Eagles lineman: Chip Kelly's problem was that he ran things like a dictator
Eagles offensive lineman Lane Johnson feels that Chip Kelly should have been listening to his players more often.
By
John Breech
•
3 min read
After Chip Kelly was hired by the Eagles in January 2013, the first player Kelly acquired through the NFL Draft was offensive lineman Lane Johnson, who Philadelphia selected with the fourth-overall pick that year.
Johnson has basically had a front-row seat to everything that's happened during Kelly's three-year tenure, which makes him the perfect person to theorize why Kelly got fired. According to Johnson, Kelly's biggest issue is that he was too much like a dictator -- he did things his way and didn't listen to anyone.
"Maybe the ego got in the way," Johnson said on Wednesday, via ESPN.com. "Too much power. Control. Not being human about things; not working together, with the team, instead of being a dictator."
Johnson believes that Kelly cared about his players, but he was just in over his head. The Eagles job was Kelly's first coaching role in the NFL after spending his entire career in college.
"I think Chip had good intentions, I just think he didn't have a good way to go about it," Johnson said. "Sometimes he came off a little stand-offish. Toward you all (in the media), he didn't want to deal with you all, but that was just his way. I don't know if he had anybody to confide in. But all in all, I know he cared about the players, but I don't think he had the best way to go about things."
For Kelly, it was either his way or the highway, and that was the biggest problem for most Eagles players.
Back in 2014, former Eagles defensive back Cary Williams said that Kelly was "overworking" his players. Although no one on the Eagles roster publicly agreed with Williams' comments at the time, Johnson says that being overworked was definitely an issue with Kelly, an issue that couldn't be fixed because Kelly refused to change the way he was doing things.
"I've been running this tempo (bleep) since college," Johnson said, via Philly.com. "I'm pretty damned tired. It takes a toll on you. You do it over a period of time, a lot of guys in this league aren't going to last ... Bigger guys, it's harder on your joints. A lot of pounding. Your hips. Your back. All you're doing is torquing all day."
Not only was Kelly's system hard on his offensive players, but it was also taking a toll on his defensive players.
When Kelly's offense wasn't clicking, the Eagles defense was forced to be on the field for long stretches. Kelly has never cared about time of possession, but apparently, he never thought about it from the perspective of his defense.
Safety Malcolm Jenkins said that there were times when the Eagles defense was just on the field for too many snaps.
"You have to figure out what your goal is," Jenkins told NJ.com on Tuesday, just hours before Kelly was fired. "If you're goal is to be a top-five or top-10 defense in every category and be very stingy, then no, you don't want to play 80 snaps a game. That's just too many plays."
In college, Kelly was asking young guys to go full speed for 13 weeks. In the NFL, he's asking older guys to go full speed year-round.
Johnson just doesn't think that's practical.
"I definitely think so," Johnson told CSNPhilly.com when asked if Kelly's practices were too grueling. "We practice pretty much the same from OTAs until the end of the season. There's not a lot of the guys in the league that do that, continuous. It takes a toll on you, especially me, I expect a lot from myself so I've hit it hard since January, go out with (Jason Peters), bust some ass, and by the end of the year I feel like I'm gonna fall apart."
The bottom line is that wherever Kelly goes next, he's going to need to start listening to his players and do whatever it takes to them fresh when it counts: during the regular season and playoffs.
