Jeffrey Lurie did not wait for "one year to many" to come.
After waiting 14 years to pull the plug on Andy Reid, he fired Chip Kelly after just about three seasons, in which the Eagles missed the playoffs in the final two.
Lurie explained at his Wednesday press conference addressing Kelly's firing that his reasoning for keeping Reid on as long as he did was that he always rebounded from down years.
"The few times we ever did not have a winning season and we were lets say 8-8, he always came back the next year with a 10 win or more season and were in the playoffs," Lurie said. "We didn't have that history here, there's nothing to basically base that on."
Simple math tells you Lurie did not give Kelly a chance to rebound. Kelly won 10 games last season and missed the postseason, but rightfully so. The Eagles were 9-3 and only managed to win one out of their final four games. They lost two games to legitimate contenders that they may have had to play in the playoffs if they qualified in the Seattle Seahawks and Dallas Cowboys, and lost to an inferior Washington Redskins team that was well out of contention in Week 16.
Dating back to the final four games of last season, Kelly's team only managed a 7-12 record.
Besides the lack of success on the field, Lurie handed Kelly the keys to the organization in between the 2014 and 2015 seasons, making him the head of player personnel. As the Eagles record stands at 6-9 with one game left, Lurie seems to have lost his faith in Kelly as the coach and decision maker. He will not allow him to finish this abysmal season, let alone get another season for a chance to rebound.
After Reid's improbable 2008 run to the NFC title game, there was grounds for firing him after the 32-25 loss to Arizona. He had just added a fourth loss in five NFC Championship appearances. The following season the Eagles went from a being a win away from having a bye, to losing to the Dallas Cowboys in the final week of the season and having to travel back to Dallas the following week as a wildcard and lost again.
Reid never won a playoff game after 2008. He should have been gone at least three years sooner than he did.
Lurie was not going to allow mediocrity and winless playoff seasons continue as long as he did with Reid. Not this time. If he didn't believe that Kelly could take the organization to the levels it needed to go, Kelly was going to be gone. And in making the decision, maybe Lurie has learned from his past and is better off being 11 years too soon on Kelly than three years too long.
Ryan Shute is a contributing writer for Eagledelphia. Follow him on Twitter @ShutemUpSports.
