July 28, 2015
The Philadelphia sports world just can't get enough of Chip Kelly. Just look at how the region reacted to a recent story by Kent Babb of The Washington Post that revealed Kelly was married for seven years in the 90s.
Even my 87-year-old grandmother was grilling me about the story.
And that's because Kelly is a mystery. An enigma. Quite possibly the most interesting* man in the world. Only we wouldn't know because Kelly wishes it to be this way.
"This book is storytelling. I'm telling the story of what happened when Chip's philosophy collided with the reality of the NFL."
This kind of private, close-to-the-vest philosophy permeates everything the Eagles coach does, from his personal life right down to the personnel decisions he makes. And that's why fans are eager to read, watch, or otherwise consume anything that may shed some light on the New Hampshire native.
On Tuesday, a new option presented itself in the form of Mark Saltveit's newest book, Controlled Chaos: Chip Kelly's Football Revolution, which was published by Diversion Books and is available on Amazon and in stores.
Unlike Saltveit's first book on the subject, The Tao of Chip Kelly, and the 10,000-word profile he wrote for philly.com last year, Controlled Chaos focuses on the former Oregon coach's time in Philadelphia and uses the author's unmatched insight into Kelly's philosophy's to put his two-plus seasons with the Birds into perspective.
"The first book was 30 condensed nuggets of philosophy that Chip had worked out through his career, and it was written before he had even coached a single preseason game in the NFL," Saltveit told PhillyVoice during a sit-down interview. "But he had boiled down his vision into easily taught things for fans.
"This book is storytelling. I'm telling the story of what happened when Chip's philosophy collided with the reality of the NFL. And I started out with that quote from Mike Tyson: 'Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.' ... To me, it's a very interesting story. A guy with a great plan, but there's a lot of really smart people doing everything they can to stop it.
"And Chip Kelly got punched in the mouth last year."
But it's more than just a retelling of what happened on and off the field, like the release of Pro Bowl wideout DeSean Jackson and how the local media covered it.
The book also explores the why behind those decisions. It sheds new light on Kelly's famous sports science programs and how he's changing the way NFL players heal by using a system called "reconditioning" rather than tradition rehabilitation.
And while Chip may not seem overly interesting -- at least not outwardly -- that's what makes us crave as much information as possible. He remains mysterious, and what we've learned about him has trickled out, one click-worthy headline at a time. It's like when you're more hungry than you've ever been, but only have a few crackers to hold you over until dinner.
Do those crackers satisfy, or do they only seem to make you hungrier?
As Saltveit so appropriately said, "Chip is the anti-Kardashian. And doesn't the world need some of that?"
In addition to our desire to find more out about the 51-year-old coach, there's also the fact that he's just ... different. Defiantly so. And he's doing things in a way NFL coaches never have before.
"The root of [what makes Kelly so interesting] is that he's reengineering football from the ground up," Saltveit said. "He challenges everything; doesn't do anything because 'that's the way it's been done.' He tries new things. Keeps them if they work; throws them out if they don't. I think the thing that's fascinating about him is that once he's convinced that something is true, he immediately takes it to its furthest extreme.
"At Oregon, they called him 'Big Balls Chip' and people made the mistake of thinking he's a gambler. He's not a gambler at all. He does sure things, but if he sees a five percent advantage, he will hammer it over and over until you're begging for mercy. ... But he doesn't gamble. If he really is not sure of the outcome, he actually is very cautious in some ways. I think a lot of what he does is designed to reduce risk."
It's the one thing Saltveit said is most often misunderstood about Kelly.
He's a risk-taker, sure, but even when he ran with the bulls in Pamplona, Kelly and his friends had mapped out the route and even walked it the night before. But just like with his transition to the NFL, even the best-laid plan can go awry once "you get punched in the mouth."
"They studied video. They had a plan of everything," Saltveit added. "And [Chip] said as soon as they started running, it all just went to hell."
Below are some excerpts from Controlled Chaos, courtesy of Saltveit and Diversion Books. The first two chapters are from earlier in the book and involve the release of DeSean Jackson and how the local media covered it. The third is about reconditioning, a different system of physical rehabilitation that the Eagles have implemented.
On March 1, a little known and fast-rising reporter named Jimmy Kempski published a story* that blew the fragile quiet into shards. In a nutshell, he said that, having signed Maclin and Cooper to new contracts, the Eagles looked like they might be ready to trade DeSean Jackson.
