Chip Kelly likely won't be the HC of the Eagles much longer

[jiminphilly]

The Eagles fired "his" guy in the front office a day after Kelly goes out of his way to praise him. There are media rumblings that shit is going down..

There are still a lot of unknowns surrounding what happened with the Eagles and Tom Gamble.

We know that when the Eagles hired Gamble as vice president of player personnel, Eagles general manager Howie Roseman spoke glowingly about Gamble, a South Jersey native who grew up around the Eagles when his dad was team president under former owner Norman Braman.

“He’s not only a talented evaluator,” Roseman said on Feb. 13, 2013, “but also a good man and the type of person you want as a part of your team.”

Gamble was so excited to rejoin the Eagles and also to be near his dad that he left an elite 49ers team to join an Eagles franchise coming off a 4-12 season.

“I grew up here, I’m from here, I worked here, love this team, love this franchise, love the city,” Gamble said. “It was a big deal for me to get back this way. Thirty other opportunities I wasn’t interested in. Philly called and I was interested.”

Now here we are, less than two years later.

Gamble is gone under mysterious circumstances, and it’s not an overstatement to say chaos reigns in the Eagles’ front office.

To really understand what Gamble’s unceremonious firing means — according to Les Bowen of the Philadelphia Daily News, he was actually escorted from the Eagles' complex on Tuesday — you have to understand why Gamble came here in the first place.

Gamble was Chip Kelly’s guy. Kelly made it clear to the Eagles when they were pursuing him for their head coaching job after the 2012 season that he wanted a pure football guy he was comfortable with in the front office, and Gamble, whom he had known for years, was at the absolute top of his list.

The Eagles already had a general manager in Roseman, but Kelly has always seen Roseman as a contract guy, a salary cap guy. He wanted Gamble to evaluate players, and he got him.

And it’s fair to say Gamble’s ouster 22 months later raises legitimate questions about Kelly’s own future here.

Will Kelly want to continue as a head coach with a team that just jettisoned his hand-picked personnel guru? Great question.

And if Kelly told owner Jeff Lurie either Roseman goes or he goes, how would Lurie respond?

Kelly has done a terrific job in two years here, taking a 4-12 team and going 20-12. But he hasn’t won a playoff game yet, and we all saw what happened in San Francisco when the head coach and front office didn’t see eye to eye. Jim Harbaugh is now at Michigan because of his deteriorating relationship with the 49ers' front office, and Harbaugh had far more success with the Niners than Kelly has had so far.

Kelly has made comments over the last couple years that have certainly seemed like veiled shots at Roseman.

He spoke after final cuts in 2013 about he how has final say over the 53-man roster — normally the domain of the general manager.

He reiterated this in November: “I know I control the roster.”

But Lurie is fiercely loyal to Roseman, who’s risen through the organization from intern to GM and has been here since 2000. Lurie even kept Roseman over his boyhood friend, team president Joe Banner, when Roseman and Banner were locked in a power struggle a few years ago.

“Jeffrey sees Howie as a messiah,” a one-time Eagles front-office exec said Wednesday. “Howie can do no wrong in his eyes.”

All of this front-office turmoil has been bubbling over in recent weeks. That’s why I asked Lurie in the locker room after the Giants game on Sunday — in his first media availability since summer — if he senses friction between Kelly and Roseman, the two most important people in the organization.

Lurie refused to answer the question, instead calling Kelly and Roseman “valued executives” who “cross over at different points.”

Asked whether Roseman would continue as general manager in light of his relationship with Kelly, a perfectly valid question, Lurie mocked the questioner: “Is that even a question? Absolutely.”

What are Kelly’s feelings on all this?

On Monday, he was how his relationship with Roseman is, and he flatly answered, “Good.” That was it. "Good."

Asked about Gamble, he spoke glowingly: “Tom does an outstanding job. He's a heck of a football guy.”

The next day, Gamble was fired.

What about Roseman? He’s declined interview requests for a while now. I asked him after the game if he would talk and he politely declined.

It sure doesn’t look good when the head coach’s most trusted adviser is dragged from the building two days after the end of the season. And it would be nice if somebody from the organization would explain what the heck is happening on the second floor of the NovaCare Complex.

But Roseman isn’t scheduled to talk until the combine in February, and Kelly and Lurie likely won’t meet with the media again until the owners' meetings in March.

Gamble, reached Wednesday, declined to comment.

An Eagles spokesman said Thursday morning the team has no plans to make Lurie, Roseman or Kelly available to discuss Gamble's departure.

Why is this all so important? Simply because teams with fractured front offices don't win championships.

All of this wouldn’t be quite as disturbing if there hadn’t been a pattern of top personnel guys leaving the organization.

Tom Heckert, now the architect of a Broncos team that reached the Super Bowl last year, was the first. Highly regarded guys like Jason Licht, Ryan Grigson, Louis Riddick and now Gamble have all come and gone. Grigson left for a better job, but the common demoninator is that they were very good football people and the Eagles did not keep them.

Riddick, now an ESPN analyst, addressed this via Twitter on Wednesday:

It is a pattern. A disturbing one.

On the one hand, the Eagles have been a winning franchise for nearly all of Lurie’s ownership. Since 1995, the first full year he owned the team, the Eagles have had 13 winning seasons and just six losing seasons. Only the Patriots, Colts, Packers and Steelers have had more winning seasons since 1995.

So Lurie is certainly doing something right.

But a Super Bowl title has remained elusive. And the most successful period the franchise has had in the last half century was 2000 through 2004, which not coincidentally is when the front office was healthy and productive with Heckert, Banner and Andy Reid running the show and working together seamlessly.

All are long gone.

Since the 2004 trip to the Super Bowl, the Eagles have won playoff games in only two of 10 seasons — 2006 and 2008 — and the draft has failed to consistently replenish the roster, especially on defense.

Players have come and gone, personnel people have come and gone, and the Eagles continue to win games but not championships.

Until they do, and until the pattern of valued personnel execs abruptly leaving ends, the questions about Lurie’s loyalty to Roseman and the ever-changing structure of the Eagles’ front office will continue.

As will the questions about Kelly's future.

[mvscal]

That's a lot of pearl clutching way out on a thin limb.

To really understand what Gamble’s unceremonious firing means — according to Les Bowen of the Philadelphia Daily News, he was actually escorted from the Eagles' complex on Tuesday — you have to understand why Gamble came here in the first place.

OK.

He wanted Gamble to evaluate players, and he got him. And it’s fair to say Gamble’s ouster 22 months later raises legitimate questions about Kelly’s own future here.

Is this supposed to be a TV drama or something? If Lurie wanted Kelly gone, he'd be gone.

Gamble is gone under mysterious circumstances

Are they? Let's say they are. Where do we begin our investigation? Perhaps we might examine and evaluate the personnel decisions made these last 22 months? Wouldn't that be a fair place to start?

Will Kelly want to continue as a head coach with a team that just jettisoned his hand-picked personnel guru? Great question.

Great question for a marginally sentient, hydrocephalic mass of loosely strewn genetic confetti, maybe. "Hey, FuuuUUUUCK YEWWW, JEFF LURIE!! YOU FIRED MY FRIEND, I QUIT!!"

Who does that?



Save your Marty Schottenheimer resets, clones. I'm not reading them.