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Patrick Causey, on Twitter @pcausey3

I’m writing this post in-between chasing two sick toddlers around, so it won’t be the most coherent article I’ve written. But I wanted to get some thoughts down on the Chip Kelly move and what it means for the Eagles franchise moving forward.

Kelly the GM Played a Huge Role in This

I was against vesting this much power in Chip Kelly from the start (read here), because giving a head coach this much control rarely works out, especially when that coach is an NFL neophyte. As I wrote back in January, for every Bill Belichick, there are 10+ coaches that could not handle the joint responsibility of building the team and coaching it.

My concern became exasperated when Kelly’s personnel moves started rivaling those made by the Daniel Snyder led Washington Redskins of the early and mid 2000s. Paying DeMarco Murray and Byron Maxwell like top five players in their respective positions were mistakes before the ink dried on their contracts. Murray was an aging running back (yes, 27 is old for a RB) coming off a historic usage rate. Maxwell was a good number two option at cornerback whose physical limitations were masked by playing along side three All Pros in the secondary. Expecting them to validate their contracts was a fool’s errand. Not resigning Jeremy Maclin, trading LeSean McCoy for Kiko Alonso, and signing Miles Austin, all hastened Kelly’s departure from the Birds.

The moves that he did not make to shore up the interior of the offensive line — for nearly three damn seasons — proved to be especially problematic. For an offense predicated on establishing the inside zone run, relying on two career backup guards seemed like managerial malpractice.

But perhaps Kelly’s biggest mistake was his misallocation of resources. To Kelly’s credit, he used some of the limited resources at his disposal to address holes on the team: quarterback and the secondary, primarily. But Kelly created new holes at wide receiver and running back and filled them with substandard parts. By focusing on areas of strength, it robbed him of the opportunity to shore up the offensive line. The net effect of this misguided approach was a team going from 20-12 to 6-10 or 7-9, and was a chief reason for Kelly no longer being in charge of the Eagles.

But Kelly the Coach and Person also Played a Part in His Demise

Tommy Lawlor was prophetic this morning when he discussed how Kelly failed to build sustainable relationships inside the NovaCare complex, a critical but often overlooked aspect of coaching. That view was confirmed by Jeffrey Lurie, who took a thinly veiled shot at Kelly for failing on the interpersonal relationship front, not only with his team, but also the city:

https://twitter.com/InsdeTheHuddle/status/682258890172559360

In a sad twist of irony, the coach that obsessed over building and maintaining a positive culture failed to grasp his central role in fostering it.

And of course, Kelly failed on the X’s and O’s at times as well. He never got away from his constant pace on offense, which led to too many mental errors and wore down his defense. And in his effort to simplify the offense for Bradford — who was still recovering from knee surgery and learning the Eagles system — he became too predictable. Gone were the days Kelly’s phrenetic pace was married with packaged plays to create an offense that seemed destined for greatness. As Bill Barnwell of ESPN.com (formerly Grantland.com) described following Kelly’s debut win over the Washington Redskins three year’s ago:

“Those packaged plays represent the newest form of option football. The Eagles aren’t just running the read-option like Washington did a year ago. They’re running the read-option, plus a bubble screen on the outside, plus a stick route up the seam, and they’re doing it all on the same play. Naysayers and read-option doom-mongerers miss the point; even if there was some simple way to defeat the read-option (and there’s not), all you would accomplish in doing that would be to open up advantageous situations for the receivers on the outside of the field. You can try and try and try to stop everything in these situations, but you’re going to find it awfully difficult to stop three plays at once if you don’t know what’s coming.”

The over simplification of his offense, coupled with his player personnel mistakes, had a ripple down effect on the entire offense. Unable to establish the inside zone run — the one area DeMarco Murray was supposed to excel — the Eagles became far too lateral in their rushing attack. And the passing concepts became boiled down to the simplest terms, with Kelly abandoning packaged plays in order to make things easier on Bradford. The scaled down attack created easy pickings for defensive coordinators, and Kelly did not have enough talent to adjust thanks to his personnel blunders .

Had Kelly adjusted in time — slowed the hell down, expanded the playbook, adjusted his play calling and formations — it might have changed the outcome of the Eagles season. He didn’t. At least not fast enough for his players or Lurie. So here we are.

With that said, I would not have fired Kelly

It is hard to say with any degree of certainty that Lurie made a mistake firing Chip Kelly because it is impossible to know what truly was going on inside the NovaCare Complex. Yes, stories are trickling out that Kelly was a benevolent dictator. But these stories should be taken with a giant grain of salt, because they provide executives and players a convenient excuse for not holding up their end of the bargain. So without that firsthand account, we are left to draw imperfect conclusions based on imperfect information.

But that said, this just feels like the wrong decision. Yes, Kelly had an ego the size of Texas and was difficult to deal with. But name me one NFL coach who isn’t.

Tom Coughlin was nicknamed “Tyrannical Tom” because he was controlling, hypercritical and had arbitrary requirements like making players wear suits on game day, keep short haircuts, and arrive five minutes early to meetings.

Bill Belichick had alienated the veteran players, the hyper-loyal fans, and the media in Cleveland because of his smugness and inability to connect. Upon firing Belichick, Art Modell said he might have stayed in Cleveland if he had never hired Bellichick: “I was sold a bill of goods on Belichick. To Bill, everything was like the Normandy invasion. I couldn’t talk to him during practice because he was coaching. I really believe that much of the disdain and abuse I received was because of the feelings the media and the public had for Bill. Every day I thought it would change, that he would be more pleasant to people. He never did and it hurt all of us terribly.”

Josh McDaniels, the Patriots offensive coordinator being linked to the Eagles by some, had an oversized ego that made Chip Kelly look like Mother Theresa. Consider this story from former Broncos general manager Ted Sundquist:

“Shortly after Josh McDaniels moved into his office at Dove Valley, he called in Cutler and his agent, Bus Cook, for a closed-door meeting. The story goes that McDaniels began with a 20-minute dissertation of his resume, how he’d worked his way up the ranks in New England to become Bill Belichick‘s right-hand man with the offense and how the team would have been nowhere the year before without his tutelage of backup Matt Cassel. He continued on with justification of his hiring by Bowlen. 

After the perplexing recitation of accomplishments, McDaniels suddenly shifted gears.

He began to bash and berate Cutler and his game to the tune of a verbal flogging neither had ever witnessed. The expletive-laden diatribe went on for a few minutes, after which Cook stood up and told Cutler they were leaving. As they walked down the long hallway past Bowlen’s office, Cutler turned to Bus and said, “Get me out of here. I don’t care how you do it.”

Boiled down, every coach has flaws. The most successful ones are able to overcome their flaws and succeed despite them. And once the coach starts winning, the ego — which was so problematic during dire times — becomes much more bearable.

While Kelly did not adjust quickly enough this year, I thought he deserved at least one season to prove that he was capable of adjusting. Because make no mistake, Chip Kelly was a good coach. Winning 20 games in your first two years is not an easy thing to do, especially when you do not have a franchise caliber quarterback.

And while this season was undoubtedly a disappointment, Kelly’s record in his first three seasons compared favorably to NFL coaching greats:

• Chip Kelly: 26-21
• Sean Payton: 25-23
• Bill Belichick: 20-28
• Chuck Noll: 12-30
• Pete Carroll: 25-23

Obviously, winning 26 games in his first three years does not mean that Kelly will turn out better than these coaches. But finding a head coach capable of enjoying the level of success that Kelly achieved is no small order. And the Eagles kicked him to the curb without affording him the opportunity to learn from his mistakes.

Firing Chip Kelly wasn’t the only option available. While it might not have been accepted, or even preferred, Lurie could have offered Kelly the opportunity to stay on as head coach without the personnel control. Or, he could have brought in a senior advisor much like the Sixers did with Jerry Colangelo. He could have at least tried these things before pulling the trigger. But Lurie acknowledged that he did neither of those things,  and only time will tell if he was right.

From my perspective, it seems that Lurie’s desperation to win a Super Bowl and refusal to part ways with Roseman is leading to rash decisions. And firing Chip Kelly three years in is chief among them.

Lurie should have fired Roseman

Speaking of which, if Lurie was intent on cleaning house, he should have fired Howie Roseman as well. Instead, he is putting Roseman back in charge of the personnel department, albeit under a loosely defined structure that requires more collaboration.

https://twitter.com/InsdeTheHuddle/status/682257342507921408

Looking back over Roseman’s track record as GM yields a mix bag of results. He had a role — albeit an undefined one — in the disastrous 2010 and 2011 drafts. But he also played a large part in the 2012 and 2013 drafts, which were resounding successes by most measures. And as a friend of the blog @sunset_shazz stated yesterday:

But my issue with Roseman is not so much his track record in selecting and acquiring players. Limiting your focus only on that half of the equation ignores the critical role that fostering a stable and healthy environment in the front office plays in the success of an NFL franchise. In other words, it would be like judging Kelly solely on his wins and loses and not his ability to connect with his players.

Both elements are important, and it is becoming harder to ignore that Roseman utterly fails in the latter regard. As Mark Eckel of NJ.com reported, Kelly played a key roll in Kelly’s firing: “According to several league sources, the firings have Roseman’s fingerprints all over it…“I can’t believe it,” a long-time executive for an Eagles rival said when told of Kelly’s firing. “They did what? Are you serious? No, you’re kidding right? You can’t be serious.” When he finally realized it wasn’t a joke, he put the onus on the former and probably future general manager. “Howie got him,” the executive said. “He won. It took him some time, but he got to the owner, and he won. That’s just amazing. What is Lurie thinking? That place is just out of control.”

Kelly and Marynowitz join a long list of executives and coaches shown the door after clashing with Roseman: Reid, Banner, Louis Riddick, Tom Gamble, to name a few. According to a report from CSNPhilly’s Reuben Frank, this is because Lurie sees Roseman as “a messiah” who “can do no wrong.” Add to it the comments from Louis Riddick, who lambasted Roseman for creating a “toxic environment” inside the NovaCare Complex, and it is easy to see why the Eagles have had such a hard time sustaining any modicum of consistency since Roseman has ascended to power.

Suffice it to say, unless and until Roseman is removed from there, permanently, we should expect more of the same turmoil with the Eagles.

Finding a New Coach Won’t be easy

I talked about this on Twitter earlier this morning, but the Eagles are a less than attractive option right now for top head coaching candidates. Consider the following:

• The quarterback position is a mess;
• The aforementioned Howie Roseman front-office drama;
• They lack a second round pick;
• Their cap situation is less than ideal, with significant money owed to Byron Maxwell and DeMarco Murray next year; and
• They will likely be competing with the following openings, all of whom have good quarterbacks in place: Titans (Mariota), Colts (Luck), Chargers (Rivers), Giants (Manning).

Add all of this up, and I will not be shocked if the Eagles are left standing at the alter by their preferred coaching candidate. Right now, the Eagles just aren’t an attractive destination, and that fact is made worse by the other, likely more desirable jobs that are available.

Do not expect Bradford back

A final thought: if Kelly was staying with the Eagles, I thought there was an 85% chance that Sam Bradford would be back next season as well. Kelly invested heavily to acquire Bradford, and spoke glowingly of his quarterback’s progress over the last few weeks.

But now? The waters are completely muddy on this issue.

Like Kelly, the new coach might be enamored with Bradford’s skill set. He might look around the league, see a dearth of quality options in free agency and the draft, and decide to re-sign Bradford until he can draft his guy.

But new coaches in the NFL are notorious for bringing in “their guys” (no, Kelly wasn’t the only coach who abided by this philosophy), and that usually starts at the quarterback position. And with the Eagles teetering close to a top 10 pick, I think there is a good chance that we see Bradford plying his trade somewhere else (Houston? Cleveland? San Francisco?), and the Eagles turning to the draft to solidify the quarterback position.

And while I still need more time to go through the tape of quarterback prospects, one name to keep an eye on is California’s Jared Goff. He has struggled at times this season with his consistency, but he is also capable of turning in eye-popping performances, like his 6 touchdown game in a win over the Air Force:

But I digress. We can talk quarterback later. For now, we are left wondering if Lurie made the right move. And what could have been if Kelly was given more of an opportunity to succeed.

Well, shit.

I did not see that coming. When Adam Caplan tweeted a couple of days ago to not assume Chip Kelly would be back, that made sense. I assumed Jeffery Lurie would be doing some due diligence through back channels to get some perspective. Taking stock of the team after a tough year would be the prudent decision. Talk to people who are well plugged in to see who could be available and could have interest. Jeffery Lurie has a reputation as a good owner because he seems to know what he doesn’t know. Yet here we sit, only a couple of days later, and everything has changed. This moment serves as an interesting Rorschach test of sorts. So I’m going to provide my analysis on where the Eagles are and where things are going to go from here.

When I set out to write my post about this week the central theme was going to be flawed but fixable. Herm Edwards has an adage “There are about 25 plays a year that make the difference between being 10-6 and 6-10.” http://www.montereyherald.com/article/NF/20151021/SPORTS/151029951 Most teams fall somewhere in this meaty part of the bell curve. Think about that for a second. Variance on right around 1% of the snaps a team plays over the course of an NFL season is the difference between a good year and a bad one. Going to the playoffs or getting fired. Things are going to be very different now. A rebuilding year or two looms.

It’s lazy and at best misleading to say the 2015 Eagles failed because they weren’t talented and had bad schemes. All NFL teams are flawed. That’s a byproduct (or desired effect if you’re more cynical) of a hard salary cap. Even the best teams have half a dozen starters where you just scratch your head and say “sure I guess”. All offensive and defensive schemes are flawed. You beat cover two by attacking the hole between the corner and safety. You beat option attacks by loading the box and maintaining leverage, forcing them to throw.

The 2015 iteration of the Eagles failed because their areas of strengths were not able to patch over the holes, or in some cases gave out themselves, like a building breaking piece by piece. The additional strains of each successive failure causing more pieces give out.

