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Chip gets his (young) man

Ed Marynowitz is 30, has almost as little NFL experience as Chip Kelly, but now is the Eagles' player personnel chief.

New Eagles vice president of player personnel Ed Marynowitz.
New Eagles vice president of player personnel Ed Marynowitz.Read more

PHOENIX - Given the circumstances, this was probably the option that made the most sense all along.

The Eagles needed someone to run personnel for Chip Kelly who knew what Kelly wanted - the coach has exacting player specifications. They needed someone who would not chafe at being subordinate to Kelly, and someone who would be able to forge a working relationship with demoted general manager Howie Roseman, who is still hashing out contracts and minding the salary cap.

Ed Marynowitz, named vice president of player personnel yesterday, fit all those criteria. That's why the team's then-assistant director of player personnel was the first person mentioned in speculation when the Eagles announced their "restructuring" on Jan. 2, putting personnel and scouting under the control of Kelly. But the Eagles clearly wanted someone with more NFL experience than Marynowitz, who turns 31 in February, and who joined the team in 2012 from the Unviversity of Alabama, where he directed recruiting for Nick Saban from 2008-11. Before that, Marynowitz spent one season as a scouting assistant with the Miami Dolphins.

Several candidates either were prohibited from interviewing - something their teams could do because they weren't going to get final say on personnel working for Kelly - or withdrew from consideration. The Eagles are believed to have been ready to offer the job to Houston Texans exec Brian Gaine, but the Texans promoted Gaine to get him to stay. This week at the Super Bowl, Seattle general manager John Schneider said Seahawks exec Scott Fitterer had interviewed with the Eagles but had opted not to pursue the position.

Candidates who had been working in personnel for years for successful organizations were looking to move into jobs with more clout. The Eagles might have been hurt by widespread buzz around the league portraying the front-office atmosphere as potentially toxic, with Roseman deposed but remaining part of the operation, close to team chairman Jeffrey Lurie.

So, the Birds went back to Marynowitz, who originally was hired by Roseman and presumably isn't leery of the dynamic, though of course that isn't how they portrayed it in making the announcement. Neither Kelly nor Marynowitz was made available to reporters.

"Ed is someone who has really impressed me going back to my interview process with the Eagles two years ago," Kelly said in a statement released by the team. Marynowitz was part of the coaching search committee Lurie put together. "He's very bright, detailed, organized, and his vision was aligned with what we wanted to accomplish. I spoke with a lot of people outside our organization over the past few weeks, and in the end, Ed was the most impressive."

The biggest negative would seem to be that Kelly has only worked in the NFL for 2 years, and Marynowitz is only slightly more experienced. But several NFL sources yesterday described Marynowitz as a rising star.

Patriots linebacker Dont'a Hightower played at Alabama when Marynowitz was there.

"He found unsung talent. He brought in guys who really helped us," Hightower said. "He's very young. I don't know how he does it, to be so young [and moving up in the NFL so quickly]. He does a tremendous job finding talent."

Greg Gabriel, former Bears college scouting director and Eagles scouting consultant, said Marynowitz is "thought of as a guy with a bright future." He added: "Ed was Saban's recruiting guy for a few years and knows how to work with a HC who is in charge."

That, ultimately, is the biggest question to be answered in all of this. The Eagles now are among four NFL teams where the coach runs everything. Two of them are in the Super Bowl, the Patriots and the Seahawks. The other is the Saints. By giving such power to Kelly, and then not bringing in someone with clout to work with him, the Eagles are taking a big risk. They probably aren't going to win the Super Bowl with Marynowitz merely organizing scouting reports for Kelly, and Kelly trying to run personnel on a daily basis as well as coach.

Earlier this week, Seahawks coach Pete Carroll endorsed Kelly's power grab, saying the coach needs to have that level of control in the NFL. Yesterday, though, Carroll talked about how much he depends on Schneider, the personnel chief he hired.

"John is a tremendous personnel guy. He's a tremendous manager. I absolutely lean a thousand percent on John to do all of the stuff of generating information, collecting all that we need to know, making decisions of great depth and concern through all aspects of what we do personnelwise, as well as being my best friend and everything that we're pulling off," Carroll said.

"I think it's too big a job for one guy . . . There's too much stuff going on. It's a whole other season of work that's being done while the football season is going on, that a football coach just wouldn't be able to handle properly. You can oversee, you can have an opinion and all that, but I'm very, very fortunate to have John as my partner in this.

"During the football season, I'll help him with the football thoughts. During the personnel season, he'll help me with the personnel thoughts. We have made a tremendous commitment to each other to always bring out the best in one another . . . Without John we would be nowhere."

It remains to be seen whether Kelly is open to that sort of arrangement with Marynowitz, and also whether the Media native and former La Salle University quarterback is capable of helping Kelly as much as Schneider helps Carroll.

Eagles running back LeSean McCoy noted yesterday that this is the structure the Eagles had under Andy Reid, especially when Tom Heckert was GM. But Reid made no pretense of doing anything regarding scouting much beyond making the draft-day decisions. Kelly, with a recent and extensive college background, seems to want to be much more involved in assessing prospects.

NFL Network analyst Brian Baldinger said yesterday that he thinks the total-control NFL coach needs not just personnel assistance, but a strong, sometimes dissenting voice.

"Has he just got a puppet in there?" Baldinger asked, of Kelly. "I understand all the adjectives used to describe [Marynowitz], but most [personnel chiefs] have eyes that have been trained really, really well. I don't know that at that age, you've really had the experience to do it."

Baldinger talked about necessary "combustible conversations," where a personnel exec "pounds the table" for a player the coach might not like.

"I don't think [Baltimore's] Ozzie Newsome and John Harbaugh always agree. I don't think Pete Carroll and John Schneider always agree," Baldinger said.

Marynowitz said in the statement: "We intend to build a collaborative and competitive work environment with our coaches, one built upon trust and respect, with a focus on winning."

That was an interesting assertion, given that a source has said there was friction between Roseman's scouting staff and the Eagles' coaches, who made changes in the team's draft board, the source said, after it was set last spring.

"This is a great opportunity for Ed, and I think Philadelphia made an excellent decision in terms of expanding his role and responsibilities in the organization," Saban said in the Eagles' statement. He lauded the job Marynowitz did at Alabama, and added: "The thing I was most impressed with was how much he wanted to learn in the area of player evaluation, and his knowledge in that area really expanded during his time at Alabama."

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