Duce Staley Has NFL Combine Drill Named After Him

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By Paul Bowman, Sports Talk Philly Editor

Much has been made of the situation surrounding Eagles running backs coach Duce Staley.

Staley is clearly among the best positional coaches in the league, creating a stable running game for years on end without many major talents and almost no continuity.

Despite that, he remains an assistant coach and was not interviewed for a potential offensive coordinator position this offseason, though the team might have never planned on hiring an offensive coordinator and that could be a reason he was not interviewed.

That situation lead to since disputed reports that he was interested in the running backs coach position at South Carolina.

The potential move to college certainly didn’t make much sense as Staley is loved in Philadelphia and knows other coaches will listen to him, so nothing below an NFL offensive coordinator or head coaching position would seem to be a step down.

With that controversy out of the way, good news broke about the Eagles legend on Friday as the NFL released some of their changes to the NFL Scouting Combine.

Among the changes to the drills at the combine, the NFL announced that running backs would now be participating in a drill named after Duce.

Josh Alper of NBC Sports reports that the drill is designed to test the ability of the backs to read zone defenses. He says the drill requires the runners to, “step over bags while reading coaches to find a hole to run through”.

The new drill means that Staley has impacted how scouts around the league will be evaluating running backs for the draft and gets his name out there.

Staley will be returning to the Eagles for the 2020 season and the longer the team can keep him around, the better off they will be.