Eagles' Chip Kelly won't settle for second

CHIP KELLY ascribes to the Ricky Bobby if-you're-not-first-you're-last philosophy.

He found no solace at all in the fact that the Eagles won 10 games for the second straight year last season. They failed to make the playoffs, and as far as he was concerned, that translated to total failure.

"Finishing 10-6 and not going to the playoffs is just like going 4-12," Kelly said last month in an hour-long interview with a group of reporters.

"I didn't feel we were close at the end of the year. I knew we had to get better as a team."

What followed in the next six months was a seemingly nonstop series of head-spinning roster moves aimed at turning a good team into a great one.

After convincing owner Jeff Lurie to send general manager Howie Roseman to Siberia and give him complete control over personnel, Kelly grabbed a jackhammer and went to work. He traded his starting quarterback and star running back. He let his leading receiver walk in free agency. He released his two starting guards and his best pass-rusher and gutted his secondary.

Many people think he's crazy. Just as many think he's a genius. We'll find out soon enough who is right.

"We had to improve defensively," Kelly said of a unit that gave up the fourth most passing touchdowns (30) in the league and an NFL-high 72 passes of 20 yards or more. "And to do that, we had to sacrifice some things on offense."

The Eagles will have a minimum of 10 new starters - five on offense and five on defense - when they open the season against Atlanta on Sept. 14. That figure could increase to 12 depending on whether tight end Brent Celek and wide receiver Riley Cooper hang on to their starting jobs.

Kelly has tried to downplay all of the changes he's made in the offseason. He has said that most of the moves have been salary cap-related.

"Almost all of the maneuvers we made were just because of contracts," he said. "People making too much money in our opinion as far as the valuation of what the pay for play is.

"We're paying three running backs [DeMarco Murray, Ryan Mathews and Darren Sproles] $11.1 million [their combined cap value in 2015]. We traded one running back [LeSean McCoy] who was getting $11.9 million [his 2015 cap number]. We looked at that as a positive. We had to change that around. And that gave us the ability to free up money to put it into other situations, like quarterback."

Kelly's decision to trade Nick Foles, who put up the third highest passer rating in league history just two years ago, for Sam Bradford, who is coming off back-to-back ACL tears, clearly was his biggest - and riskiest - move of the offseason.

It underscores his whole good-to-great plan. Foles threw 27 touchdown passes and just two interceptions two years ago. But, Kelly didn't see a franchise quarterback when he looked at Foles. He does see one when he looks at Bradford, assuming he can stay healthy.

"It's not easy to trade the young quarterback [Foles] you're developing who had a terrific year the year before and got hurt last year," Lurie said of Foles in March. "But you have to go on your evaluations.

"There was an opportunity to do an upside gamble with an outstanding young quarterback [Bradford] who you hope can become healthier throughout his career. It is so hard to find a franchise quarterback. It sets the ceiling on what you have as a team. Do you want to take upside gambles or not? You have to make that decision."

Certainly, money and cap numbers played a significant role in many of the other moves the Eagles made during the offseason.

But the fact that they didn't try very hard to get players like McCoy, linebacker Trent Cole, cornerback Cary Williams and guard Todd Herremans to restructure their deals and lower their cap numbers is a pretty clear indication that Kelly was ready to cut ties with them for other reasons as well.

While McCoy led the league in rushing in 2013 and rushed for 1,319 yards last year, Kelly had become frustrated with his running style, which resulted in an inordinate amount of negative runs and the kid's reluctance to completely buy into The Kelly Way.

Cole and Herremans both are aging players at the tail end of their careers. Herremans has missed 16 games to injuries the last three seasons.

At 33, Mathis also is on the downside of his career. But he was coming off two Pro Bowl appearances. His release had more to do with his open unhappiness with the contract he signed in 2012 and his decision to skip all of the team's voluntary workouts this spring.

"They asked for a release," Kelly said of Mathis and his agent, Drew Rosenhaus. "They weren't going to be here."

That's not exactly true. While Mathis did ask the team to release him if it couldn't trade him, he had every intention of attending last month's mandatory minicamp and would not have been a training camp holdout. If Mathis were three or four years younger, I'm fairly certain Kelly wouldn't have released him.

"That wasn't an option we wanted to go with," Kelly said when asked why he didn't just keep Mathis and make him play under his current contract. "If he didn't want to be here he didn't have to be here."

There are just 14 players left on the Eagles roster who were with the team prior to Kelly's January 2013 arrival. That number likely will shrink even more by the start of the regular season. Just five players who were Week 1 starters in '12 still are with the team.

But as Kelly has correctly pointed out, those numbers are pretty much par for the course for a coach after his second year.

Four other teams - Kansas City (Andy Reid), Jacksonville (Gus Bradley), San Diego (Mike McCoy) and Arizona (Bruce Arians) - hired new head coaches the same time the Eagles did. The Chargers have only 15 players on the roster who were with the team in 2012. Reid's Chiefs have 12, the Jaguars have 10 and the Cardinals have nine.

Only four of the Chiefs' 2012 season-opening starters still are with the team. Same with the Cardinals and Jaguars. The Chargers have six.

"We've made less moves than other teams that were in the same situation as us when we took over in 2012 if you look at the numbers," Kelly said. "We're just trying to get better than 10-6."

Ricky Bobby would be proud.

On Twitter: @Pdomo

Blog: ph.ly/Eagletarian.com