How will Philly remember Kelly?

The last game Buddy Ryan coached for the Philadelphia Eagles was a 14-point loss to the Washington Redskins that ended a season of great promise in humbling fashion. A quarter century later, here we are again, with the agonizing end of an arrogant era sending the team into an uncertain future, and still without a championship to disturb the dust in the trophy case.

Chip Kelly was fired on Tuesday, one game short of finishing his third season as head coach of the Eagles. He will find work elsewhere, but his place in the cold type of Philadelphia coaches has been set. He will forever have a 26-21 record in the regular season, and an 0-1 record in the postseason. His tenure will never be recognized as a success, but where exactly will he fit into the crowded pantheon of those who tried and failed here? How will he be remembered?

Right now, we’re all looking through the wrong end of the binoculars. Putting Kelly’s coaching reign into perspective is impossible because we don’t know what happens next, either for the coach or the team. In 10 years, it’s possible the hiring of Kelly will be cemented as the worst decision of Jeff Lurie’s ownership. It’s possible another school of thought will take root, that Kelly’s vision was prematurely shuttered by impatience and a sinister palace coup led by Howie Roseman. Time changes things.

When Terry Francona was fired by the Phillies after the 2000 season, a miserable 65-97 campaign that brought to an end his four years of managerial losing, he was labeled a clubhouse softie who couldn’t impart discipline. The team hired Larry Bowa to get a heavier hand in the manager’s office, but the results didn’t improve much.

Baseball is far different from football. Managers have little or no say over the roster, and there isn’t a brilliant system they can devise for playing the game. Baseball is baseball, and any manager who must slog through a season relying on Desi Relaford and Andy Ashby is not going to have much job security.

In 2004, Francona, the utter failure in Philadelphia, got his next managing job and he promptly won the world championship with the Boston Red Sox, ending a drought that had extended for 86 years and 30 managers. Is that who Chip Kelly will become? Is he Terry Francona?

Everything is time and place, and perhaps it will turn out that way. Kelly could have everything click in his next job. If you want to accept the most popular (and trite) scenario, he will be hired by the Tennessee Titans, be reunited with quarterback Marcus Mariota and they will win a Super Bowl together. And, oh, what a happy evening of television viewing that would be in Philadelphia.

That would be a fairly high place to land among those who left here as losers. At the other end of the spectrum, let’s consider Doug Moe. It is hard to remember now, but Moe did come to the 76ers as an outside-the-box innovator, a branch of the motion offense tree planted by Frank McGuire and Dean Smith, and tended carefully by Larry Brown. Moe won more than 600 NBA games before taking over a post-Charles Barkley roster that was incredibly mismatched.

Unable to play his style with the group he had, Moe opted to let it drift along until he got a roster more suited to his tastes. With a 1937 record, Moe was fired during his first season. He was never a head coach again. Now, that’s a failure that hasn’t wavered over time. Even Kelly won’t be able to top that one.

Which brings us back to Buddy Ryan, who left a trail of bombast that was as long as his list of postseason victories was short. He was controversial and arrogant, sure of his methods and dismissive of those who didn’t agree with them. Sound familiar?

Ryan got rid of a guy (Earnest Jackson) who had rushed for more than 1,000 yards two consecutive seasons and people wondered what the heck he was doing. He changed quarterbacks, benching popular veteran Ron Jaworski. Above all, he talked a great game and never delivered.

If Ryan remains a popular memory to some, it is because he played to the lowest common denominator of fandom, remembered more for running up the score on the Cowboys or organizing the Bounty Bowl than for his three failed playoff appearances.

And then he was gone, like Francona, like Moe, and, now, like Chip Kelly, entering into the shadow world of past coaches, some of whom are fond memories, but most of whom are not.

Kelly joins the group after his own deflating 14-point loss to the Redskins. Things change over the decades, but the end result of losing does not. Some guys are fired too late, some too early. Some should never have been hired at all.

Which will Kelly be considered among the list of former coaches? Last week couldn’t answer that question. It could only enroll him in the club.