Eagles News: Is Jeffrey Lurie Still Committed To Kelly?

With 2015 season a miserable failure, many Eagles fans have been left wondering what the future will hold for the franchise.

We should learn more within the next week, once Jeffrey Lurie comes out of hiding and addresses the media as he does following the end of the regular season.

Lurie Still Committed To Kelly? – Philly.com

I’m sure Lurie has no plans to move on from Chip Kelly.

Lurie, for better or worse, is a very patient owner, and after making a major commitment to Kelly like he did a year ago, he’s not the type of guy that would pull the plug after one season, although there is more than enough justification for him to do so.

However, what will be interesting to watch here is if Lurie puts any pressure on Kelly to make some dramatic changes either to the front office hierarchy or the coaching staff. Someone needs to be a fall guy for this season, and that guy could very well be defensive coordinator Billy Davis. The other possibility is that Lurie could force a more experienced front office voice onto Kelly.

If Kelly is uncomfortable or unhappy with either scenario, it opens the door back up for him to possibly leave of his own accord.

Eagles Must Make Major Changes – GCobb.com

If Kelly were to return next year, it’d be a do-or-die season for the head coach.

And I don’t see how he can fix enough of this team’s problems in one off-season to make them good enough to compete again.

The bad contracts that Kelly handed out to guys like Byron Maxwell and DeMarco Murray have given the team little wiggle room to work with in the salary cap this winter.

If the team is truly committed to getting Sam Bradford to sign an extension, that’s going to destroy a good amount of that remaining cap space.

And then Kelly still has a long list of holes to plug. The wide receivers aren’t good enough and need more help. The offensive line needs help at multiple positions. The Eagles are going to have a lot of key defensive starters go to free agency, including Cedric Thornton, Nolan Carroll, Walter Thurmond, and Vinny Curry. If any of them leave, those positions become holes again as well.

And in addition to the limited salary cap room, Kelly is of course without his second-round pick, thanks to the Bradford trade.

Sure, he can create some more space by releasing veterans like Jason Peters, but once he releases any of his veterans he creates even more holes that he has to fill as well.

The bottom line here is that I don’t see the Eagles in a position to do enough to improve drastically this off-season, meaning that missing the playoffs for a third straight year is a real possibility, and the Chip Kelly era would just come to an end next year at this time.

So why put it off?

Especially with so many questions about Chip the coach and GM, and the fact that is his body of work through three years really isn’t all that impressive, would this team not just be better off pressing the reset button and starting fresh with a new coach?

If Jeffrey Lurie allows Kelly to remain in any capacity, he’ll have wasted the 2016 season before it begins, just as he wasted 2012 by hanging on to Andy Reid a year too late, and just as he wasted 1998 by giving Ray Rhodes one more shot.

It’s time for Lurie to be honest with himself and have to the foresight to know that he made a mistake. Its time from him to cut his losses, and make a new hire that actually has a chance to build something great in this league.

Next: Eagles Armchair: On to 2016

Chip Kelly Needs To Realize Eagles Are Better Off Losing To Giants – NJ.com

For the second straight year, the Eagles are off to play a meaningless game in the regular season finale against the New York Giants.

And shortsighted head coach Chip Kelly will do everything in his power to try to win the game, if for no other reason to pad his personal win-loss record as he did a year ago.

What Kelly still fails to understand is the fact that the Eagles need to secure as high a draft pick as possible in order to help this team fill in their talent gaps, especially since the bumbling coach has already seen to it that the team won’t have a second-rounder next year.

When the Eagles won their meaningless game a year ago against the Giants, it gave Chip his hollow 10-6 record, and also significantly weakened the Eagles’ draft position. The team would have had a much better chance to move up for Marcus Mariota if they had a more attractive pick in the mid-teens to offer up.