Eagles’ Kelly doesn’t care what you think
Chip Kelly is known for his rapid substitutions, his unorthodox thinking, his wild unpredictability.
I refer, of course, to his front-office strategy.
Sure, those terms apply to his play-calling, too, but the past week has shown that Kelly the personnel guy might be even crazier than Kelly the coach. And Kelly the coach is plenty crazy.
That term is used with admiration. In the NFL, where coaches overwhelmingly opt to punt on fourth and two and general managers tend to cycle through the same batch of coaches, Kelly arrived in Philadelphia two years ago determined to stick with the frenetic offensive system he had used at the University of Oregon and promptly won the NFC East.
There was a definite mad-scientist vibe to his coaching, but the refreshing thing was that he was willing to do it on his own terms, even if that meant traditionalists were skewering him for, say, running an uptempo scheme even when logic would dictate bleeding the clock.
But after winning a frontoffice power struggle in the off-season that ended with former GM Howie Roseman punted to another part of the Eagles’ executive suite, Kelly assumed control of personnel decisions. If the past two weeks are any indication, he uses conventional wisdom on the roster-building side of the game as he does for play-calling. Which is to say, not at all.
The NFL free-agency period has only just officially begun and Kelly has already managed three “He did what?!” moments, which must be an unofficial record. And though it might be foolish to try to assess his lightning-fast remake of the Eagles since Kelly could make another blockbuster move by the time I finish writing this sentence — pause to check the Internet — it’s worth looking at just what can happen when your chief personnel boss gives precisely zero hoots what you think about his moves.
First, he dumped tailback LeSean McCoy, the NFL’s leading rusher in 2013, who at 26 years old still managed 1,300 yards last year behind an injury-depleted offensive line. McCoy was traded to Buffalo for 24-year-old linebacker Kiko Alonso, but the move was mostly considered a way to move salary off the books: Philadelphia cut more than $8 million US from its 2015 cap by trading McCoy.
There were other suggested reasons for the move: McCoy is an agile, evasive runner, but not a north-south guy and word that Kelly was wooing former 49ers back Frank Gore certainly led credence to the idea that he wanted to replace McCoy with a power back. There was also the argument that Kelly was such a devout believer in his system that he viewed players as fungible assets; you don’t pay McCoy all that money if you can insert a cheaper back who will perform just as well thanks to the wizardry of your schemes.
These theories did not last long. This week Kelly swapped his starting quarterback, Nick Foles, to the Rams for Sam Bradford, the former first-overall draft pick who in five seasons hasn’t shown any ability beyond that of a replacementlevel quarterback.
And going into the last year of his enormous rookie contract, Bradford will essentially cost the Eagles all the money they saved this year in trading McCoy.
Then things got really weird. After Gore spurned the Eagles to sign in Indianapolis, Kelly on Thursday signed not just oft-injured tailback Ryan Mathews from San Diego, but he also added DeMarco Murray, who was the league’s leading rusher with the Dallas Cowboys in 2014. Murray was also given $42 million US over five years, with half of that money guaranteed, which pretty much blows up the notion that Kelly doesn’t believe in paying big dollars for a running back.
So, to recap: the highly paid 2013 leading rusher has been replaced with the highly paid 2014 leading rusher, while at the quarterback position, someone who was highly successful with Kelly in 2013 has been replaced with someone who has never been particularly good, who costs a lot more and who didn’t play at all in 2014 after blowing out his knee. (Kelly has also been furiously remaking his offensive line and gave a giant contract to defensive back Byron Maxwell.)
In the end, it looks like an awful lot of moving parts to end up with an offence piloted by a much-riskier quarterback and a running back who might be a better fit for the Kelly scheme. (And who carried the ball almost 400 times in Dallas last season, which historically suggests a drop off in production the following year.)
Meanwhile, the Eagles have for years saved cap space to roll over from year to year, but by adding Murray’s big ticket, Kelly is already on his way to blowing through the team’s version of a rainy-day fund. The Eagles have zoomed past the league’s base salary cap number for 2015 of $143 million US. They do have about $159 million US to spend thanks to their rollover money, but they only have two quarterbacks under contract for 2016: Mark Sanchez and Matt Barkley.
Will any of this work? Conventional wisdom says Kelly is too clever by half and that all of his manoeuvring will blow up in his face when he discovers he needs a better quarterback and has nothing but goodwill with which to pay him. But Kelly has laughed in the face of skeptics so far and it has worked out OK. We know just two things about his off-season: it has been fun to watch and it must be driving former GM Roseman mad.