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Eagles players crave strong leadership in next head coach – Metro US
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Eagles players crave strong leadership in next head coach

Eagles players crave strong leadership in next head coach
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Chip Kelly was a unique head coach and brought with him a unique leadership style.

He ran the Eagles more or less like a college team, a style that many players — whether they admitted it or not — were not accustomed to.

With Kelly in the rearview mirror, the Birds search for a new head coach is already nearly a week old. But what do the players want?

“Someone who has a good work ethic,” DeMarco Murray, who has a huge guaranteed contract that will see him back in Philly next season, said. “[We need someone]who is very disciplined. This is a young team and turnovers and penalties hurt us. Someone who is very emotional and lays it out there for us.”

Most players asked about the yet to be determined incoming coach stressed strong leadership skills as being paramount for the job. They also made sure to say that it didn’t necessarily mean Kelly did not possess those skills either.

“As a wide receiver, obviously, going into my third year a year I know is important to me, you want to see us throw the ball,” Jordan Matthews, who led all Eagles receivers with 997 yards in 2015, said.”The next coach who comes in will see the weapons we have in the backfield and will say ‘we need to line up in the [I-formation] and run the ball too.’

“I just want to get back to football. I want to win, I know coach Kelly was committed to winning… I want to get back to winning football and into the playoffs, being a team and wide receiver Philadelphia can be proud of.”​

RELATED LINK: 10 reasons why the Eagles fired Chip Kelly

The Eagles have reportedly interviewed three candidates thus far, Doug Peterson, Duce Staley and Pat Shurmur, the Eagles’ offensive coordinator who served as interim head coach in Sunday’s 35-30 Week 17 win in New York.

Will the Eagles promote from within? Sam Bradford thinks they might.

“I think [Shurmur can do it]. I think Pat, having been there before in Cleveland, I think that helped him,” the quarterback said of Shumur’s stint as head coach of the Browns. “You want to play for a guy who is going to be there for you, who is going to lead you and inspire you, someone the guys in the locker room can really rally around. Fortunately it’s not up to me to make that decision.”

Whatever the decision is, and no matter what the leadership style that arrives in South Philly over the next few weeks (or months) is, one thing is certain — there will be changes.

“Whatever direction Mr. Lurie chooses to go, you have to recreate that chemistry every year,” Shurmur said.”No team starts the same an ends the same.​ I think you can build on things like [the win Sunday].”