It’s easy to look at the moves the Philadelphia Eagles have made this offseason and conclude that they’re actively pushing Chip Kelly’s acquisitions out the door. Not true, according to head coach Doug Pederson.
Pederson told NFL Network’s NFL HQ on Monday that the Eagles are just trying to get better, and they’re not going out of their way to target Kelly acquisitions.
“Listen, it’s never been about Chip Kelly’s guys,” Pederson said, via NFL Media’s Conor Orr. “For me, it’s about the Philadelphia Eagles and how we can better our roster and better our football team. I felt with Howie Roseman and myself, we’ve been able to do that this offseason so far and we’re always going to continue to try and better the team. If you’re not, you’re not moving forward so I don’t look at it that way.”
Pederson is right, pretty much. The big names the Eagles have moved out this offseason – Byron Maxwell and Kiko Alonso to the Dolphins, and DeMarco Murray to the Titans – were all high-profile Kelly players. They also uniformly underperformed and, particularly in the case of Maxwell and Murray, had pretty bad contracts. If they’d played well under Kelly, they’d probably still be in Philadelphia. Then again, so might Kelly.
