The year is 2006 and I’m at my friend’s house playing Madden 2004 on Xbox.
It’s the one with Michael Vick on the cover. He is in Falcons red and white, a ball clutched in one hand he looks as if he is about to take off on a scramble.
Vick did a lot of that in Atlanta. And in Madden in thousands of households around the world.
Vick was unstoppable in that game, so much so that, among my friends, it is still considered “cheating” if you used him.
Anyway, I’m playing Madden ’04 and loving it. I’ve got Vick, Julius Peppers is rushing off the edge like a beast and a young Troy Polamalu is terrorising quarterbacks.
I’ve also got a number of other pieces that I can’t remember. But it’s a talented team and we’re into the second year of a franchise. Things are good.
Then one night I went out, had a few beers and returned to my mate’s house.
I reached for the controller and over the next 30 minutes or so I proceeded to blow that team up.
I didn’t set out with the intention to destroy my team. It happened gradually. It always does.
The problem occurs when you lose sight of the big picture. You become focused on getting a particular player and you don’t realise what exactly you’re giving up.
I woke up the next day wallowing in regret. It just wasn’t my team anymore.
Madden is great for that sort of thing. You can play general manager and coach, make the decisions on personnel and in the huddle. You can also make mistakes and the worst that can happen is you have to start again.
I hadn’t seen that sort of reckless decision making in real life until Chip Kelly was handed the reigns of football operations at the Philadelphia Eagles in January this year.
By March he had traded All-Pro running back LeSean McCoy to the Buffalo Bills for linebacker Kiko Alonso (who was a former Oregon Duck under Kelly) and starting quarterback Nick Foles to St Louis for quarterback Sam Bradford.
Two days later he signed former Chargers running back Ryan Mathews, despite the fact the team already had Murray and Darren Sproles in the backfield.
Within two seasons he had released the teams two best wide receivers, DeSean Jackson and Jeremy Maclin, but re-signed mediocre pass catcher Riley Cooper.
He also released a number of other high profile Eagles veterans in roster moves that raised the ire of fans.
Kelly was trying to rebuild the Eagles organisation in his image.
In actuality, he was doing the real life NFL equivalent of coming home drunk and blowing up your team on Madden.
I wrote about Kelly’s head scratching moves in March this year, pointing out that I thought they made no sense and seemed poorly thought out, rash and reckless.
I mean why trade your starter, who managed his best season in your system, for an older, more injury prone quarterback? Why add another running back to an already full backfield?
Why cut all your best skill players? Why make it look like you’re trying to piss the city of Philadelphia off? It made no sense.
I wouldn’t have been surprised that if, once he was fired, The Man Purporting To Be Chip Kelly [or TMPTBCK for short] for the past year ripped off his lifelike Kelly mask to reveal he was just some portly teenager. The real Chip Kelly was tied up in a garage in rural Pennsylvania surviving only on Eskimo pies.
TMPTBCK tells us it was all a big joke and that he just wanted to see how far he could push it before he was fired. TMPTBCK laughs when he tells the gathered media he couldn’t believe it when everyone just swallowed all those wild trades back in March.
That would almost make as much sense as what Kelly did.
And when the inevitable happened and it didn’t work out of course he had to be fired.
To steal a line from the Philadelphia News: “See what happens when you blow up a team and it goes 6-9?”
Kelly had to win the division after those personnel moves. It probably had to be convincing, too. If the Eagles had snuck through with an 8-8 record in the poor NFC East Kelly would have still been facing the firing squad.
That’s because none of his gambles paid off.
Bradford (17 touchdowns and 19 total turnovers) was average when he wasn’t hurt.
Murray was hugely disappointing, averaging a meagre 3.5 yards per carry for a total of 633 rushing yards – a far cry from his NFL Offensive Player of the Year campaign when he rushed for 1,845 yards and averaged 4.7 yards per tout.
Alonso, who missed entire 2014 season with a torn ACL, re-injured the leg in Week 2 and only managed to play in 10 games this year. He had only 34 tackles.
Meanwhile, Jeremy Maclin and LeSean McCoy enjoyed good season for their new teams.
These are roster decisions that will impact the team for years and the Kelly era will live in infamy in the city of brotherly love.
The next general manager to fill Kelly’s shoes will have to blow up the team again, just to get things back to normal.
That should mean goodbye for Bradford and Murray, neither of which you can build a franchise around anymore.
As for Kelly, he arrived from Oregon an innovator. He will leave as enigma, a risk-taker who perhaps was given too much power too soon.
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