Kelly’s exit could benefit Kelly’s premier ‘Draft Bust’
PHILADELPHIA >> Chip Kelly had no use for Marcus Smith, not as a linebacker, not as an end, not as a trade piece, not as a part of the Eagles’ future.
It’s how it works, even for a first-round draft choice. Kelly was the head coach, earning $6.5 million a year to make those decisions even if he had the habit of blaming his assistants for game-day playing rotations. Kelly was trying to win games. He didn’t think Smith, the gifted if raw pass-rusher from Louisville, could help him win games. So others played and Smith cashed the first-round-pick checks.
“I think I’ve had a fair chance here,” Smith was saying Monday, amid the NewsControl Compound day-after-the-season swirl. “It’s just the way things went. I can’t take it back. Now, going into this next year, I just have to keep doing the things I’ve been doing.”
Whatever he was doing in practice, all but the fringes of which Kelly had kept veiled from the press, wasn’t working. Whenever questioned about why his 2014 first-round pick was almost never in the game, Kelly, ever comfortable flying around on the verbal trapeze, would spray Smith with just enough compliments to minimize the mystery … then go ahead and keep him bottled.
But one game into the post-Kelly era, there was Smith Sunday in a 35-30 victory over the New York Giants. Twice he hit Eli Manning, once for an acrobatic sack, showing a glimpse of whatever it was that inspired the Birds to make him their marquee pick after trading down to No. 26 overall. And while the game was played at something less than a Super Bowl frenzy, it wasn’t a Grapefruit League style walk-through, either, as both teams were competitive and the usual starters were active.
Thus, the question: Can one of the reverberations of the Birds’ coaching change be the opportunity for Smith to blossom as a pro? One Week 17, no-postseason-relevance game of evidence is not much. But if Kelly proved anything during his two-plus seasons, it was that just because a player wasn’t one of his favorites, it didn’t mean the guy was not talented. It’s why DeSean Jackson is in the playoffs and the Birds are not.
Interim coach Pat Shurmur, who interviewed Monday for Kelly’s old job, said playing Smith more against the Giants was not necessarily a priority. But Kelly was gone and Smith was active. The math, then, was curious. “He was out there playing and he made some plays,” Shurmur said. “That’s good.”
Exaggerated or not, Smith had been widely characterized as a favorite of Howie Roseman, from whom Kelly grabbed the effective general managing duties last offseason. But Roseman regained franchise stature upon the dumping of Kelly, and suddenly Smith was more active. Even if it all was coincidence, timing is everything, in pass-rushing, in sports. So the timing could be right for Smith, 23, to shed his reputation as a Draft Bust, capital D, capital B.
“Yeah, I have heard that a lot,” Smith said. “It doesn’t bother me because it is just a word. You have to play this game. And we’re the ones out there playing. So it really doesn’t bother me much. You can say it as much as you want. But I know in my heart that I won’t be and I will make it in this league and I will be a great player in this league.”
Smith has been blocked by Brandon Graham and Connor Barwin in the playing rotation. Both are good players, good enough to impress the next coach, too. If Smith can’t win more playing time in his third season, for a new coach, then Kelly will have been proven right.
But clearly Kelly was an impediment to Smith’s development, as was his right. Maybe that’s why when Kelly was fired, Smith was quoted as saying he was “ecstatic”, though he later clarified that he meant “surprised.” Either way, he should have been a little of both.
“I was just looking for my opportunities,” Smith said. “And once I got them, I was not going to look back.”
There is no reason. Chip Kelly is gone.