For Philadelphia Eagles fans, Fran Duffy has become a notable figure as a game tape study specialist during the season and a draft guru in the offseason. He has developed a role within the organization that is pretty uncommon, and the path he has taken is an unlikely one.
Duffy is not your typical football analyst; he never played the game in high school or at the collegiate level. Instead he gained his knowledge of the game through his experiences working with coaches and watching film.
Throughout the Eagles’ Super Bowl run, Duffy had been spotlighted as the team’s expert. Fans look to him for analytical insight for one of the league’s most polarizing teams.
Since joining the Eagles, Duffy produces a variety of film and draft content for fans to consume, including hosting a weekly podcast, “Eagle Eye in the Sky,” producing their television show “Eagles Game Plan” and writing columns for the team’s website.
He holds a position that is very limited around the NFL as many teams don’t use an in-house reporter like the Eagles.
“The role I’m doing now doesn’t exist for all 32 teams,” said Duffy, former Temple video coordinator. “There are only a handful of people in the NFL that work for a team and really focus on Xs and Os content.”
Duffy wouldn’t have received his position with the Eagles had he not followed up about a flier he saw about Temple looking for applicants to be the team’s student video assistant in 2005.
As Temple Football’s student video assistant, he worked with former head coaches Al Golden and Matt Rhule, along with many other assistants on both staffs.
“My mind was blown,” Duffy said. “You’re telling me that I can sit here and go through the coaching tape, learn more about the game, talk with our coaching staff, and work with our players? It was a perfect fit.”
After Duffy’s boss, Billy Crutcher, left only three months into Duffy’s Temple career, he was approached by Golden with the opportunity to become the new video coordinator in October 2006.
“Coach Golden came up to me and pulled me into his office and he said ‘Fran all the coaches think you would be able to do this job, would you be up for it?’” Duffy said. “And I said ‘Absolutely.’”
Duffy accepted the position at age 20 as the youngest video coordinator in Division I football, and he wasn’t aware of the significance of the accomplishment until he went to an American Football Coaches Association Convention in San Antonio, Texas. Most video coordinators at the event were at least 23 years old or older.
“All the coaches and staff would go out to dinner and drinks after the convention,” Duffy said. “But I couldn’t get into any of the bars, and couldn’t do anything because I was just 20 years old.”
In 2011, Duffy’s time with Temple came to an end after earning an internship with his hometown football team, the Philadelphia Eagles.
Working in a highly-regarded position with Temple gave Duffy a leg up on his competition, allowing him to stand out compared to the others he interned with, he said.
“I was extremely efficient and got a lot done,” Duffy said. “In my first year here they told me my internship was over the week after the Super Bowl, but I never left. They had extended it to the draft, but by the time that was over I was hired full-time.”
Duffy’s co-workers credit his work ethic as one of the main reasons he stands out from the rest of the people they work with.
“He was always gifted,” said former Temple defensive graduate assistant Satyen Bhakta. “There was never an issue with that, but on top of that he had a crazy strong work ethic.”
Duffy has also worked with many coaches and players that have more football experience than him, but Duffy can talk football with the best of them. In fact, he’s still viewed as an equal by many people in the football community even though he never played a snap.
“He does a really great job and he goes way beyond the Eagles too,” said Greg Cosell, a senior producer at NFL films and coworker of Duffy. “He is highly respected by everyone in the business, they all have tremendous respect for Fran because of the amount of work that he puts in.”
Duffy’s ultimate goal is to allow other fans to learn and enjoy the game in ways that they never could before, the same way that he learned the game.
“One of my main goals is to take a casual Eagles fan and turn them into a hardcore fan,” Duffy said. “To me, that’s something I’ve always strived to do, and something I feel like we’ve been successful at.”
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