You might think that’s a standard, even boring, football story. A team might trade a player. Might. Even granted that he’s a star, what’s the big deal?
DeSean was not just a star, however.
He had earned incredible love from fans with flashy plays and hilarious showboating. The movie Silver Linings Playbook is a testament to his iconic status. To signify their love of the Eagles, the movie’s characters invoke his name over and over as if they were praying rosaries to the Saint of Sudden Touchdowns.
Above all, Jackson owed his fame to a single play in a game on December 19, 2010. It is now known as “The Miracle at the New Meadowlands” because of the Eagles’ improbable comeback. With 8:17 left in the fourth quarter, they were down 31-10 to the New York Giants, and the game seemed clearly lost.
Then Brent Celek caught a touchdown, Riley Cooper grabbed the onside kick, and quarterback Michael Vick had two crucial runs—35 yards, then 4 yards for another TD. The Eagles forced New York to punt, threw another TD to Jeremy Maclin, and forced one more punt with fourteen seconds left and the game tied at 31. You’ll never guess what happened next.
The kick went to DeSean, who actually dropped the ball. Then he picked up his fumble and ran 65 yards through traffic for a touchdown, to complete what NFL.com calls “one of the greatest comebacks in NFL history.”
Jackson not only scored, he had the presence of mind to run sideways before entering the end zone to run out the last seconds of the clock and prevent the Giants from responding with their own miracle.
It’s impossible to overstate how dramatic and emotional that return is. On April 9, 2013, football fans nationwide voted it the greatest NFL play of all time.*
Jackson has always been a controversial figure, even in college playing for California in the PAC-10 (later PAC-12). Plenty of fans wished he would work harder, focus on football, and exhibit less diva-like behavior. His soft-holdout during 2011 was a particular focus of scorn, because it clearly hurt the team’s performance.
Even so, no reporter, talk radio jockey or blogger had considered the possibility that the Eagles might get rid of Jackson—not even when he said he wanted a new contract and hinted that something “out of the ordinary” might happen if he didn’t get it.
So in March of 2014 you had a news vacuum, and a lot of mystery about what Chip Kelly might do. Out of the blue, some guy writes that the coach might trade away the city’s most beloved player? The always-intense Philadelphia sports media went on full mobilization. The two major sports radio stations—WIP, and WPEN, better known as 97.5 The Fan—were overwhelmed by the response.
James Seltzer, a producer at WPEN, told me that in his two years at the station, the DeSean situation has been the single biggest story in any sport.
From a sports radio story perspective, there’s been nothing like it, and it went literally for a month of solid DeSean talk.
Chip Kelly’s staff is very tight-lipped, and it’s difficult for anyone to get inside information. A few newspaper reporters broke most of the scoops during the Andy Reid years—Jeff McLane and Zach Berman at the Inquirer, Les Bowen of the Daily News, and Geoff Mosher at Comcast SportsNet (CSN Philly). With Chip Kelly as coach, new writers joined them, mostly guys who wrote for the blogs of print publications: Tim McManus at Birds 24/7 (a blog of Philadelphia Magazine), Jimmy Kempski of Philly.com (the website for the two big papers), and Eliot Shorr-Parks of NJ.com (a website for several Jersey newspapers). The newer reporters seem more adept at finding non-traditional sources, and they’re definitely better at gleaning bits of information from social media sources, such as DeSean Jackson’s frequent Instagram postings.
Players such as Evan Mathis and Matt Barkley show up from time to time on Reddit’s /r/Eagles forum (or “subreddit”), as does Kempski. It’s a place for interaction—Barkley got mad and challenged Kempski to a football-throwing duel after one bit of pointed criticism—but it’s also a place where people can send anonymous tips without going through email. Twitter serves a similar function.
Kempski’s initial story about DeSean was careful and understated. He did not trumpet confidential sources, or present the piece as breaking news. Under the title “Eagles’ signings of Jeremy Maclin and Riley Cooper could signal a DeSean Jackson trade,” he wrote a long, analytical essay that described the four possible results of those free agent signings—labeled (a), (b), (c) and (d) —and then suggested a fifth.
As we learned over the last few days, the answer ended up being “D.” Or did it? Is there perhaps a bombshell on the horizon, in the form of “option E?”
E) Both Maclin and Cooper stay, DeSean Jackson goes.
The Eagles are not going to shop Jackson. The instant they do, they’ll forfeit any negotiating advantage they may have in trying to recoup acceptable value in return. This is especially true with a personality like Jackson, who comes with a history of character concerns. However, if another team came calling, the Eagles certainly wouldn’t laugh and hang up.
