PHOENIX -- Chip Kelly’s scouting process targets specific criteria in certain players at different positions. It has preferences for height, weight, wingspan, potential weight gain or weight loss, intelligence, behavior on and off the field and many other variables.
It’s a strategy that owner Jeff Lurie called more defined and detailed “both psychologically, athletically, [and] in so many categories” than any he’s ever seen.
It’s the blueprint that fascinated Lurie and then-general manager Howie Roseman back in 2013, when they replaced the fired Andy Reid with Kelly and touted the former Oregon head coach’s unique program-building acumen.
Ironically, it’s the same vision that ultimately forced Lurie to demote Roseman as the franchise’s top personnel man in January and hand over total power to Kelly.
But it’s worth wondering as Kelly approaches his first draft with final say if Kelly’s criteria are so rigid that he’s narrowing the pool of available talent.
The Eagles have taken risks before, either on prospects with character concerns or ones who didn’t wow scouts with measureables or play in a power conference. They’ve hit on some, such as Trent Cole, Todd Herremans and Bryce Brown. They’ve missed on others, like Curtis Marsh, Tony Hunt and Bryan Smith.
Kelly admitted that his unique scouting preferences will determine the fate of the franchise going forward.
“That’s the $64,000 question,” he said Wednesday at the owners meetings. “But you can say, ‘You know what, our parameters are too tight, so let’s expand them.’ If you accept it, expect it. So if you accept that you’re going to take a 5-7 corner and the ball gets thrown over his head, you can’t say, ‘Boy, he should have made that play.’ He ain’t going to make that play. The receiver is 6-4.
“So there’s a give and take. It’s a tough deal. If you take overachievers that aren’t the right size at every position eventually you’re going to have a 5-10 nose guard with a 5-9 inside linebacker with a 5-8 safety and they’re going to run the ball right down your throat and you have no one to kick in the pants but yourself because you decided to make those selections.
“If you’re going to have a standard in any operation — your business, your newspaper, whatever — and say, ‘I want to have a guy that is really good at this. This guy doesn’t really fit the criteria, but let’s just hire him anyways,’ and you wonder why your business failed, it’s because you lowered your standards to get to a certain point.”
As he typically does to illustrate his points, Kelly built his anecdote around players who represent the extreme — the undersized nose guard, shrimpy linebacker and dwarfish corner.
But the concern isn’t that Kelly is passing on sleepers who may have more potential than meets the eye. It’s that his preferences might be causing the Eagles to pass on elite talent because a player or group of players doesn’t satisfy enough of the coach’s detailed checkmarks.
For example, Kelly and his staff have agreed that lack of ideal outside corner height makes the 5-foot-10 Brandon Boykin best suited for the slot, where Boykin has played exclusively for the past two seasons — even while plenty of balls were completed over the head of left cornerback Bradley Fletcher, who is two inches taller.
Kelly’s heavy lean on intellect also provokes concerns if he’s passing on an All American who could use a few more hours in the classroom in favor of merely a very good player who aced his Wonderlic exam.
Kelly has stressed in the past his admiration for players who graduated college even though underclassmen typically dominate the first round of the NFL draft.
At the owners meetings, Kelly was asked if he thinks his draft board differs from others around the league, based on conversations he’s had with his contemporaries.
“Talking to guys that were in other programs, no. Most boards are similar,” he said. “And if a guy doesn’t have a first-round grade, you don’t look at the board and say, ‘We don’t have enough in the first round so let’s put him in the first round.’
“The pool is what the pool is. Presidential candidates are the presidential candidates. You’re picking between this presidential candidate and that presidential candidate. You can’t just say, ‘Well, I don’t like that guy and I don’t like that guy.’ You’ve got to pick one of them, right?”
Kelly recently spoke about a conversation that took place between him and Seahawks general manager John Schneider at the Senior Bowl.
Schneider’s 2012 draft, the one that produced Pro Bowl linebacker Bobby Wagner in the second round and Russell Wilson in the third and starting guard J.R. Sweezy, who played defensive end in college, in the sixth round, was largely mocked by the so-called experts throughout the three-day event.
But the Seahawks, who have been to the last two Super Bowls, are known for looking for a specific type of player who doesn’t always fit the normal scouting model.
Kelly said it’s more important that he and his scouting department have identifiable traits that the Eagles are looking for than just going after the prospects who have the best 40 times or lead the NCAA in specific categories.
“Philosophically, I think everybody would say the same thing,” Kelly said. “The guys that can’t tell you what they want in a player are probably the teams that aren’t successful. When guys are specific and know exactly what they want, then you have a chance to fix it from an understanding.
“But if you don’t understand what you want in a player or a defensive scheme or an offensive scheme, then you can never correct a mistake because you don’t even know if you’re making a mistake.”