EAGLEMANIACAL.com

MEANWHILE we still don’t know why Tom Gamble was fired. But to hell with that. They apparently fired him and promoted Chip Kelly whom Gamble served (as an advisor), to a position that would have had Gamble reporting to Kelly. Go ‘head, read that last sentence again. Now Kelly will “run the personnel department”. This promotion is such a boss move from Lurie, that it has my jaw on the ground.

Here is a direct quote from Jeffrey Lurie: “Chip will not be doing this work by himself, obviously. He has been charged with recruiting and hiring a new personnel executive that will report directly to him and together we will move forward with this new, highly integrated approach.”

Howie Roseman gets a “promotion” where they’ve taken away his ability to select players, and given it to Kelly. What’s interesting however, is at the end of that article, Lurie says that Roseman has also been given a contract extension. What makes that interesting, is that Kelly so far has not been given an extension.

Kelly is in a position to either make the Eagles look really good, or make himself look really bad. If he nails the player personnel gig, Lurie looks like a genius. If Kelly tanks it, nobody’s fingerprints but his are all over the decisions he’s made. Even Lurie’s golden boy, Roseman is insulated now. Oh yeah! Don’t be ashamed if you missed that. That sort of detail gets lost unless you look at the fine print. (Which is why you’re smart enough to come to this site.)

Last year’s three-headed monster of Kelly, Gamble and Roseman butting heads over players to draft is gone. This year it’s all neatly on Kelly.

For Lurie and Roseman it’s ‘heads I win, tails you lose’. It’s downright Machiavellian. Quite frankly I’m a little stoked. I had no idea that Lurie had something like this in him. It takes balls to even try this, let alone pull it off: Fire a guy’s right hand man; promote the guy you isolated; make him the point man for hiring his buddy’s replacement; and then give him enough rope to hang him and only him, as you insulate you and your buddy from any mess he could make. IT’S FUCKING BRILLIANT! I have to like it.

Meanwhile in the event that Kelly tanks and is fired, the Eagles handling of Tom Gamble, will come back to haunt us; as candidates to replace him will weigh this organization’s past, against their own futures.

This situation is a lot of things, but the one thing it isn’t, is over.