This was presented as his opinion and analysis, not a scoop that Jackson was on his way out. But Kempski then proceeded to reveal that he did in fact have a confidential source connected with the Eagles who was suggesting something more dramatic. The very next line reads:
There’s an opinion among some in the Eagles organization that Jackson’s personality is not a great fit with the locker room culture that Chip Kelly is trying to cultivate, and the Eagles could be open to trading him.
In the coded language of journalism, Kempski was sending several signals. By presenting this mostly as his analysis, he indicated that he did not have enough information—two independent, credible sources, named or anonymous, is the standard—to report that the Eagles were going to get rid of Jackson.
But he clearly had more than nothing. The certainty of his opinions, and his reporting of “an opinion among some in the Eagles organization,” implied that he was carrying a message from the Eagles’ front office, aimed at general managers of other squads.
If another team came calling, the Eagles certainly wouldn’t laugh and hang up.
It almost sounds like junior high school shenanigans, where Hannah runs up to ask you if you like Maddie and let you know that if you asked Maddie out, she’d probably say yes.
The Eagles were in a difficult spot. Any team that traded for DeSean would inherit his contract, which was too expensive by league standards. Jackson was basically a top ten wide receiver getting top five money. To trade, a team would have to give up a draft pick or player for the right to pay DeSean more than he was worth.
As Kempski noted, shopping DeSean around would have looked desperate. Potential trading partners would probably refuse to deal, knowing that if they just waited, the Birds would have to cut him. Then they could negotiate a new, cheaper contract and keep their draft picks.
Whatever subtle messages Kempski or the front office may have intended to send, Eagles Nation erupted with an outburst of emotion and bewilderment. WIP and 97.5 The Fan talked of little else for a month or two. Howard Eskin, a famous and mercurial radio host, replied to a tweet by Kempski about his story with the following message (edited for grammar) that implied his own front office sources:
Possibly trading DeSean Jackson is not connected to the signings of Riley Cooper and Jeremy Maclin. I hear the team may be at the point [of wanting to trade him] because of his drama. | @howardeskin. 12:56 P.M. March 1, 2014.
Others were in denial, dismissive or angry. On Twitter, “BGN Radio” podcaster John Barchard made a bold bet with the universe.
If DeSean gets traded this year, I will wear a diaper, paint my chest with the saying “I’m a moron” and walk down Broad St. -Market to South | @JohnBarchard. 3:34 P.M. March 2, 2014.
On March 4th, slot receiver Jason Avant was cut after a long career as one of the Eagles’ most reliable and hard-working players, a true locker room leader. His production on the field had declined steadily, though.
The CSN TV show Philly Sports Talk noted the impact on DeSean’s future. Host Michael Barkann asked reporter Derrick Gunn if Avant had served as a peacemaker between Jackson and WR coach Bob Bicknell. Gunn replied:
On more than one occasion, yes. Yes. And the problem with that is... DeSean Jackson doesn’t really listen to anybody. Jason Avant was probably the only guy who could get his attention. Over the last several years, the Eagles have had a number of ex-players try to talk to DeSean.
DeSean Jackson does what DeSean Jackson does and I think that’s eventually going to be his downfall. Not just with the Philadelphia Eagles, but in the NFL because the word is out on him. The word is out across the league on DeSean Jackson: “We don’t know if he’s the kind of guy we want in our locker room. We don’t care how talented he is.”
Four days after Kempski’s bombshell, and one day after Avant’s release, reporter Geoff Mosher of CSN Philly moved the story forward with a report that DeSean was “one false step away” from being cut outright. Despite that bold headline, though, the actual text of the story was much less confident:
... it all seems to add up to this conclusion: DeSean Jackson, you’re on the clock... all of [GM Howie] Roseman’s recent moves and hints suggest that the super speedy wide receiver isn’t part of the team’s long- term vision. For a variety of reasons, mostly financial, Jackson’s days with the Eagles are likely numbered.
No source was cited, and none of the sources I spoke to thought the report was based on solid information. (Mosher declined an interview request.) The article contradicted even itself, with a headline implying that Jackson’s behavior was the problem, while the body of the article described the reasons as “mostly financial.”
The biggest problem with Mosher’s story was simply this; according to my sources, the Eagles had already decided to get rid of Jackson in February, because Jackson wasn’t physical enough, earned too much money, and didn’t buy in to Coach Kelly’s system.
