.
As for Reid, the past history of Eagles coaches in their new jobs does not bode well. But very few coaches manage to thrive with their second team, with Vermeil as one of the obvious exceptions. Is Reid still exceptional, or did he leave his skills behind in Philadelphia like Ryan, Kotite and Rhodes did?
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