Jeffrey Lurie

JEFFREY LURIE: I’ll just start by summarizing and then open to questions. But a very, very special season, as you all know. I couldn’t be more proud of everybody in the organization. What I said on the stage– I mentioned [Head Coach] Nick [Sirianni] and I mentioned [Executive Vice President/General Manager] Howie [Roseman], just incredible and their staffs– but you guys follow us and it truly takes a few hundred people to accomplish this. Whether you’re talking injury prevention, nutrition, training in every possible way, mental health, locker room equipment, the business operation, servicing the football operation. I mean, it’s transportation, dogs involved in the whole operation.

It’s just one thing, if I had to say from owning the team, you just don’t appreciate– it’s so much more than just those you read about. You need it all. We’ve got this wonderful, wonderful culture. A lot of people have been there that are just at the top of their game. They’re collaborative and it’s a special situation and led by some very special people. Nick and Howie, I can’t say enough about them and their staffs, but I just want to highlight that it takes so many people, and it’s sort of like football itself. It takes 53 people or 70 people on the roster.

It’s yes, the quarterback, yes, this position in that position, but it’s truly the quality of the 70 or the quality of the 53 is what can create a special season. The other thing I just want to say, I am really almost never completely speechless, but it reminded me. It’s incredible when you win. It’s incredible when you’re up on the stage. We all know how hard it is. It’s very, very difficult. But the parade in Philadelphia, there are no words for this, honestly. There are no words when you are up there and looking at a million, 2 million people screaming for four hours straight along Broad Street and then going up to the art museum.

I don’t know what in life is comparable to that. There’s other incredible moments in one’s life, like having kids and weddings and all that kind of stuff, but in terms of a profession and a love affair between a sports team and a city and a region, I’m sure it exists, but there’s no words to describe what we have with the Eagles and our fans and people in Philadelphia, and around the world really. There’s no words. So here I am trying to create words. There are no words. It’s that amazing. So anyway, happy to open it up to any questions and I’m sure we’ll get to a lot of great stuff.

Q. What do you think of the Tush Push bill being moved back to May? Why do you think people want to ban the Tush Push? (Eliot Shorr-Parks)

JEFFREY LURIE: Well, they probably will be discussing it in May, so we have to be prepared for every result. I think for everybody, including myself especially, health and safety is the most important thing when evaluating any play. We’ve been very open to whatever data exists on the tush push and there’s just been no data that shows that it isn’t a very, very safe play. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t be pushing the tush push.

But I think, first of all, it’s a precision play. It’s very practiced. We devote a lot of resources to the tush push. We think we have an unusual use of personnel because we have a quarterback that can squat over 600 pounds and an offensive line that’s filled with All-Pro players. That combination with incredible, detailed coaching with [Offensive Line Coach/Run Game Coordinator] Coach [Jeff] Stoutland, has created a play we can be very successful at. There’s other ways of gaining that half yard, that yard. There’s quarterback sneaks, other types, but we’ve been very, very good at it.

It’s a play that’s available to every other team in the league, and I think it hasn’t been used more than five times by almost every team in the league. Buffalo is an exception. The usage rate has gone down over the last year dramatically in the league. We’re still very good at it. We’re not as good as we were the year before. We’ve got to adapt.

So I think for all of us that have followed NFL football over the decades, there’s an ebb and flow to offense and defense. And typically one of the great things about professional football is that defenses adjust to offenses and offenses adjust to defenses every year. When we won the Super Bowl a few years ago, we really banked on the RPOs and were very, very successful. It didn’t take long for defenses to adapt to the RPOs, and if you notice, we weren’t as successful and we stopped using it nearly as much. As the passing game becomes more explosive, you see more styles of defense to prevent explosive plays that open up the running game.

So the value maybe becomes more where there’s an effective run game in order to balance against defending explosive pass games. So, there’s an ebb and flow, and I don’t ever remember a play being banned because a single team or a few teams were running it effectively.

It’s part of what I think I personally, and I think most of us love about football, is it’s a chess match. Let the chess match play out, and if for any reason it does get banned, we will try to be the very best at short yardage situations. We’ve got a lot of ideas there, but I think it’s a credit to using our personnel in a way. There aren’t that many teams that have 600-pound squat quarterbacks and that offensive line. Listen, if there were any injury concern, I would be concerned.

