MIAMI _ This was January of 1999, and Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie was looking for his third head coach in five years.
He had canned Rich Kotite a year after buying the team from Norman Braman, and had just shown the door to Ray Rhodes after four seasons, following an embarrassing 3-13 finish in '98.
Lurie and his executive vice president, Joe Banner, badly wanted to hit a home run with their next hire. With Rhodes' fate sealed long before he was officially fired, they had begun the search for Mr. Right weeks earlier.
They did a study of every NFL head coach who had been to more than one Super Bowl to see whether there were any traits that all of those coaches had in common.
"As it related to football, there really was nothing that was indicative of what you should be looking for," Banner said this week. "By that, I mean there were offensive guys, defensive guys, younger guys, older guys, guys that passed, guys that ran, guys that blitzed, guys that didn't blitz. There was nothing there that connected them to each other.
"On the other hand, we almost kind of accidentally realized that they had a series of traits that were essentially the same in all of them. There were things as obvious as being exceptionally good leaders to things maybe not quite as obvious, like being obsessed with an attention to detail in a way that often frustrated the people around them because it was so extreme."
They used those common traits to create a Mr. Right profile, then began to look around for coaches who fit that profile. They talked to agents, players, media members, executives on other teams that they trusted, anybody they thought could help.
"We'd hypothetically ask an agent if they had any players who really liked their coach and thought he was a good leader, but found him really annoying with his obsession to every little tiny detail about things," Banner said. "We started assembling a list that was much different than the list other teams were using at the time.
"That's how we got to Andy."