No additional “false steps” were needed at all. The only thing standing between him and being cut at that point was the team’s hope of a trade.
It’s likely that Mosher had the same source as Kempski, or that his informant and Jimmy’s were both passing on information from a common original source. But Mosher’s story was blunt—a competing reporter who asked that his name not be used called it “half-baked reporting”—and it didn’t capture the essence of the situation.
Mosher’s story viewed the DeSean situation as a replay of the Terrell Owens mess. But Owens played hard and well up to the day he was suspended, and he delivered in the playoffs. He was not overpriced for his production. T.O. was in fact one step away from dismissal, for purely disciplinary reasons, and then he stepped over that line.
On March 5th, Eagles GM Howie Roseman ridiculed Mosher’s report on Angelo Cataldi’s radio Morning Show:
Well it’s funny because what I did last night when I got home is, I played the “one false step away” game with my wife. So I said, “what am I one false step away from?” and she said, “Certainly kicked to the curb.”
I’m one false step away from getting hit by a bus. I don’t know where that report came from. Obviously everything that we’re doing we’re going to do in the best interest of the Eagles. Don’t want to get into every rumor and kind of go through each player one by one, but certainly there was nothing there from anyone in this building that that report came from.*
The stories by Kempski and Mosher triggered an extraordinary response from Jeff McLane of the Inquirer, who is basically Philadelphia’s best known and best connected reporter. In a March 5th story in the Inquirer and a subsequent early-morning tweet, though, the main reporter for Philadelphia’s newspaper of record was anything but cautious or carefully sourced.
It’s more accurate to say that he thundered like an Old Testament prophet.
DeSean Jackson rumors have little weight. Not usually into refuting rumors but the madness had to be stopped: http://po.st/dX3ohR #Eagles | @Jeff_McLane. 5:21 A.M. March 6, 2014.
There were no grays in McLane’s story, no caveats. He was 100% confident. And 100% wrong.
The Eagles are not actively shopping DeSean Jackson, nor do they have any intention of parting with their Pro Bowl wide receiver this off-season... Jackson is not close to being cut, and even if he was one misstep away from forcing the Eagles to move him, they most certainly would not release him without getting something in return.
He was also apparently unaware that DeSean had skipped his exit interview. (That fact was not reported anywhere until three weeks later.)
There has been no indication from Jackson or his agent, Joel Segal, that he plans to hold out.
What made this blast even more astonishing was that McLane admitted right in the story that he had no sources with the team.
The Eagles do not respond to rumors. It wouldn’t be in their best interest to feed a reporter this sort of information without attribution—as a “team source”—because refuting speculation would be acknowledging it.
So what did he base his conclusion on, then?
... after talking with almost a dozen sources from around the league, it’s clear the Eagles aren’t interested in dealing the 27-year-old Jackson—not by a long shot.
It appears that McLane spoke with agents and GMs around the league, people who might be involved in a potential trade as well as former members of the Eagles organization such as Joe Banner (a childhood friend of Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie) and perhaps Andy Reid staffers who had moved on to Kansas City with “Big Red.” McLane’s story was entirely wrong but it was exactly what many fans wanted to hear.
McLane’s fatal mistake was thinking that if Mosher’s and Kempski’s reports were accurate, the Eagles would have already contacted other teams about potential trades. But the Eagles were keeping their powder dry. As Kempski’s story said directly, they knew that actively shopping the wide receiver would ruin his value. They were waiting for the phone to ring.
Jeff McLane has a uniquely contentious relationship with Coach Kelly. Not that any reporters are buddy-buddy with Chip; he has been wary at best toward the press since his first day at Oregon. Andy Reid was a really warm, nice guy from the media’s point of view, and well-connected reporters such as McLane had excellent access to information when he was coach.
Chip is at best a sparring partner for reporters. Though he has one of the league’s highest ratios of great quotes per press conference, his teams have very few leaks. Access to inside sources dried up, and the change had to be very frustrating for a well- connected reporter.
That’s just Chip, but for McLane it seemed a bit more personal, perhaps because he was the top reporter in town with the best access until the day Chip showed up. For his Twitter avatar—the little picture that appears next to your username—McLane often uses a cartoon of the coach looking worried and wearing a bicorn hat, the style associated with Napoleon (and, especially in cartoons, insane people with delusions of grandeur who think they are Napoleon). There was an incident later in the season, during a part of the story we haven’t gotten to yet, where Kelly asserted his power over the team. In response, McLane tweeted that cartoon with this caption:
Think it’s time to break this baby out again. It’s Chip’s Ship, for good or bad. | @Jeff_McLane. 3:50 P.M. January 2, 2015.
