Power struggle? What power struggle?
Eagles coach Chip Kelly, who was given total control of personnel decisions in January after a sudden front-office shakeup by owner Jeffrey Lurie, denied Wednesday that tension and friction had developed over time between him and former general manager Howie Roseman.
“I think there’s a lot of things out there that people talk about all the time that weren’t true,” Kelly said Wednesday, speaking for the first time since the dramatic shakeup. “I get along great with him. Great working relationship. Just like I do with everybody else in this building.”
Along with handing complete personnel say to Kelly, Lurie reassigned Roseman, who had influence on personnel decisions except for the final 53-man roster, to cap management, contracts and other non-personnel issues.
Roseman, strangely, received a pay raise and a promotion in title, to executive vice president of football operations.
Kelly’s pro-Roseman sentiment contradicted the feedback from several sources who told CSNPhilly.com in past months that Kelly and Roseman weren’t on the same page and that Kelly viewed Roseman more as a cap manager than capable talent evaluator for his program.
Roseman and some of his staff members have since moved their desks -- or were instructed to -- to the business end upstairs at the NovaCare Complex opposite the coaching side.
NFL
Sources have said Roseman wasn’t happy about having personnel taken away from him after he had worked 16 years to go from the cap sector to the evaluation sector in his rise to general manager.
One can only wonder about their relationship going forward after Kelly’s admission that Roseman had final say on last year’s draft, which is largely viewed as a disappointment because of the struggles of first-round pick Marcus Smith and third-round pick Josh Huff.
“Howie had final say on that decision,” Kelly said.
Kelly also continued to support former executive vice president of player personnel Tom Gamble, whom Roseman fired on New Year’s Eve.
Whispers of friction between the two franchise pillars had started before the season ended. In the locker room after the season’s finale against the Giants, Lurie declared that Roseman would return as general manager and mocked reporters for even asking.
A few days later, on New Year’s Eve, the team fired Gamble and rumors soon surfaced that Kelly wanted out. Lurie then announced the major front-office overhaul, issuing two statements that explained his decisions.
In the statement, Lurie said conversations with his staff led him to believe changes were necessary, but he denied that Kelly threatened to leave.
Kelly, answering questions about the shakeup for the first time, denied that he asked for total personnel control.
“I didn’t think I needed control of personnel. That was a decision that our owner made,” he said. “I just had a meeting with him like I do at the end of every year in terms of the direction of what we’re doing and how do we go from being a 10-6 team to a team that could win the Super Bowl. That was a decision that Jeff made.”
Is the franchise in better shape because of the change?
“It better be or we made the wrong decision,” Kelly said. “I just feel like we’ve got a vision of what we want for football players here and I think we can articulate that here and that’s what we’re trying to go out and get.”
Kelly also said he didn’t make suggestions during his postseason powwow with Lurie.
“I just talked about the vision of what this thing [is] … and he came back to me with what he wanted to do,” Kelly said, adding that, “It’s Mr. Lurie’s decision on how things are run.”
Despite the reports of friction and Kelly priming to ask out of his contract, Kelly said reporters are “misconstruing” the events that prompted the massive change upstairs at One Novacare Way.
“Mr. Lurie made that decision,” he repeated.
“My thought was how do we make this place better?” he later added. “I never talked about [taking total power]. Howie does an outstanding job. He’s done an outstanding job in free agency in terms of negotiating contracts. I think there’s a collaborative effort in everything we do.”