Trading the Farm for Marcus Mariota Would Be a Moral Hazard for Chip Kelly

The swirling NFL Draft rumor du jour is that Chip Kelly wants to make a run at his former Oregon quarterback Marcus Mariota through a three-team deal. It’s fun to rampantly speculate on, but nobody with the possible exception of Kelly himself knows for sure whether or not it’s complete, specious bullshit. However, if it were to somehow happen, and the Eagles gave up the bevy of picks and players that would be necessary to leap from no. 20 to no. 2, it would represent a moral hazard for Chip, who in a year or two would be basking in the glory or bailing on the wreckage.

It’s relatively obvious what would happen for Chip if Mariota panned out quickly, the vaunted Oregon offense translated even better to the pros with the right signal caller, and the revamped Eagles defense finally started getting stops. Genius, luminary, etc. If it failed, though, there would still perhaps be upwards of a half-dozen NFL teams clamoring for his services, to say nothing of television networks and just about every college football program who didn’t already have someone like Urban Meyer or Nick Saban.

Cautionary tales like Herschel Walker, Ricky Williams, and RG3 would apply to the Eagles, who could suffer the consequences for five years if this theoretical swap happened and blew up, but Chip Kelly would emerge from the rubble just fine.

Look at the last 10+ years of teams that traded into the Top 10. How many winners are there here? [via Warren Sharp]