Bye-Bye Chip: Thank You, Jeffrey Lurie

I was never a Chip Kelly fan, so I'm not shocked about the stories coming out of the NovaCare Complex. As amazing as it is, college coaches don't have an easy transition into the NFL, even the great ones. Chip was a very confident guy, and many fans took to that confidence, however I found it to be grounded in nothing. The truth was very cold on Chip Kelly- people thought he was a great coach, because people thought he was a great coach. People thought his style would work, that it was different, that it was innovative. Today, the truth is clear.

Yes, Chip Kelly had some early successes. His team won the division in his first season, and they went 10-6 in consecutive years. He started out his NFL career 19-9, and it seemed that he had proven people like me wrong. Then the last 13 months happened. He finished 1-3 last season, and is 7-12 since last Thanksgiving. He lost three in a row to Washington, and is an OT win against a Romo-less Dallas from losing three in a row to the Cowboys. They did beat the Patriots, without Gronk, this season, but have losses against the NFC's big boys in Carolina and Arizona, got manhandled last season by the Seahawks and Packers, and took a punishing loss in his rookie season to Denver. Chip did not fare well against the NFL's elite, but he was probably mostly done-in by his personnel decisions. He famously cut DeSean Jackson, but really felt the effects of that after letting Jeremy Maclin walk. He drafted Marcus Smith and Nelson Agholor. He traded LeSean McCoy for a stiff in Kiko Alonso. He signed Byron Maxwell and DeMarco Murray to big money contracts and then misused both on the way to underachieving seasons. He kept Riley Cooper around. He cut Evan Mathis. Yeah, Miles Austin happened too. Chip wanted to push out Howie Roseman, and he did, but he made the team worse with almost every move he made. Chip the GM has a mixed record, one that spans his first 28 games, and another his final 19. Chip, the football boss of the Eagles, has a terrible record that is one-sided. As a coach, I would have considered firing him, but maybe waited a little longer. As a GM, he had to go now.

And so the story goes. Jeffrey Lurie talked to Chip, and apparently told him he wanted to take away his control over personnel. Chip refused, and was fired. It ended up being a simple choice over insubordination, or philosophical disagreement, or whatever drove Lurie. Regardless, the situation was so bad within the Eagles organization that Kelly had to be "released" from his contract with five days until the final game of the season, a meaningless game at that. Lurie decided to do the deed immediately. I couldn't support him more.

Another off-season of Chip's arrogant bluster, his "i'm smarter than you" moves, would have destroyed this team for much longer than his bad moves already have. To be clear, I expect the Eagles of 2016 to be much worse, and I'm okay with that. Coming into a new coach with the expectation of a three year rebuild is fine by me. Allowing that coach to have complete control over the draft and free agency will keep us from digging a deeper hole under a coach who was clearly overmatched running an NFL franchise. Yes, it will cost money to release Chip, but it's worth every penny. I did not want to watch him put us through another over-hyped soap-opera.

My preference is a defensive-minded NFL assistant coach. No more gimmicks, no more college guys, give me a nuts-and-bolts football coach that stresses blocking and tackling, disciplined football, and uses his players right. I had enough of the last three seasons. Enough with the drama. Let's get an NFL coach in here and start to build a real winner.