Q. You said if there’s injury concern, you’d be concerned. Do they have to show you more that it’s more dangerous than a quarterback sneak in order for you to buy that? (Bob Brookover)

JEFFREY LURIE: Absolutely. I want to know what data there is. I don’t think there is any. If you want to say that it could be, it’s hard to make rules on could be’s and should be’s. The quarterback sneak is one of the reasons we like using the tush push, we think it’s a safer play than the quarterback sneak.

The quarterback sneak, if you talk to quarterbacks about it, there’s more spearing going on. They’re less protected by players around them. One of the reasons we got motivated to develop an expertise in this play is it was more protective to the quarterback.

It’s ironic that people would bring up health and safety. We’re at the top of the game in terms of wanting health and safety on every play. We voted for hip drop tackle and defenseless receiver. We will always, always support what is safer for the players. It’s a no-brainer. If this is proven to be less safe for the players, we will be against the tush push. But until that’s the case, to me, there’d be no reason to ban this play.

Q. You bring up player safety. Atlanta Falcons CEO Rich McKay brought up that the aesthetics of the play was part of the dialogue. What’s your reaction to that? (Dave Zangaro)

JEFFREY LURIE: You know what? I remember reading about the forward pass, and they said it really was an odd play that is no part of American football. It was controversial when the forward pass came out. I think aestheticism is very subjective. I’ve never judged whether a play looks okay. Does a screen pass look better than an in-route or an out-route? I don’t know. To me, it’s not a very relevant critique that it doesn’t look right or something like that. I don’t know what looks right. Scoring; we like to win and score.

Q. Regarding short-term contract extensions equating to decision makers making short-term decisions. (Reporter)

JEFFREY LURIE: Listen, I’m very big on rewarding those that have done a great job. Howie is as good as it exists in the NFL, I’ll say better. We proceed in that direction. We don’t announce things, but we proceed in that direction at all times. That’s just the way I like to operate and it’s the way we operate. When you have the right people, continuity is big.

Q. The minority ownership stick that you sold. What is the plan for the money that came in from that? (Reporter)

JEFFREY LURIE: Buy more Corn Flakes and Wheaties. I don’t know, there’s an opportunity with sports teams and their valuations to not keep all your money in one thing and there’s a little bit more of a chance for liquidity. A big part of what I wanted to do was to try to get partners that were consistent with our culture, our goals, that shared my aggressiveness on winning in every way possible, and appreciated the culture we have organizationally, but the fan base.

We found that in two outstanding families, the Kim and Peskowitz families. I’m thrilled. I love having them. And an irony is Susan Kim, her first away game for the Eagles as a limited partner was the Super Bowl. How about that?

Q. Since free agency started, you guys have lost several really key good players to huge contracts and kind of replaced them with guys on one year deals. Obviously Executive Vice President/General Manager Howie Roseman has a plan for addressing everything, but what do you tell the fan base that’s kind of like what’s going on here? (Martin Frank)

JEFFREY LURIE: We want to win and we want to win big. The way to win consistently and to win big is to plan for the contracts you’re going to have to give to your best young players, and we want to retain our best young players as we go forward. It’s impossible if you draft well to do that. We want to make sure we’re aggressive at being able to sign players early that we think are core players for the future.

In the NFL, the way the salary cap system works is it’s based on a certain percentage. The average team should not have a surplus of players they have to sign. When you’re an excellent team, you should certainly have a surplus of players that you have on your roster.

So my hope is we will always draft well, we will always have a surplus and we will always continue to figure out who and who and what opportunities you need to try to sign players 12 months out, 24 months out and prepare for that so that you’re never in a situation of drafting an excellent young player and preferring to keep them and have no way to keep them.

Howie and Nick, they’ve done an outstanding job of drafting and developing and I think we’re all really excited about the players that are going to be playing that. [Former Eagles DT] Milton Williams, excellent young player, [Former Eagles OLB] Josh Sweat delivered so much for us. These are the kind of players that in the salary cap system and you’re a really good team, you better be prepared for what’s next.

So we want as many draft choices as possible and we want as much salary cap space as possible to plan for who we’re going to have in the core now, 12 months from now, 24 months from now. So the goal is win big and that’s really the theory behind the whole thing and I trust Howie.

