Browns Bonanza, Eagles and Texans Upheaval and Divisional Round Picks | The Weak-Side Podcast

Wild-card weekend recap, breaking news and much more.

Mark J. Rebilas/USA Today Sports

This week on the Weak-Side Podcast, Conor and Jenny break down wild-card weekend, starting with the Browns' assertive win against the division-rival Steelers, setting up next week's meeting with the Chiefs at Arrowhead, and raising questions about Ben Roethlisberger's Steelers future. They also discuss the big news of the week, the Eagles parting ways with Super Bowl-winning head coach Doug Pederson, and reports that Deshaun Watson could want out of Houston amid the latest Texans turmoil. For next week's divisional round games, Conor and Jenny are in agreement on Packers having the upper hand against the Rams, but have different favorites in the three other matchups. Finally, Conor's Orracle projects the future of simulcasts, while Vrentas issues her Consensus that Bill Belichick should decline to accept the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Donald Trump. Also: Can anyone tell us what time zone Hawaii is in?

The following transcript is an excerpt from The Weak-Side Podcast. Listen to the full episode on podcast players everywhere or on SI.com.

Jenny Vrentas: Let's dive right into topic number one before we get into all the postseason fun. The Eagles have parted ways with Doug Pederson just three years after he won the franchise's first and only Super Bowl. For most of his tenure, Pederson seemed to have the pulse of the locker room, a way with quarterbacks and the easy stride of a man either always coming from or headed to the golf course. Now he is gone, possibly to make some late noise in the head coaching cycle. This all seems like a big disaster, no?

Conor Orr: Do you want me to tell you what really bugged me about this? The second after he was fired. Which the NFL Network reported. Another NFL Network reporter said it's Mike Kafka, right? It's the guy below Eric Bieniemy on the pecking order. Like that's who the Eagles are after. They just want another Andy Reid guy. And it seems like they're A) not going to interview or maybe aren't as interested in Eric Bieniemy, which makes me mad for a different reason. But B) I don't understand the sort of lack of creativity here. And I guess, C) if it's not Kafka, if I'm a head coach, I'm staying a million yards away from this job. This seems like this is an expensive, veteran roster. You're gonna walk right into a quarterback controversy and have to answer a lot of questions about that. And your team just fired its head coach three years after he won a Super Bowl and made the playoffs in between there. It's not like they missed the playoffs all these years in between. They just really had that one bad year this year. So I don't know, this does not seem like an attractive job to me. And if they are not hiring another Reid guy, like they just have him on deck already, I think that they're going to be pretty surprised at what the market returns to them during a coaching search.

Jenny Vrentas: Yeah, I think there are a lot of questions in Philadelphia and among them are the circumstances of the split. Reporters from NFL Network, also in Philadelphia and ESPN, have been reporting a strain between Pederson and Lurie and Roseman that he was given instructions on what his staff should look like, which led to an awkward situation last year where he said he was retaining some of his assistants and then ended up firing them after his end-of-season meeting with management. So I think if you're a candidate, you look at this job and you think, exactly some of the things you laid out, Conor. One is, are you going to have autonomy? Is there going to be some input from the GM and the owner into every decision that you make? Given the information that's trickling out surrounding Pederson's departure. Two, the roster is a total mess, and I think that has been one of the most stunning things that after the Super Bowl three years ago, it looked like they were set up to be contending for a while, and ultimately that resulted in what we saw this season where they couldn't even win a hapless division. And the third thing is the quarterback situation. It's unclear what's going to happen with Wentz. Now, Pederson, if it is to believe that he did have a rift with the organization, letting go of Pederson indicates that perhaps there are higher odds of them holding on to Wentz, but you don't know where you're going. You had, Hurts playing the last few games of the season. And also we still haven't gotten a clear explanation of exactly who ordered the 'Code Red' essentially in Week 17. 

Conor Orr: Yeah, I think all of this scares me, and to me, you had the Andy Reid era, which was the picture of stability, and they were kind of lacking in that ultimate success. But only one team every year can win the Super Bowl. But then you move on to the Chip Kelly era, which ended in basically somewhat of a petty disagreement over power. And then now the Doug Pederson regime ends in what seems to be a petty dispute over power and decision making. And so, it's weird where the Eagles can vacillate so quickly between seeming like one of the league's stable blue-blood franchises and then all of a sudden, looking like a hot mess, at least right now ... And every team looks like a hot mess when they fire their head coach. But if you do it a week after everybody else fires their head coach, you do it after a meeting between the owner and the coach, which would signal some sort of clear disagreement. And, you know, you find yourself way, back behind the eight ball during the head coaching search. I think all of that is concerning unless you have Kafka and that's the guy that you want. And say what you will about that. Or you're comfortable waiting out doing what none of the other teams are going to do, and that's waiting out the Super Bowl and getting a coordinator from one of those teams and hoping that you can land someone like that. I don't know. Maybe that's part of the plan as well. 

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