What does Howie Roseman's resurrection say about Jeffrey Lurie?

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It was unexpected and jarring, the kind of moment that smacks you and makes you remember where you were when it went down. I was at a family gathering when the text came in that Chip Kelly had been fired. Sorry, released. Love that language. How genteel. Then the tweets started. Then the official team press release arrived via email. I still didn’t believe it. I had to check and re-check to make sure it wasn’t an elaborate ruse.

The timing was odd. The Eagles still had a game to play (and a now-famous holiday party to hold). And it hadn’t even been a year since Jeffrey Lurie gave Kelly full authority over the entire operation. They not only restructured the front office in function, they also rearranged the physical floor plan, moving Howie Roseman’s office — which used to be next to Kelly’s — clear across the NovaCare Complex. That is a message that lacks any form of subtlety.

Roseman got a raise and a new title, but the window dressing was so transparent you didn’t have to press your nose up against the glass to see right through it. No one expected Roseman to be around very long after something like that. And yet Roseman is still around. And Kelly is gone. If the rest of us remember where we were when Kelly got canned, you better believe Roseman will. It will be his own special holiday: V-E Day. Victory-Eagles. Roasted duck and smoothies for everyone.

Roseman was buried. And now he’s risen. The resurrection is really quite remarkable. Everyone knows Roseman’s story — he started as a soot-stained intern in the Eagles’ boiler room and worked his way up to the personnel department. And bully for him. Detractors screamed about him not being a “football guy,” which was/is silly for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is the lazy catchall appellation. Plenty of football guys fail in front offices all over the place. Matt Millen was a football guy. Ask a Lions fan how that went.

How Roseman got to the front office matters not at all. How he performed matters very much. And if you’re inclined to skewer Roseman, that’s where you begin. His tenure as general manager featured mixed results, if we’re being kind. Among hits in the first three rounds: Fletcher Cox, Lane Johnson, Brandon Graham, Vinny Curry and Bennie Logan. Among the misses: Jaiquawn Jarrett, Curtis Marsh and two major first-round gaffes, Danny Watkins and Marcus Smith.

Roseman once said he thought the Eagles were “getting an enforcer” when they drafted Watkins. The lineman played 23 games. Then the Eagles cut him. After starting a lot of on-field fires, he ostensibly puts them out now. Meanwhile, it took until the very last game of his second season before Smith recorded the first solo sack of his career. That’s not a very good return on their investment. You can put some or all of the blame on Roseman for that, but those are the kinds of draft picks that tend to get people fired, even if they’re only tangentially involved in the decisions. And yet Roseman remains.

That brings us to Lurie. If it’s fair to wonder why he would dethrone Kelly a year after making him the supreme leader, it’s also fair to wonder why he retained Roseman following the power struggle and once again when he chose to hit the undo button on the whole mess. Lurie said things with Kelly didn’t work and he had enough time to evaluate it and course correct. That’s fine. But what about Roseman? His draft record is spotty. And the Eagles haven’t won a playoff game since 2008. That’s seven long seasons. Roseman has been around in various capacities for all of it. What’s his culpability there? Put another way, what did/does he do on the positive side of the ledger to make Lurie ignore the negative weight? Why not make a clean break on all fronts — from Kelly to Roseman — and reboot the whole process?

Lurie has proven to be a pretty patient guy since buying the team. There haven’t been a lot of shakeups to the power structure with him around. Maybe that’s part of who he is. Maybe keeping Roseman around is a function of DNA and disposition. But that doesn’t make it any less curious.

During the farewell-Chip press conference, Lurie said the Eagles don’t change head coaches very often. He made it sound like a form of stability, like it’s a positive. Then you remember that the first coach he hired was Ray Rhodes and the last was Kelly. In between he hit on Andy Reid, but that’s not a very good average, and it hardly supports the steady-as-she-goes organizational philosophy he was tacitly touting.

Here’s another interesting issue: Lurie said Roseman (along with president Don Smolenski and others) will be part of the search committee for the new head coach.

“I am very confident that this search will be done very, very professionally,” Lurie said, “as the last one was.”

Cool. Yeah. About that: You know who was part of the last one? Roseman. That didn’t exactly work out. Lurie made sure to remind everyone that Kelly was atop the wish list of a lot of teams at the time. Fair enough. But the Eagles’ second choice the last time was Gus Bradley. The Ol' Gus Bus is still stalled in Jacksonville with a 12-36 record.

But hey, Lurie is “very confident” this time will be different. The same essential search crew is going to get it right this time. They’re going to do it better. No doubt the owner thinks Roseman has learned from previous mistakes. Maybe he has. And Lurie promised the new guy and the holdovers are totally going to get along.

“Our new head coach, executive vice president of football operations and a player personnel head, they are all partners to collaborate and that's the structure,” Lurie said.

He sounded like he believed it this time. He sounded like he believed it last time, too.

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