The Eagles knew Jim Johnson’s chances weren’t good when he was examined during this past year’s playoffs. What he thought was a back injury proved to be much more serious.
At that time, Joe Banner and Andy Reid knew they had better start planning for the post-Johnson era. You can believe they were thankful they had blocked teams from signing Sean McDermott away from them.
Still, they wanted to get more experience on the defensive staff with the 35-year old McDermott taking over as the defensive coordinator.
It’s the reason Reid reached out to former Dallas Cowboys defensive coordinator Brian Stewart and brought him here after he was shown the door by Jerry Jones and Wade Phillips.
I see McDermott being the main designer of the Birds defensive game plan for each game but Stewart will have a great deal of input on what they do.
On Monday nights and Tuesday mornings during the season, McDermott and Stewart will put together the game plan.
When Johnson was running things, he would get everybody’s input then on Tuesday he would start sharing it with his defensive assistants.
On Wednesday morning, he would come into the defensive meeting room and tell his players what they were going to be doing on Sunday.
It won’t be working that way any more because the workload will be shared.
