Why the Eagles will miss Jeff Stoutland the scout as much as the o-line coach

Why the Eagles will miss Jeff Stoutland the scout as much as the o-line coach originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

The Eagles didn’t just lose one of the NFL’s best offensive line coaches when Jeff Stoutland left the team.

They also lost one of the NFL’s best offensive line scouts.

Stoutland was intimately involved not just in coaching the Eagles’ offensive linemen over the past 13 years but in scouting them as well. He spoke often about how much he enjoyed watching film of offensive line prospects, quizzing them at the Combine and writing up reports for General Manager Howie Roseman and his staff.

He loved that part of it, and he was very good at it. 

The Eagles drafted six offensive linemen in the first three rounds since Stoutland got here, and four of them have made at least one Pro Bowl – all but Andre Dillard and Tyler Steen.

For the first time since 2012, the Eagles are now preparing for a draft without Stout, and that’s a huge adjustment for the entire scouting department.

“Yeah, I don’t think it’s a secret how close I am to Stout,” Roseman said. “Not was, I am to Stout. How much I appreciate our relationship, the process that we go through. You know, I probably could have 50 stories on our draft process and how we went through them. And, you know, I miss him. I care about him. But, obviously, You know, there’s a change there, and so we’ll continue to move on.”

The good news is that all of the key members of the scouting department have been here for years, some since even before Stoutland arrived. So they’ve worked with Stout, they’ve learned from Stout, they’ve picked up all kinds of wisdom about evaluating offensive linemen from one of the best to do it.

“I feel like we have a really good group of people here,” Roseman said in an interview at the Jefferson leading up to the Combine. “I feel confident in our ability to evaluate, but at the same time understanding how important he was to the process of adding good players and then developing those good players. He’s a Hall of Fame assistant coach, in my opinion.”

Stoutland wasn’t here when the Eagles drafted Jason Kelce, and he didn’t have as big a role in the scouting side of things in 2013, when they drafted Lane Johnson. But he had a lot to do with evaluating and recommending everyone from all-pro 2^nd-teamer Jordan Mailata to Pro Bowler Isaac Seumalo to Super Bowl left tackle Halapoulivaati Vaitai and most recently Pro Bowlers Landon Dickerson and Cam Jurgens as well as Tyler Steen. Not to mention undrafted players such as Brett Toth and Kayode Awosika, Nate Herbig and Sua Opeta, who carved out nice NFL careers.

Asked about Stoutland, Roseman prefaces his comments by recalling that his predecessor, Howard Mudd, was also a legendary coach as well as a guard on the 1960s all-decade team.

“I’ve been very fortunate to be around him and then Howard Mudd,” Roseman said. “Very different styles of what they were looking for, and I was a young GM with Howard Mudd, he would tell me something and it would be probably be a little more aggressive in how we saw it, and I think Stout and I were able to have a different level of conversation, and … I would be able to say this is my vision of how how things I think would look without talking about specific players. 

“And he would come back and he would give me feedback, but I’d say in 13 years – was he here 13 years? – in 13 years, I probably (could count) on one hand disagreements. I think we looked at offensive line play very similarly, which made the process good. Didn’t mean we didn’t disagree at times. But it allowed us to go back (productively).

“When you have good people around you, it makes you better at your job. So certainly he had influence on me and how I look at players and how we discuss players. And I hope I had a little bit of influence on him as well.”

Because of those 13 years with Stoutland, Roseman believes he can now evaluate offensive linemen the way Stoutland did without Stout in the building.

“I don’t think (Stoutland leaving) changed the evaluation of the position,” he said. “I don’t think that changed that those guys have unique tools in their body. I don’t think that changes that those guys have been have incredible ability to help our football team going forward. 

“Is it a priority position? Always. Always. And I think we’re always looking for alignment on both sides of the ball. That’s always been the strength of this team that I’m proud of. So we’ll continue to do that. 

“That’s definitely a core philosophy that we have here. And that won’t stop.”