Q. On that subject. You guys have spent more cash than most teams and in terms of void years coming up significantly more than most teams, how has that factored into some of the perceptions of a budget crunch? (Jeff McLane)

JEFFREY LURIE: Yeah, no, inevitably you’re going to spend as much as every other team. But yeah, our cash over cap has been high and it’s continuing that way. I only know one way. So there’s no implications of that at the moment. All of these decisions are strictly how to win big, how to replace players that you’re going to have to sign, players that are excellent young players in their prime, and if you want to win big, you better plan ahead.

Q. So you’re saying letting guys walk in free agency and then signing guys to just one-year, kind of low-cost deals has more to do with the future contracts than it does with all the cash that you– (Jeff McLane)

JEFFREY LURIE: Totally. It has all to do with resigning your best young players in their prime. That’s the entire goal there. If you keep paying the market value of every person, every player that becomes a free agent on your team, you will absolutely be unable to sign most of your best young players. So it’s so clear that it’s kind of a no-brainer.

Q. Where do things stand in terms of the potential extension for Head Coach Nick Sirianni, and what stands out about the job that he did? (E.J. Smith)

JEFFREY LURIE: Yeah, superb job. I mean, Nick’s going to be our coach and we don’t talk publicly, never have you guys. I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough that Nick will be our coach going forward and he’s done an outstanding job.

When we were 2-2, we went 16-1 after that, and the one was when [QB] Jalen Hurts, we were winning the game, got a concussion. So it’s not easy to go 16-1 in the National Football League, four of which are against playoff teams, one of which was the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl. So, outstanding job.

Everything that I had hoped for with Nick, he embodies. Whether it’s connection, intelligence in so many ways, from football intelligence, emotional intelligence, managing of people, hiring of assistant coaches, growth mindset at all times.

It’s one of the reasons Howie is so good, incredible growth mindset. Neither are risk averse.

These are all the things that we embody, appreciate and are a big contributor to the culture we have. So everything that I had hoped for early on, identifying Nick as the next head coach has come to pass and great to work with and he has a growth mindset, he’ll get better.

Q. If you think back to 2018, what perspective do you have on navigating post-Super Bowl years and years that you did not have them? (Zach Berman)

JEFFREY LURIE: It’s a great question. It’s incredibly difficult to repeat. I think in any sport you don’t see it very often. I think that maybe we didn’t plan as well for 1, 2, 3 years out as we are now. Maybe it’s just more obvious now.

We’ve got an exceptionally young both roster and talent level that’s at a very high level, players that are about to really emerge on the scene that are not necessarily national names. We want to keep as many of those people as possible. Maybe at that stage we kept more in the short run and didn’t quite maximize where we’d be 12, 24, 36 months out.

So if anything, and I think Howie is just really on top of that and I do rely on him for roster construction and the ability to plan out what are we going to have to be doing next February, next February, and it’s just from experience.

Q. It’s clear what you guys are doing, what you want to do. But is it difficult to sit here right now and say, hey, we’re a better team right now than we were February 9th when we beat the Kansas City Chiefs. When you lose that many guys? (Bob Brookover)

JEFFREY LURIE: I don’t know, I’d almost like to say that has there been a better NFL team than the 2024 Eagles? I don’t know. I’d much rather say that. I’m very proud of that. I think we had an incredible roster. I think we’ll still go into the next season with a superb roster.

We didn’t talk last February about [LB] Zack Baun and [DT] Moro Ojomo and the list goes on and on and on of [Former G Mekhi] Becton and guys like that. I mean, where we stand now, March 31st or whatever, there’s no games for five months. The strategy of bringing in some players that have potentially great skills and great ability with our coaching staff and our culture to maximize their ability. I don’t think we talked much about Zack Baun last year. So we hope to have a few of those amongst all the signees and five months to go.

With Howie, trust me, I think every day is an excursion in terms of what could be. There’s no games for five months. So, I think we’ll have a very good roster and you guys can decide how good was that team that you’d mentioned February 9th.

