Bradford or Not, I'm Avoiding the Eagles Off-Season Soap-Opera

After the Eagles make their decision on Chip Kelly, which I suspect will be his return for 2016, the next major soap-opera drama in Philadelphia will be whether or not they re-sign Sam Bradford. You'll hear it on talk-radio and see it on Twitter arguments. Fans of a team that is woefully inadequate on the whole will argue passionately over whether one borderline piece of the puzzle should be back or not.

For what it's worth, I'm not totally anti-Bradford. He got better as the year went on, and if you watched him, he really wasn't bad at all. If they had Marcus Mariotta instead of him, as supposedly Chip dreamed of, they wouldn't be in a much better position than they are right now. If they had Nick Foles, it would have been much worse. Bradford was not the big problem that some fans like to imagine. He also isn't a superstar though. He's not an elite QB that you want to commit big money to. If they can sign a reasonable deal, fine. I'd like to see them go look at other options, both in free agency and the draft, before they do that. Perhaps a more club friendly deal can be reached that brings in a "buy low" candidate, which could obviously fail, but also might have a higher ceiling. If he's back though, it won't upset me.

None of this matters though, which is my main point. I don't think Chip Kelly can hack it in the NFL, at least not in his current role. I'm not going to buy into media narratives that the Eagles are some kind of big players in free agency, just to keep the attention on a franchise that is neither close to winning, or has won in my lifetime. The Eagles are going to end up a six or seven win team. They last won a championship when my father was three. They seem to do a great job of winning the attention-grabbing game in the off-season. That hasn't helped matters though.

Will Chip re-sign Bradford? Will he fire Billy Davis? Will he cut DeMarco Murray? Will he cut Jason Peters? What veterans will he bring in from free agency, or rookies from the draft? I'm not paying attention to these small-time stories. If the Eagles make a fundamental change (to be read a complete nuking of the roster or a coaching change), I'll certainly give that a look. Anything less than that isn't going to change the outcome much. This team is not currently good enough to contend. They haven't been since 2008, at least. I'm going to avoid buying in too much to headline grabbing while the core of the roster isn't there. In short, I'm not going to watch this off-season as closely unless events dictate it's worth it. The Eagles haven't earned the over-abundance of attention they get from their fans.