The more you look at it, the more this seems like a bad idea. Making Chip Kelly all-powerful and tasking him as head coach, de facto offensive coordinator and personnel poobah — not to mention charging him with hiring a GM who might very well end up as little more than his avatar — is a lot. He is a smart man, but that is a considerable workload for even the brightest mind.
If the Eagles wanted to move on from Howie Roseman in order to keep Kelly happy (and simply keep Kelly), that’s fine. But they did not move on from Roseman. They simply moved Roseman over. He remains in the building — diminished, perhaps, but present nonetheless and in charge of a specific domain that will inevitably force him to interact with Kelly, or at the very least interact with whatever personnel representative Kelly designates as liaison. Therein lies the rub. And it is, potentially, a big, aggravating rub that could create all sorts of raw and ugly wounds.
Roseman, with his fancy new title (wonder whether that and the extra money helped him swallow what must have been a very difficult situation to choke down), remains in control of the salary cap. He’s the cap guy. Which means he’s the contract guy. Which means — at least in theory, as this crazy plan was hastily explained to everyone — he controls the money. Which means he could potentially be a huge pain in Kelly’s backside.
Put simply: What happens if Kelly wants to sign/re-sign a player that Roseman thinks is overvalued?
Let’s play a game. It’s one that Kelly would never go in for because it involves hypotheticals, but we’re going to play it anyway because, while Kelly’s power is ever-growing, he mercifully does not run this particular corporate concern. The game involves Nick Foles.
The Eagles have a decision to make. He has a year remaining on his contract. It’s a small sum, relatively speaking, for a professional quarterback who still projects as a starter. The Eagles could bring back Foles, make him play for the current salary structure, and then watch him become a free agent the following season — at which point he might or might not stay, and he might or might not command top dollar on the open market. (Or they could franchise tag him, but we’re skipping that possibility in favor of simplicity and time.)
Had Foles not gotten injured and played more than eight games this year, had he posted numbers somewhere between average and the insane statistics he mustered in 2013, the Eagles would have almost certainly had to pay him this offseason. Better-than-average starting quarterbacks are hard to unearth.
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For the sake of this exercise, let’s imagine that, despite the injury, Kelly has seen enough of Foles — and enough of Mark Sanchez and the other available options in the NFL — to believe the Eagles can succeed with him. And so, fearing his pending free agency, Kelly decides he wants to give Foles a new deal sooner than later. Kelly then tells his people to tell Roseman’s people to hammer out a contract. Roseman calls Foles’ agent, and they begin to negotiate. Ah, and now the rub.
Foles’ agent, ostensibly bright enough to know that the Eagles need a quarterback next year and beyond, and quick enough to survey the QB landscape and realize how barren it is, adopts the position that his client is worth, say, top-15 quarterback money. (And he might well be, but that’s a different story for another time.) At present, top-15 money would be an average salary of about $14.5 million. That would put Foles in the company of Tom Brady, Ben Roethlisberger, Eli Manning, Philip Rivers and some others, give or take a few million.
Roseman balks. He says Foles isn’t worth that kind of coin. He says Foles isn’t that kind of quarterback. He tells Foles and his agent to pound sand (because that is what all the hardline cap guys say in hypothetical games).
And then what?
If Roseman is able to override Kelly because the money a certain player wants is too much, then what was the point of installing Kelly as the end-all, be-all, do-all in the first place?
But if Kelly can overrule Roseman and instruct his foil to sign a player he desires regardless of cost — to simply ignore the attendant short and/or long-term financial ramifications — then Jeffrey Lurie and the Eagles have added one more task to Kelly’s already super-long shopping list of duties. Kelly would be head coach. And de facto offensive coordinator. And in charge of personnel. And de facto general manager. And, essentially, in charge of contracts.
That last part is significant. Kelly has previously admitted that he is not a cap or contract expert. But given the power to hammer square players into round contract holes, he would basically serve in that capacity. That is potentially problematic and dangerous, and it could create more drama for an organization that has lately resembled a Spanish-language telenovela.
Dios mío. That’s Spanish for “Uh-oh, this is a bad idea, did anyone think this through? Because it doesn’t seem like anyone thought this through.” Rough translation.