PHOENIX — Jeffrey Lurie finally opened up about his bold and controversial decision to massively overhaul his front office and surrender total personnel authority to third-year head coach Chip Kelly.
Lurie, speaking Tuesday outside the Arizona Biltmore resort at the NFL’s annual owners meetings, didn’t necessarily slam his foot on the pedal and speed the bus over Howie Roseman.
But in explaining that the head coach needed a “football guy” by his side to procure the unique kind of player that Kelly needs to win, the Eagles' owner delicately and carefully steered the vehicle over his former general manager, whom Lurie had previously given a stamp of endorsement before doing a 180.
"I changed my mind," Lurie said.
“When we hired Chip, his style of play is very different than what we had before. It’s a power spread offense and it’s a 3-4 defense and we were not organized and designed in that way. We had outstanding, young, finesse and fast players. ... We had over two years to understand where we were at, where are we going to maximize Chip Kelly’s vision and system or were we going to counteract it?”
Roseman has since been reassigned to duties that mainly include salary cap management and contract negotiations. He no longer has any say in personnel but received a hefty pay bump and extra years on the contract.
In order for the franchise to “get from good to great,” Lurie added, Kelly needed someone who sees the game the way he does. Ed Marynowitz, the scout Kelly promoted from within to become the team’s top personnel man under the head coach, became that person to take Roseman’s place.
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“Having a seamless scouting and coaching enterprise was really what Chip’s vision was,” Lurie said. “He felt he could be maximized best with a senior personnel executive that was of his choosing, and of course with my approval. I feel that was important to back him on that, and to allow him to maximize [that].
“It’s a different form and structure than most organizations have in the NFL because it’s so tied to a particular series of requirements and modes of play, and it took that.”
Why couldn’t Roseman, whom Lurie once referred to as the best talent evaluator in the scouting department, adjust to fit Kelly’s model?
“That’s a good question,” Lurie responded. “It wasn’t Howie. I think it was much more Chip’s requirement to sort of have a football guy that he was comfortable with in terms of helping him day to day and minute by minute.”
Was Roseman not doing a good enough job at getting Kelly's players?
“You can always argue you’re never good enough until you win the Super Bowl," Lurie said. "And even then you’re going to lose players, and you’re not good enough then, either. I just think with Chip, he wanted his own football player personnel guy next to him at all times. And I don’t blame him. That’s what he wanted, so we’re providing that for him.”
So Roseman's not a football guy?
“That may have been the interpretation," Lurie said. "But I don’t think that’s how any of us really see it.”
Well, except the head coach.
Peel away the layers there and Lurie basically acknowledged what had been known by others since before the season finale — that Kelly and Roseman weren’t seeing eye to eye and Lurie’s best chance to keep Kelly content (and therefore employed by the Eagles) was to remove Roseman from the equation.
Lurie spoke for about 40 minutes outside the Arizona Biltmore resort, hitting on several topics. Many of his candid thoughts came off as logical and reasonable, which only made the team’s decision to have Lurie avoid speaking publicly until Tuesday more puzzling.
But Lurie also either danced around — or skirted altogether — direct questions on other subjects, such as Tom Gamble’s firing and Roseman’s real feelings about being stripped of personnel say.
Regarding Gamble, the former top scouting executive who was fired on New Year’s Eve, Lurie said the move was “a long time coming” and urged reporters following up to “move on” to a different line of questioning.
Regarding Roseman, who spent much of his 16 seasons in the organization working to become a personnel man, Lurie was asked about the emotional toll of the reassignment on his former general manager.
Lurie vaguely answered.
“Just knowing Howie, he’s so selfless,” Lurie said. “He just wants to participate and he’s so valuable to us. Always seeks the best for the organization, which I really respect.”
Lurie said he couldn’t be 100 percent certain Roseman would stay for the long haul but downplayed the reported friction between Roseman and Kelly and Roseman and Marynowitz, although he didn’t exactly pretend that Roseman and the two new pillars of power are all buddies.
“Everyone’s professional,” Lurie said. “That’s it. It’s not a soap opera. Everything’s professional. Do you need to work with your best friends? No. I’ve never wanted to do that.”
Lurie also avoided a yes-or-no question about whether Kelly’s contract includes safeguards against the head coach leaving before his contract is up.
“I think everything is just a normal situation,” Lurie said. “There’s nothing different with Chip than there is with any other coach in the NFL. They’re accountable, they’re responsible.”
Lurie repeated several times that he understood the risk of giving final say to a head coach who has just two years of NFL coaching experience, but he said risks needed to be taken for the Eagles to get over their Super Bowl hump.
Something needed to be done in order for the Eagles to go from a 10-win team for two straight seasons into a real championship contender.
“I’ve lived through a lot of division championships, a lot of playoff appearances, a lot of final four appearances, but our goal is we want to deliver a Super Bowl,” he said, “and sometimes maybe I’m influenced by the notion of it’s very difficult to get from good to great, and you’ve got to take some serious looks at yourself when you want to try to make that step.
“It’s a gamble to go from good to great because you can go from good to mediocre with changes, but I decided that it was important enough to adopt the vision and philosophy of integrating the scouting with the coaching on a daily basis.”