BOCA RATON, Fla. - The three years in which Chip Kelly was the head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles ultimately ended in failure, after Kelly was dismissed with one game remaining in the 2015 season and the Eagles out of playoff contention. Speaking at the owners meetings in Boca Raton, owner Jeffrey Lurie classified the decision to give Chip Kelly full control of the team as "a time expense."
"The expense of a lesson is just time," said Lurie. "It’s not money. We’re all about wanting to win big. No amount of money will ever prevent us. We’re all in, as you know. It’s really about winning championships for Philadelphia. So we lost some time. We didn’t lose in the classic way of expense. It was a time expense."
A year ago, Lurie seemed sold that giving Kelly full control of the team was the best way for the Eagles to proceed forward. Today, Lurie said that he was essentially testing Kelly to see if he was the right person to lead the team.
"I think it was a necessary way to go to find out if Chip was the right guy, let him be responsible for all the decisions he wanted to inject and make," Lurie said. "No question I have it was the right way to dissect whether Chip was going to be the right guy going forward or not. We dissected it, and decided that (even) with some of the great things he brought, he wasn’t the right person going forward, and it was helpful to have him be accountable for those decisions so we could move forward in a great way."
The Eagles haven't won a championships since 1960. "Just time" is something the fan base has become accustomed to expending.
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