Report: Chip Kelly alienated Eagles scouts, turned around draft board
According to a report, Chip Kelly alienated his scouts in Philadelphia and blew up the 2014 draft board.
By
Will Brinson
•
2 min read
There is no shortage of negative press coming out of Philadelphia as it relates to Chip Kelly this offseason. It hasn't been a full-blown attack or anything, but Kelly getting fired and Howie Roseman taking over personnel certainly sets up for some shots at Kelly.
One such shot comes via NJ.com from an anonymous former Eagles personnel guy, who said Kelly took the Eagles 2014 NFL Draft board and "totally turned it around" right before the draft began.
"Right before that draft, the scouts set the board," the former personnel exec told NJ.com. "Then Chip got a hold of it and totally turned it around. Scouts had no say at all in that draft. Anybody that Chip didn't want, that player's card got removed from the board and thrown in the trash. Those guys were never even in the discussion.
"Almost immediately, you had a lot of scouts looking around and wondering, 'Why am I even working? Why the hell are we even here?' We put all of this work in, put the information in and Chip changed everything and took whoever he wanted to take."
The 2014 draft featured Jordan Matthews as a nice pick in the second round. But it also featured a disaster in the first round with Marcus Smith, who has just 1.5 sacks in two seasons with the Eagles.
"Personally, I had Smith with a third-round grade," the former exec told NJ.com. "That was one of the shockers of the first round -- that he went as high as he did."
But the rub here is Roseman took responsibility for the selection of Smith previously. Like, specifically said it was his decision to take Smith in the draft. Kelly's first draft with full control of personnel power was 2015 -- Nelson Agholar, Eric Rowe and Jordan Hicks looks like a decent haul from the first three rounds, but the full value is TBD.
So basically it feels like everyone in and around the Eagles is staring at Smith as one of the all-time busts and trying to figure out who is to blame.
He was taken immediately before Deone Bucannon, Kelvin Benjamin, Dominique Easley, Jimmie Ward, Bradley Roby and Teddy Bridgewater so, yeah, Smith was a pretty terrible pick two years into his career.
The reality is the winners write the history and at this moment Roseman is the winner. The Eagles struggling in 2016 wouldn't do much to help this narrative however.
