The Eagles handed the personnel department over to coach Chip Kelly this offseason and Kelly used his new power to make big changes to the team that he’s led to 20 regular season wins in his first two seasons with the team.
Those moves have been met with confusion from some and criticism from others, which is something that Jimmy Johnson thinks Kelly is going to have to live with. Johnson had the same kind of power in Dallas and Miami and said that critics of the approach will persist until Kelly wins the way Johnson did in Dallas or Bill Belichick has in New England.
“You don’t let media or pundits affect you, but of course you are aware of what they’re saying,” Johnson said, via MMQB.com. “It was both comical and hurtful. Even though you found it comical because you knew they had no idea what you were trying to do, nobody wants to be criticized. At times, it would almost feel personal. It had nothing to do with your decision-making, it had to do with the fact that they just didn’t like you—because you rubbed somebody wrong. Maybe you didn’t do right by one of their favorite players, which Chip has done, which I did, which Belichick has done. With Belichick, he has the credibility so people accept it. Late in my career, they began to accept it. With Chip right now, people are not accepting it. Some people are not accepting trading LeSean McCoy. Some people are not accepting cutting Evan Mathis. Until you win big, people are going to criticize you.”
Johnson said he’s spoken to Kelly about handling both coaching and personnel and that one piece of advice he gave to the Eagles coach is that he needs to have someone overseeing personnel during the season. Johnson said that was a problem for him when he was coaching the Dolphins and that he advised Kelly to focus on personnel in the offseason and have a trustworthy person do it come September because doing both jobs is too “overwhelming to do it 12 months of the year all by yourself.”
Johnson also mentioned some concern about the injury histories of players the Eagles have brought on board, but said being great in the NFL involves taking risks and not being afraid to fail because you’re confident in yourself. Kelly seems to have that confidence and we’ll start finding out the results in a couple of months.