Kelly Admits Dysfunction, Avoids Accountability

(973espn.com) — Jeffrey Lurie claims the 2015 Philadelphia Eagles season was one big accountability test designed to see if Chip Kelly was really the man to lead his organization for years to come.

It's still not all that clear if Kelly accepted the faulty premise of Lurie's tortured experiment but the guy in charge gets to make the rules and there is no question the Eagles' ex-coach isn't all that keen on taking responsibility.

On Wednesday at the NFL's annual spring meetings Kelly talked about what went wrong in Philadelphia for the first time and the now-49ers mentor blamed it on a “weird” organizational structure in which he was given final say of over personnel decisions, but Howie Roseman, who had been the general manager for Kelly’s first two seasons with the Eagles until losing a power play, remained in place to draw up the contracts for the players Kelly yearned for.

What developed from there was two grown men making well over seven figures a year each refusing to speak to each other, making now-deposed vice president of player personnel Ed Marynowitz the go-between.

Lurie allowed this toxic environment to breed in South Philadelphia and Kelly now admits he and Roseman were never “on the same page.”

Yet, Roseman, who is known for being deft in contract negotiations to say the least, "allowed" Kelly to hand out bad contract after bad contract. In fact, a cynic might surmise Roseman was purposefully giving Kelly the rope to hang himself so he could regain control as he ultimately did.

Kelly, though, does continue to lose points in this he said, she said soap opera by continuing to claim he was never the "general manager" in Philadelphia, nor did he ask for any added power he received in January of 2015, clearly a semantics-based defense because Kelly does admit he didn't exactly embrace the previous setup.

“I didn’t like the way it was, but I didn’t ask for anything,” Kelly claimed. “It’s (Lurie’s) organization and it’s his team. He can run it however he wants to run it. It wasn’t like I was going to say: ‘I’m walking out the door.’”

Lurie should have shown the autocrat the door, however, and never allowed this pissing match to reach the level it did.

-John McMullen covers the Eagles and the NFL for 973ESPN.com. You can reach him at jmcmullen44@gmail.com or on Twitter @JFMcMullen