The dislike appears to be mutual.
Kelly can be playful, often teasing reporters the way you’d give crap to your buddies. But teasing is tricky. The coach spoke to reporters later in the year, at a particularly rough part of the 2014 season when he wasn’t too happy about the way thing were going. Kyle Scott of the website Crossing Broad called it “the Saddest Chip Kelly Press Conference Ever.”*
McLane was pressing Kelly on how whether he might change his lineup for the next game, and tried to poke Coach Kelly a little bit in that same teasing way. Chip was not having it; he turned to ice. When Coach Kelly turns his glare on a reporter, even the toughest tend to falter a bit or try to explain themselves.
Martin Frank of the Wilmington News Journal described what happened next in an article titled “Chip Gets Testy, Says No to Young Players:”*
Then the reporter responded that the question was in the vein of Kelly only looking to the next game. To which Kelly responded: “Was that a wise-ass comment?”
Then he stared at the reporter for a few seconds before adding: “I just told you before, we haven’t done anything game plan-wise.”
Under the scientific laws of Chip Kelly Special Relativity, a five-second wordless stare from the coach into your eyes at a press conference lasts seven or eight hours in normal space-time. A writer who was in the room described the scene this way:
Chip doesn’t necessarily like reporters, but he has a special lack of fondness for McLane. There was like 5 seconds of silence with them just staring at each other. And literally every person in the room is just sitting there like, “Oh boy.” ... I don’t think Chip loves any of the reporters, but I think he loves Jeff the least.
Because the Eagles are so tight-lipped, reporters and avid fans are reduced to measures as desperate as scanning the website for unannounced changes in staff titles. Diehard fan Greg Richards (@igglesnut on Twitter) spotted one on May 9, 2015 and tweeted:
From Eagles’ website, Shaun Huls’ title has changed from ‘Sports Science Coordinator’ to ‘Director of Sports Science and Reconditioning’.* | @igglesnut. 11:47 A.M. May 9, 2015.
That’s not a word most fans are familiar with, but it’s a common and longstanding term in the field of exercise physiology. Reconditioning is the process of restoring injured athletes directly to their elite athletic levels.
Recently, in the science-forward circles where “high performance” is the term of art for scientifically maximized elite athleticism, the concept has deepened. I spoke with Bill Knowles, an expert in the field who does not work with the Eagles. He’s the “Director of Reconditioning and Athletic Development” for HPSports, in Wayne, PA, and works with a number of European pro soccer and rugby players. (The HP in the firm’s name stands for “high performance”.)
Knowles told me that a serious joint/tendon/muscle injury should be looked upon as a neurophysiologic dysfunction, not just a basic peripheral musculoskeletal injury. With this in mind we must train movements, not muscles during all stages of post-injury care.
In the traditional model, an injured player is in rehabilitation— specialized training focused on repairing the injured limb, usually a knee—until the therapist “releases” them to the team’s conditioning coach, so they can resume regular training.
Reconditioning begins with appropriate full body training immediately, instead of waiting until the knee is biologically healed or “fixed.”
Asked at a press conference about the change in Huls’ title, Kelly explained that ...
... when guys get injured, you spend a lot of time concentrating on just rehabbing the knee, but it also means that you’ve got to take care of the arms, you’ve got to take care of the cardiovascular, you’ve got to take care of a lot of other things besides just that specific rehab for that particular injury. Not only do you rehab the injury, you also have to recondition the body.*
The Birds also hired two more sports science guys out of Oregon: James Hanisch, who ran the Ducks’ Sports Science program, as the Eagles’ “High Performance Analyst,” and J.P. Crowley Hanlon, a recent graduate who majored in advertising, as “Logistics Coordinator.”
The team does not share information about sports science willingly, even thought it promotes that phrase as part of the Eagles’ “brand”—in part to attract free agents to the team.
But the Eagles picked up a lot of injured athletes over the off- season. From QB Sam Bradford to CB Walter Thurmond, ILBs Kiko Alonso and Jordan Hicks and RBs Ryan Mathews and DeMarco, you hear the same criticism over and over. “Sure, he’s talented and high character, but he has had a lot of injury problems.”
