Nick Piccone
After Chip Kelly was fired by Jeffrey Lurie last night, the owner sent out this letter to the media and fans. In the letter, Lurie states that he, Don Smolenski and Howie Roseman would head a committee to find a new head coach for the team.
Lost in the mostly positive reaction of Kelly’s firing comes one unsettling fact – Howie Roseman has probably regained the power he lost one year ago to Chip – and that’s not a good thing. Are the Eagles looking for a new general manager? I’m not so sure, because I think they believe they already have one back in place, which is kind of scary.
According to Mark Eckel of NJ Advance Media, Roseman and former Eagles vice president of player personnel, Ed Marynowitz, engaged often in war at the NovaCare Complex, going so far as to quote a source as saying Roseman had been poisoning Marynowitz.
There was also a war going on in the NovaCare Complex between Roseman and Marynowitz, according to several sources inside and outside the building.
“Howie has been poisoning Ed,” one person with knowledge of the infighting said. “And he has his people doing the same.”
According to several league sources, the firings have Roseman’s fingerprints all over it.
So, if Roseman was kind of shoved out of power and put in the office across the building like all reports stated last year, he sure as hell made sure he wasn’t forgotten about. And it seems like he got what he wanted. According to one NFL executive that Eckel spoke to, he said that the Eagles’ front office is “out of control” and that Roseman finally “got him.”
I can’t believe it,” a long-time executive for an Eagles rival said when told of Kelly’s firing. “They did what? Are you serious? No, you’re kidding right? You can’t be serious.”
When he finally realized it wasn’t a joke, he put the onus on the former and probably future general manager.
“Howie got him,” the executive said. “He won. It took him some time, but he got to the owner, and he won. That’s just amazing. What is Lurie thinking? That place is just out of control.”
That’s fantastic. Sounds really swell. Eckel also says in his report that a person with knowledge of the Eagles’ plans said that Chip was going to have to make changes if he was going to come back next season, including the coaching staff and giving up control of the personnel department.
So, while Chip may be gone, and it’s looked at widely as a positive move, there remains a lingering problem in Roseman. And that could set the Eagles back a lot more than keeping Chip another year would have.
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