That stability Lurie talked about? It was McNabb
During the news conference Wednesday when he explained, or tried to, why he had fired Chip Kelly, Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie uttered fewer than 30 words of his opening statement before referencing the rarity of what he had done the day before. Kelly was j
During the news conference Wednesday when he explained, or tried to, why he had fired Chip Kelly, Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie uttered fewer than 30 words of his opening statement before referencing the rarity of what he had done the day before. Kelly was just the second head coach whom Lurie had decided to replace since 1998, and he cited that relative lack of turnover - just Kelly and Andy Reid, for close to 18 years - to sell everyone on his always-careful thought process and the franchise's resulting stability.
That Lurie would dump Kelly a year after giving him full control over the Eagles' player-personnel decisions suggests that Lurie isn't quite as patient as he used to be, if he ever really was that patient. For in emphasizing his thoroughness and deliberation, Lurie misplaced most of the credit for the high points of his 211/2 years of ownership. He doesn't deserve most of it, and he and the Eagles' new coach, whoever he turns out to be, ought to understand that it wasn't Lurie, or Reid, or certainly Kelly who was most responsible for whatever stability the Eagles have had since 1994.
It was Donovan McNabb. It was the one franchise quarterback whom the Eagles have had in the last 20 years.
Let's review the entirety of Lurie's tenure and analyze his assertion that he has overseen a stable organization. One year after buying the Eagles, he fired the team's head coach, Rich Kotite, and replaced him with Ray Rhodes. Rhodes had the following starting quarterbacks: Randall Cunningham (as his Eagles career was ending), Rodney Peete, Ty Detmer, Bobby Hoying, and Koy Detmer. Rhodes lasted four years before Lurie fired him.
Then came Reid, whose first major decision as head coach was a critical one - the most critical of his 14 years with the franchise. With the No. 2 overall selection in the 1999 draft, he didn't pick Ricky Williams, or Cade McNown, or Akili Smith, or even Daunte Culpepper. He took McNabb, and from the moment Reid made him the Eagles' starting quarterback late in that '99 season, McNabb was the plinth on which the Eagles built the longest period of excellence in their history. Over the next 10 seasons, the Eagles made the playoffs eight times, won five NFC East titles, and reached five conference-championship games and one Super Bowl.
McNabb's presence allowed Reid, Joe Banner, and the Eagles' other decision-makers to establish and preserve the level of success that at the time was customary for the franchise, that ignited all that talk of Super Bowls and gold standards. It informed the Eagles' strategy of signing promising young players to long-term contracts and jettisoning aging ones to maintain salary-cap flexibility. Once a franchise has its quarterback, it can make those kinds of moves, secure in the knowledge that its most important player will at least keep the team in the hunt year after year.
"Going back to with Andy, every time, and the few times that we ever did not have a winning season and we were, let's say, 8-8, he always came back the next year with a 10-win-or-more season and we were in the playoffs," Lurie said. "We didn't have that history here [with Kelly]. There's nothing to basically base that on. So that was a situation with Andy that I just had a lot of faith that the following year would create a double-digit win season, and it usually did until the very last time."
But Lurie is misreading history and reality there. The end didn't really arrive for Reid after the 2012 season, when Lurie dismissed him. It arrived after the 2009 season, when the Eagles traded McNabb to the Washington Redskins. This is not to suggest that the Eagles should have kept McNabb beyond 2009; his skills were clearly in decline. But it is to suggest that, with the exception of Michael Vick's startling six-week stretch in 2010 and Nick Foles' final eight games of the 2013 season, the Eagles have never adequately replaced McNabb.
Remember: After McNabb left, Reid's subsequent starting quarterbacks were Kevin Kolb, Michael Vick, and Foles. Reid lasted three more years before Lurie fired him. Three. Then Lurie hired Kelly, and his starting quarterbacks were Vick, Foles, Mark Sanchez, and Sam Bradford. Kelly wasn't here three years before Lurie fired him. Three.
Say what you want about Kelly's personnel moves, his in-game coaching decisions, his interactions and demeanor with his players and the other people in the NovaCare Complex. They were all lacking, and they contributed to his firing. But give him this: He recognized that he, like pretty much every NFL head coach, needed a franchise quarterback to succeed. That's why he took a chance on trading for Bradford, and that's why Lurie's corporate-guru-speak Wednesday about finding a head coach who can "open his heart to players" and who values "emotional intelligence" rang so hollow.
"I think in today's world of the way businesses are run and sports teams are run that a combination - and it's not easy to have - a combination of all those factors creates the best chance to succeed," Lurie said.
Or, you can just find the right quarterback. Based on his history, Jeffrey Lurie will give the Eagles' next head coach three years, give or take, to find one. We wish the man luck on his search.
@MikeSielski