At the March, 2015 Owners’ Meeting, Kelly talked about his team’s ability to bring players back from injury.
... you look at, I think, the history right now in terms of sports science and what doctors are doing now, it’s unbelievable. Look at the year Jeremy Maclin had coming off of two ACLs. Look at our center. Jason Kelce came off an ACL when I first got there. He had a sports hernia surgery in the middle of the season and still made the Pro Bowl. Our left tackle, who is arguably a Hall of Famer, is coming off two Achilles [injuries] and has played at an outstanding level.
In 2013, Kelce and Peters anchored an offensive line where nearly every player was coming back from a major injury; by the end of 2013, many considered them the NFL’s best front line. The excellent ChipWagon blog posted video clips of what they call “Kelce porn” (don’t worry, they’re safe for work).* It’s always fun to see your lineman pancake a linebacker, but it’s really fun when he runs 20 yards downfield first.
Jeremy Maclin was considered a major risk before the 2014 season, coming back from an ACL tear at the position where speed and cutting ability is most crucial. He had a career year, matching the career year that (the uninjured and more talented) DeSean Jackson had had in the previous season.
Some injured prospects haven’t worked out. Patrick Chung was a major liability at safety for the Birds in 2013, including the playoff loss, and Kenny Phillips never even made it out of training camp.
The jury is still out on some other players. Inside/outside linebacker Travis Long is coming off of two consecutive ACL tears, and his absence really hurt the team at ILB in 2014 when both starters (DeMeco Ryans and Mychal Kendricks) and top backup Najee Goode all went down with injuries. Goode and safety Earl Wolff have shown flashes of great skill but are both coming back from serious damage in 2014.
And no gamble is bigger than the trade of starting quarterback
Nick Foles plus a second-round draft pick for Sam Bradford, also coming off of consecutive ACL tears—on the same knee. It’s hard to see any other possibility the Eagles had to upgrade at quarterback, once Mariota proved unaffordable, but if Bradley gets reinjured or can’t fully recover, the Eagles could be in very deep trouble.
The promotion for Shaun Huls and the new hires made it clear that the personnel changes and acquisition of injured players was not a coincidence; it’s a deliberate strategy. The team is re- conceptualizing injury not as “bad luck” to be hoped against, but an inevitable part of the game that should be planned for and built into your training—and your player acquisition. Your reconditioning.
Everyone likes to quote Chip’s mantra, “Bigger people beat up little people,” but it’s not as simple as that. Coach Kelly also wants fast, smart and versatile players.
But every team wants big, fast, smart, versatile players, so it’s hard to find them. How does a coach come out ahead? He can compromise on one of his physical standards, hoping that a shorter or slower player might overachieve by will and intelligence, or he can draft smaller school players untested against top talent, and hope that they can make the leap against much better talent. The large number of college players—even from the SEC—who can’t adapt to the NFL make the difficulty of that approach clear. Small school players essentially have to make two leaps, at the same time, even as they jump into adult life.
Seattle built a Super Bowl team on shrewd late-round draft picks (such as cornerback Richard Sherman in the fifth round), in part by applying the secretive SPARQ metric they developed with Nike to measure athletic potential.
Dallas seems to be getting every bad character player possible on the cheap, from Greg Hardy (domestic violence incident) to Randy Gregory (who tested positive for marijuana at the Combine, which he knew was an event that exists for the sole purpose of testing potential players).
The risks of that approach are obvious and increasing, as the NFL begins to crack down on domestic violence and other forms of abuse after highly publicized legal cases involving Aaron Hernandez, Ray Rice, and Adrian Peterson.
The Eagles are grabbing big, fast, talented players with injury histories and good attitudes. The hope is that Kelly’s sports science program will give him an edge in reclaiming their potential. If it works out, it’s a strategy to win a Super Bowl, to build a team of great players without compromise.
None of these strategies is guaranteed to be successful, but the Eagles’ approach seems shrewder. Even if the Cowboys can successfully wrangle their wild bunch, they will at best be talented guys with sketchy character. Maybe Dallas will just embrace their new attitude, trade their white and blue uniforms for black and red, and call themselves the Bad Boys or the New Raiders. The Eagles’ strategy has a higher upside, and seems like a smarter long-term bet.
If they are better at rehabilitating players than the rest of the league, it will be a very shrewd strategy. Not only will they get full- sized, athletic players with positive attitudes on the cheap, but those players will be motivated to stay with a franchise that will extend their career, and free agents will be inclined to come aboard.
