Philly Phile | Who's Worse: Chip the Coach or Chip the GM?

THE KELLY FILE

​AGE: 52
OCCUPATION: Head coach/GM, Philadelphia Eagles
PREVIOUS: Head coach, Oregon Ducks
COLLEGE RECORD: 46-7
BOWL RECORD: 2-2
YEAR-BY-YEAR: 10-3 in 2009, 12-1 in 2010 (lost to Auburn, 22-19, in BCS title game), 12-2 in 2011, 12-1 in 2012
FINAL RANKINGS: #11 in 2009, #3 in 2010, #4 in 2011, #2 in 2012
YEAR PRIOR TO HIM AS HC: Oregon finished 10-3 and ranked #10.
YEAR AFTER HIM AS HC: Oregon finished 11-2 in 2013 and ranked #9. Also, Oregon finished 13-2 and ranked #2 in 2014.
NFL RECORD: 24-20
PLAYOFF RECORD: 1-0
YEAR-BY-YEAR: 10-7 in 2013 (includes loss to Green Bay in NFC Wild-Card Game), 10-6 in 2014, 4-7 in 2015
YEAR PRIOR TO HIM HC: Eagles finished 4-12 in 2012
NOTABLE: Four-time Pac-10/Pac-12 champion, 2009 and 2010 Pac-10 Coach of the Year, 2010 National Coach of the Year (Associated Press, Eddie Robinson, Walter Camp, Sports News, AFCA), and 2013 Maxwell Club NFL Coach of the Year
COACHING TREE: Mark Helfrich, head coach, Oregon; Scott Frost, head coach, Central Florida

Just a quickie stream of conscience thing.

On one topic …

Chip Kelly the Coach vs. Chip Kelly the GM.

Around these parts, the consensus seems to have clearly settled on the side of Chip the Coach being screwed royally by Chip the GM, and that the former would be much better off if he had no association with the latter. Then there are some who fall in the gray-area faction of, well, after the “disaster” that the 2015 Philadelphia Eagles season has been thus far, maybe, just maybe, Chip ain’t all that as a coach, either.

If anything, yours truly would share that shade instead of the pure black or white.

But, on second and third and fourth thought, is he really that bad a GM, or is he a GM hamstrung by an extremely limited coach?

Not for nothing, but got no problem here with the guys, the “name” guys, Kelly has let go, or nudged enough to get out the door. DeSean Jackson, LeSean McCoy, Evan Mathis, goodbye and thank you for your service to the club. OK, maybe Nick Foles departing still seems strange to me, but the Chip-aholics out there can rationalize that well enough anyway just by pointing to how his replacement here is the lesser of two evils … or, in Philly-ese, Sam Bradford sucks less.

Still sucks, they'll grudgingly admit now, fully influenced by blathering from the local sportstalk yakkers, and costs a lot more, but let's digress …

Frankly, the gut feeling here is that a coach who is unwilling OR unable to change isn’t really much of a coach at all. He’s stagnant, set in his ways, stuck in the past, unable to adapt, forever beholden to beliefs that kinda fade from relevance in an ever-fluid sport, where situations and solutions can change one moment to the next.

Kelly is the definition of the above. He’s a “system” coach, locked into certain parameters, certain personalities, certain plays and desperately in need of “his quarterback” in order to be able to succeed, or reach his full potential.
That presents an incredibly restricting environment from which a GM must operate.

Sure, a GM wants to get players who fit what the coach plans to do, but there has to be a little give-and-take there as well, where some alterations are made in order to utilize assets acquired as close to their fullest as possible … even if they’re not exactly, by definition, the specific assets sought.

DeMarco Murray, Ryan Mathews, Kiko Alonso – these guys are good players. But they, like Bradford, all have shown themselves to be injury prone. If anything, that was Chip the GM’s biggest failing, not recognizing that or ignoring that.

The Hail Mary debacle that failed to land Marcus Mariota in midnight green, and instead inserted a helmeted china doll behind center here and had Mr. 27 & 2 taking snaps in St. Louis? That’s all – repeat, ALL – on the coach, who, apparently, is like a baby attached to a pacifier.

Seriously, if you can only coach one way, win one way, with one specific skill set running the show out on the field, you’re done. You’re cooked. You bring no value to an NFL franchise in this day and age where change is necessary for survival as much as it is for success.

Because a GM, even if it’s the coach himself, needs a helluva lot more to work with than that.

- Jack Kerwin  | [email protected]
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