According to Jeff McLane, the Eagles have allowed the contracts of two medical staff members to expire.
Shaun Huls, director of high performance, and Shireen Mansoori, director of rehabilitation, will not return, the sources said. Their contracts were allowed to expire. The Eagles had no comment Tuesday.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise. The Eagles had a total of 32 players appear on the injury report in 2019 – a number that had somehow decreased from 39 in the year beforehand.
Howie Roseman met with the media after the Eagles’ heartbreaking loss to Seattle and hinted at a potential change behind the scenes in an attempt to literally and metaphorically stop the bleeding.
“As a front office, we have the ability to do that while the coaches are preparing for games. One of the things that obviously has been an issue for us has been the injury situation. When we look at the last three years, in 2017, we were able to overcome it. The last two years, the injuries have really hurt our football team.
There is a part of that that is natural during the game. Injuries are going to happen. But we have to figure out a way to get better here. We can help from a front office perspective by looking at the players that we bring in. Hope is not a strategy when it comes to injuries. When you bring in guys that are injured, it obviously increases the risk that they will get hurt again.
We have hired a new chief medical officer. This is someone that we are very, very excited to have. He came in in June and what he asked for us was that he would observe, observe through the season, observe our training staff, observe our weight staff, our sports science, our processes, and make recommendations to us that we would carry out. So we’re excited about that.”
With one of the older rosters in the NFL, Howie also acknowledged that getting younger and going after players who don’t have a track record of setbacks are things he and the front office can do to ensure this horrid run of injury problems come to an end.
Soft-tissue injuries and a pattern of emerging Lisfranc setbacks have become deeply concerning for the Eagles. The confusion, mystery, and conflicting communication at times between the team, media, and fans have not only damaged that trust when it comes to injury reports, but likely the bond between team and player. On the other side of the coin, Kamu Grugier-Hill lied about a concussion in order to play more snaps, and DeSean Jackson refused surgery in a decision that would ultimately come back to take his entire season away.
The Eagles have to be better when it comes to injuries. Preventing them, treating them, and communicating them. It’s a positive sign to see the team ready to move on from members of its medical staff.
Mandatory Credit: Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports
