Chipmania
Posted: July 26th, 2015 | Author: Tommy Lawlor | Filed under: Philadelphia Eagles | 55 Comments »Chip Kelly met with the local media a while back and answered a ton of questions. The media held the stories so they would have something to write about as a lead-up to the opening of Training Camp. Those stories are starting to break this morning and will continue for several days.
If you get tired of Chip Kelly stories quickly…this won’t be your favorite week.
First up is Jimmy Bama with the best non-story you’ll read all day. Players like DeSean Jackson, LeSean McCoy, Evan Mathis and Frank Gore all have been represented by Drew Rosenhaus. Three of them were let go by the Eagles and Gore was involved in a weird “I’m an Eagle” vs “I’m a Colt” situation. Is Rosenhaus a problem for Kelly?
“I don’t really deal with agents,” Kelly said. “I think we have a real good relationship. We have a real good relationship with Drew I can tell you that. I think Drew has been very professional, very detailed, I think he gets a bad rap to be honest with you in my dealings with him. I think he’s been above board, straight ahead, detail-oriented, very organized and you know exactly where you stand. I think anybody will tell you that when you deal with Drew you know exactly where you stand. Wish more people acted like that to be honest with you.”
Rosenhaus represents more than five percent of the NFL’s players, many of whom are very good players. It certainly doesn’t behoove Kelly to speak poorly of Rosenhaus to a gaggle of reporters and potentially strain that relationship. As such, Kelly’s complimentary words on Rosenhaus don’t come as much of a surprise.
Kelly, not specifically talking about his former Rosenhaus players, noted that the players they cut had another common denominator. “They were all very expensive,” said Kelly. “I think that’s just the nature of contracts in this league. A lot of them are back-end loaded. I mean, then decisions have to be made. So guys are making 10, 11 million dollars a year, you have to make a decision on them. That’s just part of really how the league is set up. That’s why when people throw all these numbers out, that Player X signed a five-year $100 million contract when two years are guaranteed at 8 apiece, he never signed a five-year, $100 million contract. He’s never going to see that, so that’s just the way the league is.
“And there’s guys that… DeMarcus Ware had a very high contract, and he got let go at the end of his contract. Does that mean he’s a not a good football player? He’s a hell of a football player. He’s just, the pay for play at that point in time, was he worth X? The same thing happened with [Darrelle] Revis. Are you going to pay him, I don’t know what he was supposed to make, 20? I mean, those numbers really just got really high at the end of a lot of contracts.”
Still, when you look at all the names Rosenhaus represents who have had unceremonious exits with the Eagles since Kelly was hired, you do wonder. So let’s look at them all individually…
Go read the whole piece. Jimmy breaks down each situation thoroughly. As for his conclusion…I won’t spoil that, although I’ve already given you a key hint.
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Roob wrote about Kelly dismantling the Eagles and why that happened.
In all, the Eagles said goodbye to nine regular starters, including big names like LeSean McCoy and Jeremy Maclin, long-time Eagles like Todd Herremans and Trent Cole and recent Pro Bowlers like Nick Foles and Evan Mathis.
Players who started a staggering 658 games in an Eagles uniform in their career were either traded, released or allowed to sign elsewhere.
Why tear apart a 10-win team?
“I didn’t feel we were close at the end of the year,” Kelly said. “Ten and six, not going to the playoffs, is just like being 4-12. I understand it numbers wise, but it’s still…”
It’s still not good enough, Kelly decided.
It’s easy to realize you have to fix a lousy team. Kelly realized late in the season that he had to find a way to fix a pretty good team.
“I knew we had to get better as a team,” he said. “And I think in this league, it’s almost year-to-year. Teams don’t stay up or down.”
In other words, going 10-6 did not seem to Kelly like a stepping stone to a Super Bowl run.
So Sam Bradford replaced Foles. DeMarco Murray replaced McCoy. Nelson Agholor replaced Maclin. Byron Maxwell replaced Cary Williams.
