Ross Tucker is a Princeton man, so it’s no surprise if he would be drawn to Ivy League types running NFL front offices, even if it’s only because of the cache of the pedigree.
Well, when he joined EB and Bish on a two-man Junkies weave Tuesday, he came on to discuss everything about NFL Week 14 and the NCAA bowl schedule – but he also got into potential names the Commanders could look at to revamp their front office this offseason, and one of his answers both supported the Ivy AND hurt a division rival.
“I am a big fan and believer of looking at certain organizations that clearly know what they’re doing and do it at a high-level, so I’d probably look hard at the Eagles,” Ross said. “Not only are you getting someone who knows what they’re doing, you’re also hurting your division rivals. (Assistant GM) Alec Halaby is a Harvard guy who heads up the analytics side, but he’s really over the last five years he’s really come into the player development side. He’s a big reason why they started going for two and going for it on fourth down years ago when they have Doug Pederson.”
Within that, Ross told an interesting story of how the Eagles do things that lines up with the knowledge.
“Last week they cut Derek Barnett, but before they did, they gave him a bonus and gave him cash to knock his salary down to $500,000 of his salary,” Tucker said. “Why do you do that? Because if his salary is the minimum, he’ll get claimed off waivers, which he did by the Texans, so it saved the Eagles $500K. If they just cut him, no one would have picked him up. Maybe that $500K was the difference in them signing Shaq Leonard? They do little things around the organization over and over again, and all those little things add up to a big thing.”
Ross also had an interesting thought on the head coaching search, re: Bill Belichick.
“What percentage of Washington fans would be happy if they named Belichick head coach,” Ross asked, and when told it was low, he said: “That’s amazing that, as disastrous as that organization has been, you don’t want arguably the best head coach of all-time.”
Check out Ross’ entire call-in above!