Chip Kelly, Culture Talk, and Former Player Complaints
By Jason Lisk
It happened again. Late Saturday night, a player on his way out of Philadelphia made comments about Chip Kelly not understanding or bonding with an African-American player. This time, it was cornerback Brandon Boykin, who was traded to the Pittsburgh Steelers. Boykin said, via text to Comcast Sportsnet’s Derrick Gunn, that Kelly was “uncomfortable around grown men of our culture.”
After those quotes flew around the web at warp speed, and Kelly met a frothing media Sunday morning, Boykin clarified his comments to NFL Network’s Judy Bautista:
It should be noted that his initial comments also did not call Chip Kelly “a racist.” Any critique is automatically elevated there, but one can say he believes the coach didn’t feel comfortable around “grown men of our culture” without going all the way to racism.
Earlier this offseason, it was first, Stephen A. Smith saying that “Chip Kelly makes decisions, that dare I say, make a few brothas feel uncomfortable,” followed by LeSean McCoy firing off on his way to Buffalo.
"The relationship was never really great. I feel like I always respected him as a coach. I think that’s the way he runs his team. He wants the full control. You see how fast he got rid of all the good players. Especially all the good black players. He got rid of them the fastest. That’s the truth. There’s a reason. … It’s hard to explain with him. But there’s a reason he got rid of all the black players — the good ones — like that."
McCoy also didn’t use the word “racist.” Again, I think there was an assumption that was the “reason” McCoy implied in the above quote. But that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case.
The “reason” deals with all the talk of culture, and Chip Kelly’s views toward his roster, and what he prefers. Those ideals may intersect with how certain individuals feel when they leave the team.
[RELATED: The Philadelphia Eagles Are Playoff-Bound, and Here are Five Reasons Why]
“We’ve got a good group of guys, don’t we?” Chip Kelly said on the sidelines, caught on a microphone, last fall. “You know why? ’Cause culture wins football. Culture will beat scheme every day.”
“Honestly, if you look at our roster, we don’t have the most talented roster out there,” Malcolm Jenkins said in a radio interview on 94WIP shortly after that Kelly audio was published. “There’s other teams that have more talent than we do, but we know how to maximize our potential.”
After Boykin’s comments, Jenkins also said the following:
"“I know for a fact that Chip likes uniformity. And it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s not about personalities or race or whatever. It’s just about being about the team. “So sometimes that means you can’t have as much swagger as you want to as far as the way you dress, but it’s also the mentality that no player is bigger than anyone else and no player is bigger than the team, and I can buy into that.”"
Sometimes you can have unintended results that follow from policies and preferences. “You can’t have as much swagger,” as stated by Jenkins, could be something that certain star players have. They may not be fits if one is inclined to prefer uniformity over swagger.
Preference for uniformity and discipline over individuality and swagger are not unique traits within the football, or the rest of the sporting world. Too interested in academics and other endeavors, and have other options? See Myron Rolle. Too expressive or opinionated? We see conflicts constantly arising in baseball, for example, over the dreaded unwritten rules, often revolving around some expression of individuality (Or as Chris Rock said when describing why blacks were not following the sport as much “the right way, the white way”).
Last fall, the Eagles had the fewest African-American players (27) in the league. The year before, Philadelphia was tied for 2nd-fewest with 33, behind Minnesota (29). Maybe you saw this graphic last fall on dreadlocks, a hairstyle that can be seen as individualized and something that allows a player to stand out in an otherwise sea of uniformity hidden behind masks and gear. There were 185 players last year with dreadlocks on NFL rosters (Atlanta being the roster with the most). None of those 185 players were on the Eagles roster, the only team where that was the case in last year’s NFL.
[RELATED: Sam Bradford Better Put Up MVP Caliber Numbers to Justify Chip Kelly’s Move]
The Eagles have also expressed, publicly, a preference for college graduates. From Chip Kelly in May of 2014:
"“I think it’s important from the standpoint of, No. 1, intelligence is a huge part of what we’re looking for in every aspect that we do, whether it’s offense, defense or special teams,” Kelly said. “So the fact that they have a degree is proven where they are from an intelligence factor. The other thing, it’s also what is their commitment? They set goals out for themselves and can they follow through for it? A lot of people can tell you they want to do this, this and this. But look at their accomplishments. Sometimes when you look at those things, it’s always a plus when you have that. Tony Dungy came to speak to our team when I was at Oregon just to speak to our players about it, and I think he had some statistics that kind of blew our mind that the two teams from 2000 to 2010 that had the most graduates were the Colts and the Patriots, and there was something to it."
While there is not a perfect inverse correlation between underclassmen and those with degrees–plenty who exhaust their college eligibility haven’t graduated, and a some early entrants did get degrees before declaring–that is a policy that will negatively impact drafting underclassmen.
Of the 60 underclassmen who were drafted this year, for example, only six were not African-American. It should be noted that Nelson Agholor, the Eagles first-round pick this year, was among those underclassmen. But, a philosophy that one favors graduates (and thus disfavors underclassmen in a greater ratio) could have a disparate impact on drafting “star” players–even though, as I looked at when those quotes originally came out, it is a questionable philosophy when age appears to be undervalued in drafting.
The culture talk, more prominent in Philadelphia than other places in the NFL, may also increase the hard feelings when one is rejected from that culture. It’s one thing to be told you don’t fit the scheme. It’s another to be told your essence, your personality, doesn’t fit a culture. Most of the moves that have been made can be justified on football/salary management grounds, but the players on the way out have said things that aren’t said elsewhere. Chip Kelly gets more attention when he makes a roster move–I wrote in June about how he had made fewer moves than other coaches who started at the same time, when Evan Mathis was released. Still, other players, while they may grouse about being released or traded, don’t publicly drop statements questioning whether the coach identifies or understands their culture.
[RELATED: Dan Le Batard and Mike Florio’s Chip Kelly Twitter Squabble Yields Civil Radio Chat]
Chip Kelly is an enigma. He seems a very focused individual, and one who can be very tied to maintaining his beliefs, and is willing to move on quickly from a particular player. In that, he is not alone, and others like Bill Belichick come to mind.
One can say that without screaming racism. That doesn’t mean there’s not an issue here for the franchise to reflect upon, and that this is all manufactured drama. We also heard, for example, that Frank Gore had doubts about joining the Eagles, after initial reports were that he was signing there. Those reported concerns included phrases like “overbearing approach” and “intense, no-nonsense approach.”
Kelly has his core beliefs. Most successful coaches do, and organize around those. Bill Belichick, though, has not faced these sort of shots about race and culture on the way out, and he’s been a successful coach who has churned his roster repeatedly, trading veterans on a regular basis. I think the question is whether there is any flexibility on the edges of Kelly’s core beliefs, or whether Kelly can take it as a challenge in how he manages personalities.