We have discussed this premise a few times this offseason. The Eagles were a winning team. They were a good team. They were not a championship team. They didn’t have the potential to be great. You can try to tweak a good team for a while and hope you can put it over the top. That generally only works when you have a franchise QB to build around. And even then it isn’t a sure thing.
Kelly loved Nick Foles as a person, but just didn’t think he was ever going to be good enough to put the team over the top. That meant something had to be done at QB. There weren’t great options so Kelly made the risky trade for Sam Bradford, a player who does have a higher ceiling than Foles.
As for the rest of the moves, age and expense had a large role in most of them. Todd Herremans and Trent Cole were simply declining players. Trading Shady netted a potential stud LB and save the team money, which it then invested in a pair of bigger, stronger and faster RBs.
The one player the Eagles didn’t want to let go was Jeremy Maclin, but KC was willing to overpay for him so the Eagles let him walk and then drafted Nelson Agholor in the 1st round.
The changes in the secondary? I don’t think anyone had much of a problem with them.
The Eagles feel like a more talented team right now. Time will tell if they are a better team…if Kelly made the right moves. He certainly had the right intentions and there is logic to everything he did, but there are risks as well. We’ll just have to wait and see which risks pan out and which ones went wrong.
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Mark Saltveit wrote about Kelly last week. He was challenging some perceived myths about Chippah.
— “Adult millionaire NFL stars won’t go for Chip Kelly’s “college boy” hard-work-and-hustle mentality.”
This is the weakest myth of all, because it normalizes and encourages immature, self-destructive behavior by players. First of all, “adult” is a stretch, since NFL rookies are one year older than college kids, and most flush out before age 26 — especially those who spend their time nightclubbing and making reality TV shows.
More importantly, the best players in the NFL of any age — Darrelle Revis, Peyton Manning,Marshawn Lynch, J.J. Watt, Richard Sherman — work their asses off, studying tape, learning new moves, and haunting gyms.
They’re millionaires many times over, but their goal isn’t to get rich. Those money-grubbers are the ones who disappear after their first big contract. Thereare people in the NFL who will coast on their talent and do just enough work to stay in the league and maintain their lifestyle. But Chip doesn’t want them on his team, and that’s just common sense. It will make it harder to find the perfect players for his scheme, but to say that such players don’t exist is foolish.
I’ve got to disagree with Mark a bit here. Manning and Revis are all about money. Both guys have tried to max out every possible penny when they have had the chance. That isn’t to say they aren’t great players, but those two love their cash. I have never understood Manning’s obsession with being the highest paid player. Why not sacrifice some money and have the team spend it elsewhere? Tom Brady has done that a few times in his career.
As to Kelly and dealing with NFL players…complicated subject. Mark is right in pointing out there are plenty of high level guys that are grinders. They will work really hard regardless of who is coach. The question is really how coaches with college backgrounds will do with a team over the long term. Motivating and coaching men is different than motivating and coaching boys.
The most famous example of this is Lou Holtz. He went 33-12-3 in 4 years with NC State, including one ACC title and bowl appearances every year (back in an era when making a bowl actually meant something). Holtz left NC State to coach the NY Jets. One of the first things he did was write a fight song for the Jets. He wanted to bring some emotion to pro football. Holtz went 3-10 and was fired before the season was even over. He went to Arkansas and resumed a terrific college career.
One of the assistants on that Arkansas team was a young man named Pete Carroll. He has won big in college and the NFL. There is no question that college coaches can win in the NFL. Can they sustain success? Carroll is entering his 6th season with Seattle. Not many guys are left from the first couple of years so I doubt Carroll’s style/message are getting lost on anyone yet.
Carroll is seeing the tough side of the NFL as he has contract distractions with Russell Wilson, Marshawn Lynch and Michael Bennett. Carroll didn’t have that issue at USC. When one star left, he just replaced him with a new star. It will be interesting to see how things play out in the northwest.
Kelly has proven that he can coach in the NFL. The big question with his is whether he can put together a Super Bowl team. After that will be the question of whether he can sustain success. The one thing we know for sure at this point is that he has clearly shown he’s not Holtz/Steve Spurrier. Those guys could not handle the NFL. Chip can coach at any level.
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