Q. The decision to go to the White House to celebrate the Super Bowl, can you take us behind the thinking of that decision? And then you guys didn’t go in 2017 the first time you won the Super Bowl, maybe any differences as to why you’re going? (Eliot Shorr-Parks)

JEFFREY LURIE: We just felt this is a time honored tradition being invited by the White House. So there was no reticence whatsoever. To be celebrated at the White House is a good thing. There were special circumstances back then that were very different, and so this was kind of an obvious choice and look forward to it.

When you grow up and you hear about, ‘Oh, the championship team got to go to the White House,’ that’s what this is. And so we didn’t have that opportunity and now we do. I think we’re all looking forward to it.

Q. Another offensive coordinator change you’ve seen?What are your thoughts on this process and seeing Nick make this decision and Offensive Coordinator Kevin Patullo stepping into this situation? (Brooks Kubena)

JEFFREY LURIE (21:24): Yep. One thing I’ll say, [former Eagles Offensive Coordinator and current New Orleans Saints Head Coach] Kellen did a great job. He’s a great person. I wish him really well in New Orleans. It’s good to be the offensive coordinator of the Eagles lately. It’s a good thing you become a head coach pretty quickly, and Kellen’s deserving.

[Former Eagles Offensive Coordinator and current Indianapolis Colts Head Coach] Shane [Steichen] was deserving, [former Eagles Defensive Coordinator and current Arizona Cardinals Head Coach Jonathan Gannon] JG was deserving, defensive side. These are all deserving young smart coaches.

[Offensive Coordinator] Kevin [Patullo]’s been working with us for the last few years. He’s an integral part of everything we’ve accomplished. Worked great with Kellen. I see it as both continuity and a dynamic presence in terms of taking it to another level if that’s possible. I think we can continue to say we want to improve in every aspect of the game and I think Kevin gives us that opportunity.

Q. Going back to the last White House visit, before the invitation was for bid, I think some players had decided that they would go. Others decided that they wouldn’t go. Do you plan kind of similarly this time on letting players make that decision? (Olivia Reiner)

JEFFREY LURIE: Absolutely. Our culture is that these are optional things. If you want to enjoy this, come along and we’ll have a great time and if you don’t, it is totally an optional thing.

Q. What do you say to the fans who take offense to embracing the president? (Bo Wulf)

JEFFREY LURIE: This is really just an invitation from the White House. That’s all this is, and we’re not politicizing it in any way. Not for us.

Q. In the past, I know you’ve been a proponent of being on the cutting edge of the passing offense. This past season, has it changed your views at all about the way the offense– (Dave Zangaro)

JEFFREY LURIE: No. I mean I think what you always have to, I’ve always said to our play callers, our coaches, our entire organization, I don’t care if you throw the ball 30 times in a row or run the ball 30 times in a row, it’s about effectiveness. There’s going to be periods of games and periods of defensive mechanisms or strategies. The Super Bowl was a great example. I mean Kansas City did an outstanding job stopping our running attack and if we weren’t a dynamic passing attack and our passing game wasn’t outstanding, who knows what would’ve happened and vice versa. Let’s say they shut down our passing game, we better have a damn good running game. So I’ve always felt you’ve got to have excellence all around. It’s still a sport where most teams pass the majority of the time, us included. But I always feel I want us to be great passing the ball. Great running the ball and we were.

Q. In his retirement speech, former Eagles DE Brandon Graham said he planned to go to dinner with you and talk about a role in the organization. What do you kind of envision for Brandon and that dinner? (Zach Berman)

JEFFREY LURIE: Thank you for bringing up [former Eagles DE Brandon Graham] BG because I would’ve been remiss not [to]. So last year, we said goodbye temporarily to [former Eagles C] Jason Kelce and [former Eagles DL Fletcher Cox] Fletch. Two incredible, incredible Eagles. BG, he embodies everything that one can be proud of as a Philadelphia Eagle, as do the others.

Outstanding person, outstanding career. You know. I don’t have to tell you, you’ve been around him as much as anybody. Very, very special person and player. BG and I, we’ve always talked about him being part of everything that we’re doing forever. We haven’t had that dinner yet, but BG will be a welcome addition and part of our family forever and look forward to it.