The offensive line was going to have two JAGs at guard. That isn’t as disastrous as it’s made out to be. The Shanahan/Kubiak school of zone blocking has always made due with marginal talent at the position and thrived due to strong cohesion. Also you were going to have Peters, Kelce, and Johnson bookending them. Except Peters has been visited by father time and health and is no longer a starting LT in this league, Lane battled a myriad of injuries and didn’t take the next step in his progression, and Kelce had the inverse of a career year. Add in the fact that there were stretches where basic principles of zone blocking escaped them and suddenly a situation which should have been ok became bad.

Not even a lick of common sense to be found anywhere. None of these are physical limitations.

Suddenly without the ability to run inside zone, the fundamental building block of the scheme, Chip struggled to find answers to fix the ailing run game. That would have been ok, but he had a QB new to the system coming off injury that wasn’t prepared to handle having to shoulder the burden of carrying the offense. The run game finally got on track somewhere around the Jets game and was solid for a stretch, but then the receiving corps decided they really weren’t all that into catching the ball. Add in lots of untimely penalties, and pass blocking that faded as Peters got hurt and became ineffective, and the offense which should have been fine, ate itself.

Outside of a rough opener the defense was pretty darn solid for the first half of the year. Then Jordan Hicks got hurt, forcing a one legged Kiko Alonso back into service, put more burden on an aging Demeco Ryans, and there was another linebacker who wore 95 but we will refer to him as John Doe because he apparently went into witness protection at some point early in the season. The 34 2-gap is designed to get stops on early run downs to force the other team into 2^nd and 3^rd and long. This worked relatively well for 2.5 years. Finally the burden of pace and the lack of ILBs killed the run defense, and the whole thing came unraveled. This would have been ok if we had the 2013 offense and could get into shootouts.

One by one an element of the team broke, until Kirk Cousins yelled “JENGA!” and finally brought the whole thing down for good. No Kirk, I do not particularly like that.

The play the perhaps summarizes the 2015 Eagles better than anything I write can:

Chip. Oh Chip. I come not to bury you, nor to praise you. The GM Chip experiment was bad. Not franchise ruining. But I would have to grade it as a D. The playcalling wasn’t great either. Hopefully Chip finds more people he feels comfortable delegating to at his next stop. He simply felt overwhelmed at times this year. The offensive scheme hasn’t been “figured out” because it’s not a gimmick. It’s just a spread tempo, with a zone running scheme and WCO passing game. I think the most fitting sentiment about Chip would be

https://twitter.com/smartfootball/status/671334127375933440

Chip has stayed largely stagnant in an ever evolving league. How many times did we see packaged plays this year? Like 5? If he’s to be successful at his next stop he needs to take some time off to self scout.

There will be lots of stories in the coming days about Chip is an ass or a weirdo. Some will try to rehash the tired racism claims. NFL head coaches are strange people. Bill Belichick probably isn’t exactly a cup of tea. Noted “players coach” Rex Ryan has had alot of players talk alot of trash about him in the press this year. Bruce Arians isn’t exactly discussing the musical stylings of Lil Boosie with Jon Brown. Winning makes all those types of things go away.

Jeffery Lurie has become much more present in the last month. The firing was pretty uncharacteristic as well. I only hope he isn’t suddenly feeling his age and becoming desperate to win. That historically is the way to become the sucker at the table.

It appears Howie Roseman will be back as GM. He gets a lot of shit from certain crowds. A lot of it is the moronic “he never played so he doesn’t know what he’s doing” crowd. There’s also an uncomfortable amount of anti-semitic dog whistling from some of his detractors. I’m not going to make Howie out to be Ozzie Newsome, Ron Wolf, or Bill Polian he’s a more than capable GM. He excels at valuation both in terms of draft resources and cap management. If he can surround himself with strong evaluators, it can work. The Machiavellian streak is concerning, but for now I can live with it.

The pool of coaching candidates currently underwhelms the soul. Adam Gase headlines this group. He would be a solid hire. Hue Jackson has HC experience and a diverse resume. Josh McDaniels would be a head scratching hire. Replacing Chip with a coach from New England, a reputation for offensive wizardry, an abrasive personality, and a penchant for questionable personnel decisions would be quintessential face-palm. I’m intrigued by Mike Shula. If that name sounds familiar, yes he’s the offspring of Don, and the guy who bequeathed Nick Saban a wholly mediocre Alabama program. But he’s currently running the most exciting (from a football dork standpoint) offense that has overcome many issues with personnel. Sean Payton may or may not become available.

Chip is gone. Howie appears to be back in the picture. Jeffery Lurie may be starting to meddle. A rebuild looms. What a time to be alive.!?