The Eagles' entire offseason has felt like a shot fired at Chip Kelly by Howie Roseman.
Or at least it did feel that way, with Roseman shipping off every single one of Chip’s guys. DeMarco Murray to the Titans in a really impressive trade and Bryon Maxwell/Kiko Alonso to the Dolphins in an even more impressive trade.
The one guy he kept around from Chip’s regime (aside from Ryan Mathews) is a surprise, though. As Peter King of TheMMQB.com points out, Roseman kept around Kelly’s Smoothie King!
And in an underreported illustration that Roseman and the Eagles are big enough -- even in the wake of the sudden and disagreeable parting with Kelly -- to learn from everything in the football universe, the club decided to keep a huge Kelly hire, sports science czar Shaun Huls, who had some forward-thinking ideas about nutrition and body maintenance.
“Chip brought in a lot of great ideas and great people,” said Roseman. “Shaun and sports science are both examples of that.”
Just kidding, of course. Huls isn't a "smoothie king" -- he's the sports-science guru (technically known as the Director of Sports Science and Conditioning) for the Eagles. And he's good at his job. In Kelly's first season, the Eagles didn't put a single player on IR after the season began. You'd think it would be impossible but they did it.
Also worth noting: sports science is a huge part of the changing approach to how teams operate in terms of gaining an edge. Keeping a guy who is at the forefront of that movement is smart.
Roseman told King during his year off that he basically went and learned the most important things relating to team building. (Interestingly, he spent a lot of time with English Premiere League teams, learning how they would meld players from around the world to create high-quality culture despite big-time language barriers.)
Also of note is Roseman's approach to this year's draft. Roseman said the Eagles missed out on players they coveted in years past (see: Brandin Cooks to the Saints, causing them to take Marcus Smith, whoops) and wanted to move up as a result.
“In the past few drafts,” said Roseman, “often we’d be picking lower in the first round, and we’d just miss out on a guy we had targeted. This year we felt there was a big drop-off after 10 players, so I talked to people about trying to move into the top 10."
He's pretty spot on. You look at the talent in the top-10 and it's clear there's a big dropoff around the No. 8 slot, depending on how many quarterbacks end up getting drafted in the top 10.
He managed to pull off a near-impossible deal to move up five spots while jettisoning some contract weight. Maybe this past year was a good learning experience after all.
