Little Confidence in Eagles 3 Amigos Coach Committee
Happy 2016!
Now, let’s get down to business. Chip Kelly is gone, thankfully. In typical 2015 fashion, the Eagles won the one game they needed to lose. Instead of the 10th overall pick in the 2016 draft, the Eagles will now draft 13th.
Who will replace Chip Kelly is the big question and topic of conversation wherever you go, unless you’re at maybe a knitting club. Stop it, I love knitters!
For me, the larger questions and concern is who is selecting the next coach of the Philadelphia Eagles.
Jeffrey Lurie indicated that it’s basically a three-headed task force of himself, Don Smolenski, and Howie Roseman with ex-Steelers Football Personnel guy Tom Donahoe playing an advisory role. It’s a convoluted model.
I can’t see how any Eagles fans would have confidence in this “Head Coach Search Committee.” It’s definitely a committee, right? Is it a task force? I mean we have four people with equal say in it, if I understood Lurie correctly from his post-releasing Chip press conference.
Tom Donahoe hasn’t done anything significant in the NFL in quite some time. He had success with the Steelers, but they didn’t win a Super Bowl until five years after he left because of a power struggle with Bill Cowher. He’s not Bill Polian.
We’ve been down this road before of Smolenski, Roseman and Lurie seeking a head coach. These are the amigos who brought us the wonderful Charles Edward “Chip” Kelly. That hiring has proven to be a disaster.
I don’t want to hear that the coach hire of Chip Kelly was fine and it was the GM Kelly that screwed up the franchise. He lost the room. The players didn’t like playing for him. Reports are that nobody liked working with him. Apparently, he’s a dick and that is something that should’ve been vetted out in the interviews that Smolenski, Roseman, and Lurie conducted with Kelly. That’s a bad judge of character or personality by those three.
I hear Roseman apologists saying things like “everyone wanted Chip” so you can’t blame him for that hire. That’s not true. In 2013, 8 teams hired new head coaches. Only 3 of those 8 teams were after Chip Kelly: the Browns, Eagles, and Bills. That’s 3 teams that have never won a Super Bowl.
The Bills ended up dropping out of the Chip Kelly race, leaving only Howie Roseman and Joe Banner courting Kelly. Joe Banner was a great capologist/numbers guy, but not really a football personnel guy. Some people say the same about Roseman. Is it a coincidence that these were the two guys going hard after Chip Kelly?
They blew off Bruce Arians. They were close to signing Gus Bradley. Bradley is one of 4 coaches hired in 2013 to still have a job (Arians, Reid, McCoy). While the Jaguars have struggled, they’ve stayed on course of developing players and have one of the better young offenses in the NFL with Blake Bortles throwing for over 4,000 yards and 35 TDs. The players have openly expressed their support of Bradley. Here’s quote from a recent Jacksonville news article:
Bradley has created a culture that resonates within the walls of Jags headquarters and especially the walls of the locker room. When coaches get fired there is usually a divide in the locker room – see Chip Kelly in Philadelphia. The Jags players would run through a wall for Bradley, and they respect him just as much as a man as they do a coach.
Interesting that people are discussing Gus Bradley’s culture, right? That’s the complete opposite of Chip Kelly. Maybe Gus Bradley was the right hire at the time. Or, maybe Bruce Arians was a wiser choice, instead of getting caught in the Kelly hype. Arians’ Cardinals are currently the Super Bowl favorites.
Smolenski, Roseman, and Lurie all seem like solid individuals. I just don’t trust them to make football decisions, especially a head coach decision. That has to seem reasonable to the Eagles front office after what the fans and team have been through. Maybe I have PCSD (Post Chip Stress Disorder).
I know that I’d love a proven “football guy” GM in place to assist with the head coach selection. For me, that’s not Tom Donahoe, unfortunately.
Confidence level is 3.25 out of 10.