“Get outta here, Chip,’’ wasn’t good enough for the Eagles. Now they’re adding, “And take your lousy players with you.’’
Byron Maxwell, gone. Kiko Alonso, gone. DeMarco Murray, going. Ryan Mathews, on the market.
This isn’t a housecleaning by the new/old Eagles regime. It’s a fumigation. Everything Kelly brought into the organization in his one year as omnipotent ruler is being exterminated.
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The bad contracts. The bad fits. The bad schemes. The bad trades. And, if you believe in that sort of thing, the bad karma. After all, his roster purges (bye, DeSean Jackson, LeSean McCoy, Evan Mathis and so on) defined his time in full control. What goes round, comes around.
Probably the bad memories, too — the knowledge that Jeffrey Lurie, the owner himself, let it all happen.
Lurie, to repeat, moved Kelly into position and let Kelly move Howie Roseman out, after all his years working with Andy Reid when things weren’t as bad as they were always made out to be.
Now, Kelly has been expelled and they’re opening all the windows, letting in fresh air and fanning the stale vibes out.
What a legacy. Three of the top acquisitions from just a year ago booted out, with possibly a fourth to follow, and maybe more to come, because who knows what to expect now. The failure apparently goes far beyond that 6-9 record when Kelly was fired.
It’s remarkable to watch. These final few days before the cap deadline and the start of free agency always are, all around the NFL.
But teams don’t send many clearer, more transparent, less ambiguous messages than the Eagles are sending now.
It seemed obvious to everybody except the now-deposed, now-exiled-out-west man in charge, that things in and around the Eagles coming out of 2014 didn’t need that much changing.
But to Kelly, they couldn’t live another second with McCoy, and Alonso was just what they needed. Murray was the ideal replacement. Mathews was a perfect complement. Maxwell would slide right in on a defense that, to be fair, did need work.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. And wrong mostly because Kelly either was wrong about the player or wrong about how he used him.
And for general manager Roseman to come in, add a new-but-familiar head coach in Doug Pederson, look around and decide not that these players can help if put in position to do what they do best but that they had to go, too, and right now?
That’s not poking Kelly in the eye or even karate-chopping him in the throat. That’s security heaving him through the front window, then going back and tossing his whole crew on top of him.
You wonder whether Kelly is sitting in the Bay Area, 3,000 miles away with the 49ers, watching this and wondering, “Come on … was I that bad?’’
No, the Eagles have declared for the world to see.
You were worse.