Section 215
Fansided

The Eagles Front-Office Overhaul Was Done in Fear, Not by Design

By Tim Kelly

facebooktwitterreddit

This is not how the Eagles drew things up. Howie Roseman is Jeffrey Lurie’s guy, and when Tom Gamble was fired on New Year’s Eve, I believe he intended to hand back front-office control to Roseman. There is a lot to soak in about the Eagles new front-office layout, but one thing feels clear to me–the changes were damage control on Lurie’s part.

Wednesday afternoon, when news broke that Tom Gamble had been escorted out of the Novacare complex upon his firing, it became publicly clear that there was a front-office power struggle between then General Manager Howie Roseman and Chip Kelly. Gamble was Kelly’s guy, as he did not view Roseman as capable of being the lead talent evaluator in the front-office when he arrived, and clearly, he was not friendly with Roseman. Whether Roseman made the end decision or not, he pushed Gamble out of Philadelphia.

And that was it. Or at least it was supposed to be. Lurie decided that he was going to stick with his guy in Roseman, and probably believed that Kelly would eventually get over Gamble getting fired, and at least become cordial with Roseman.

If he intended to demote Roseman and give Chip ultimate power in the front-office, he would have done that right after Gamble was let go. He did not do that, because he wanted Howie to have front-office control and thought that things would work themselves out.

Instead, the move turned out to be Lurie symbolically dousing Philadelphia with lighter fluid.

Within 24 hours of the move, with many of us already popping Advil, reports began to surface that the Eagles front-office was “a toxic environment”, with Roseman having won a power struggle in the front-office after Kelly “infuriated” him by all but saying he was a numbers guy at his end of the year presser.

An anonymous league executive then said this to Mark Eckel of NJ.com, on Kelly’s perspective of the situation. The word dysfunctional crept up here, again.

"“There is no way Chip Kelly is happy about this,” said an NFL personnel executive with another team who knows Gamble. “What the (heck) is going on there? How does Tom lose out in that battle? That place is dysfunctional.”"

That prompted me to write an article about how Lurie needed to act swiftly to avoid a Jim Harbaugh-esque exit from Chip Kelly. I didn’t really take a side, but rather I laid out the positives and negatives from both. I essentially came to the conclusion that the Eagles did not want to lose Kelly but that he had not necessarily earned the front-office control that he may be after.

The article was written with the belief that the Eagles needed to act sooner rather than later, but certainly not with the expectation that less than 12 hours after the article was published the Eagles would have come up with their version of a resolution.

Prior to that resolution, more reports leaked about Chip Kelly. The reports, which never seemed all that believable, may just turn out to be something many of us laugh in the future. The idea of the Eagles trading Kelly, him asking out of his contract, and many other things to that effect might have been exaggerated. But they might not have, and Lurie couldn’t take the risk of finding out.

Prior to the announcement of the Eagles front-office shake-ups, Adam Caplan of ESPN reported (no link because it was on a 97.5 the Fanatic interview) that the three (Kelly, Roseman, Lurie) had a long sit-down. It is unclear if Kelly making demands or hinting at demands led to the sit-down, but given the lack of a sit-down after Gamble’s departure, it probably wasn’t something that was weeks, or even days, in the works.

Jeff McLane of the Inquirer tweeted this Thursday, a tweet that was probably a combination of speculation and information.

It’s clear, regardless of whether Chip actually had control last off-season or not, that something happened between Thursday and the announcement Friday evening, that forced Jeffrey Lurie’s hand. Every indication prior to that was Howie was going to get this off-season, after Chip, or Chip’s guy, bombed last year’s draft. Instead, Howie got demoted.

More from Section 215

So anyone speculating that maybe Howie was behind Marcus Smith last year or that maybe he wasn’t responsible for the 2012 draft, is most likely wrong. Chip did not earn his front-office power, nor did Jeffrey Lurie want to demote Howie Roseman. That’s not to say that Chip won’t succeed in his new role, but Lurie certainly did not plan to give it to him when less than a week ago he scoffed at the idea of Roseman not returning as the team’s general manager in 2015.

Lurie, unlike some have suggested, was not out in front of the curve on this issue. Granted, it went from background noise to the front-pager rather quickly, but it was reported over a month ago that Kelly and Roseman had begun to fall out. Lurie simply acted when a bad situation was on the verge of becoming a crisis.

Judging by all indications that we had received prior to this, Lurie realized that he needed to bank on Kelly’s coaching translating to success in the front-office, with whomever he selects to replace Gamble.

In his heart of hearts, Lurie would have rather had Chip just be the coach and Roseman be the General Manager, but knew that he couldn’t explain to his fanbase how he managed to let an innovative coach like Chip Kelly walk over issues with Howie Roseman. There isn’t something that we don’t know that led to these moves. Gamble got fired, Chip began to question if things could work in Philly (or Lurie was afraid he would), and Lurie sat down with Kelly and Roseman, which led to this. That’s it.

Home/Philadelphia Eagles