Q. Would it be difficult for you to not to TE Dallas Goedert here? And when you lose some of these guys, are any more difficult to digest than others? (Bob Brookover)

JEFFREY LURIE: It’s hard for me because I’m so – I think you know – really obsessed with the team, the culture, getting to know the players. I take them all out to dinner from time to time. This is not a distant relationship.

And so whether it’s [former Eagles S] C.J. Gardner-Johnson, or it’s [TE] Dallas [Goedert], or it’s Milton Williams, or whoever it is, we’ve got to do what we think is best for the franchise in terms of winning big. But it’s for all of us.

These are not names. These are human beings that we’ve really, really been through battle with, been on the big stage with, and enjoy.

No different than [former Eagles TE] Zach Ertz. It’s the way it is. You’ve got to balance it all out. And the one thing is, we’ve got to do what we think is best in terms of roster construction, planning, and winning big. Winning big.

Q. Get it back to BG and everything, you mentioned also former Eagles DT Fletcher Cox and former Eagles C Jason Kelce before that. I mean, those are obviously three huge leaders on your team. Are you kind of excited to see the next generation of who’s going to step in? (Martin Frank)

JEFFREY LURIE: It’s a great question. I mean [T] Lane [Johnson] is already there. Lane is one of those guys, with great respect for Lane.

Yeah, I mean you can see it already. It’s an incredible group. I give the older guys credit for evolving and continuing that, but the young group is both exceptionally talented and [has] outstanding leadership potential. And I think you all probably can tell who they are. And led, by the way, by [RB] Saquon [Barkley] and Jalen Hurts.

So it’s a great situation. You can pinpoint many of these young players as potential leaders already.

Q. Business and Football Operations Strategist Julian Lurie has been in the building for a couple of years. What have you seen from him over that time, and what is to come for him? (Bo Wulf)

JEFFREY LURIE: Right. So he’s been involved in the business operations, football operations. He’s sort of been a part of getting to understand and know every aspect of the operation. It’s the best way to prepare him.

He’s humble and smart and gaining experience. And most importantly loves the specialness of the culture, the Eagles, the NFL, and the incredible fanbase. He gets it. And it could have been a different way. I hoped as a father he’d be incredibly obsessed and excited the way I get. He’s that way. He grew up in Philadelphia, unlike me, so he has a real appreciation for the fanbase and the region.

But you know what? I think I’m still a young kid, so I don’t want to go further than that.

Q. If I could follow up on something you said, you said that this team might be the best in football history. (Zach Berman)

JEFFREY LURIE: No, no, no. I didn’t say that. What I’m saying is it was a damn good team. (Smiling.)

Q. But I imagine that’s not something you thought on a whim. What made you feel that way about this team? (Zach Berman)

JEFFREY LURIE: Just roster wise, incredibly capable. Very well coached, all sides of the ball. Really hard to pinpoint a weakness. And then the way it dominated the championship game in the Super Bowl. There have been some other teams. It’s right up there, I think, with those teams. That’s something for you guys and everyone else to decide, not me. We just experienced a major win against Washington and a major win against the Chiefs. Those were not close games.

Q. LB Zack Baun seemed to be a surprise financial domino for you guys. In the event of going aggressive and trying to resign, you guys have re-signed players in the middle of the season before, and this time, not. What led to that? (Brooks Kubena)

JEFFREY LURIE: That’s a better question for Howie in terms of timing, but Zack Baun was his number one priority and our number one priority in the offseason. And no matter what, we wanted to resign Zack. I thought it was a real key thing, but better to ask Nick and Howie.

Q. What did it mean to beat former Eagles and current Chiefs Head Coach Andy Reid? (Bob Brookover)

JEFFREY LURIE: To beat Andy? Ah, beating a good friend. Well, he beat us.

What I will say is, two years ago, we’ve probably internally talked about the frustration of not winning that game. Maybe you could even call it, to use maybe a stronger word, bitterness or whatever. Not towards Andy, but towards some of the things that played out in the fourth quarter in that game.

So we held onto a lot of that. Probably played to our benefit this year, but there was all of us feeling that that was an incredible missed opportunity and a feeling that there was a Super Bowl there to be taken.

So Andy, as you know, we have got a great relationship. Enjoyed spending some time with him last night. I just have nothing but respect for this first-ballot Hall of Fame coach. He epitomizes everything that I think the NFL is all about in terms of outstanding head coaches and his strategy. We were able to defeat his offensive strategy – credit to all of our coaches and players.

