It has been over three weeks since the Eagles fired their offensive coordinator and wide receivers coach and on Thursday night a new name was floated for one of those positions.
A name “that keeps popping up” for the wide receivers coach job is former NFL receiver Aaron Moorehead, according to ESPN’s Tim McManus.
Moorehead, 39, played in the NFL for five seasons and has been a coach at the college level for a decade.
We all know how much Doug Pederson values having former NFL players on his coaching staff and having a former player at receiver might be even more important than at other positions. The Eagles were previously linked to former players and current coaches Hines Ward and Bobby Engram for this opening.
Moorehead has been the receivers coach at Vanderbilt for the past two seasons. He held the same position at Texas A&M from 2015-17 and at Virginia Tech from 2013-14. He began his coaching career as a grad assistant at New Mexico in 2009 and held the same position at Stanford from 2010-12 (when Zach Ertz was there).
While the last hire from college for this position didn’t work out (Gunter Brewer from UNC), the difference with Moorehead is his past as an NFL receiver.
NFL
As a player, Moorehead was in the NFL for five seasons (2003-07) with the Colts after going undrafted out of Illinois. He was in Indianapolis at the same time as then-quarterbacks coach Jim Caldwell, who has been linked to the Eagles’ opening at offensive coordinator. Even if the Eagles don’t hire Caldwell, they might have been able to glean some information from Caldwell about Moorehead.
At Texas A&M, Moorehead coached a couple NFL draft picks in Christian Kirk and Josh Reynolds.
Whomever the Eagles hire for this job, that person will be the sixth receivers coach in as many years for the franchise and will be Pederson’s fifth in five years. This used to be a position of great stability under Andy Reid but has been anything but that in recent years:
1999-12: David Culley
2013-15: Bob Bicknell
2016: Greg Lewis
2017: Mike Groh
2018: Gunter Brewer
2019: Carson Walch
The only receivers coach under Pederson who has worked out was Groh in 2017 and he was too good. Groh was promoted to offensive coordinator and fired two years later.
It seems like no matter what the Eagles do, they haven’t been able to find a receivers coach to stick. With how much they need that position to improve in 2020, this is an important hire.
The Eagles will likely wait until all of their coaching positions are filled before they announce them. Those positions are offensive coordinator, WRs coach, DBs coach and DL coach.
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