[Chiefs Defensive Coordinator Steve Spangnuolo] Spags, outstanding defensive coordinator. There’s that wonderful relationship we still have with those people. And of course, it’s great to beat them. They’re a great team.

Q. Regarding leaving timing decisions up to Executive Vice President/General Manager Howie Roseman. (Brooks Kubena)

JEFFREY LURIE: I just think we’ve got the best general manager in football. He thinks every day about roster construction, who to resign when, the psychological impact on a team of signing, picking out one player in the middle of a season versus being able to wait.

It’s a cost benefit analysis. He felt that it was better to wait until after the season. Didn’t mean that we weren’t, and he especially wasn’t, talking to Zack throughout, but when you have somebody that you rely on as top notch in his game, Howie and his staff, I rely on those people. I don’t make those decisions.

Q. Where do things stand in terms of his future? (Jeff McLane)

JEFFREY LURIE: Who’s that?

Q. Executive Vice President/General Manager Howie Roseman. (Jeff McLane)

JEFFREY LURIE: Very stable and secure.

Q. How long is he signed? (Jeff McLane)

JEFFREY LURIE: We never talk about it. A long time. (Smiling.)

Q. At 2-2, you guys went 16-1 after that, but the players and coaches talked about that bye-week and the changes and how productive it was. From your perspective, there was a lot of criticism there for Head Coach Nick Sirianni, what do you remember about that time, and what do you think catapulted you guys to then going 16-1? (Eliot Shorr-Parks)

JEFFREY LURIE: So Eliot, if I could bottle that – I don’t know the answer, personally. I would just say that collectively, everybody knew. I think the roster that we had, and to be 2-2 with that roster at that time didn’t feel right.

So there’s a self-evaluation on everyone’s part, coaches, players, ‘What is preventing us from being the team that we just expected to be?’ And I think it was a combination of a lot of growth-minded players and coaches and everybody, why.

I think that was good timing, and it was put to great use. But a lot of it’s resilience, toughness, connectivity, unselfishness on the players, humility, all that kind of stuff evolved to make that possible. Because you can say ‘We’re not as good as we should have been, blah, blah, blah.’

You’ve got to have all those qualities to max out. And so that’s what happened. We maxed out.

Q. As the owner, how was the second Super Bowl different than the first one? (Zach Berman)

JEFFREY LURIE: It was more relaxing in the fourth quarter for one. A lot more relaxing. (Smiling.)

Two incredible – it’s hard to compare. The first one is the first one. It’s incomparable, your first one. But the second one was sort of incredibly gratifying because you feel you have the team you have, and you were able to hit on all cylinders in a way in which it was just incredibly gratifying.

So they’re both extraordinary experiences in one’s life when you devote your life to this existence in the NFL and football. Incredible.

But now, I’ve got to say, an interesting sort of look at oneself. I feel like I’m just as hungry, if not more now, for a third. Ever since the parade, I don’t know that there’s been one day where we’re not discussing something in terms of the planning process to try to get a third. It’s nonstop.

Now maybe June, July, there’s less one could do. But I find myself, it’s a burning desire to get that third, and we’ll go from there. That’s really, it’s an obsession. Maybe it’s not healthy, but I think it’s worthwhile.

Q. Players and coaches and even GMs talk about legacy as something that’s important to them. Is that something that you’ve given thought to about yourself? (Dave Zangaro)

JEFFREY LURIE: I don’t give myself any time to think about that honestly. It’s going to get, I suppose, determined by others. But I’m someone that actually sort of self determines. I don’t look to outside voices and reputations and all that kind of stuff. Legacy, I’d just rather focus on getting that third, honestly. I don’t think that way. I’m proud of the culture we have more than anything. I’m proud of everything we’ve accomplished. It’s so hard. But no, I just don’t think that way.

Q. Is there at least some pride in being here among the other owners as a Champion? (Bo Wulf)

JEFFREY LURIE: Yes, there is, Bo.

You did some things right, let’s put it that way. I know our effort is always there. There’s no shortage of wanting to win on any of our part at all. But yeah, you walk through, and you know how hard it is, and everyone’s congratulating you. It is a good feeling.