The AFC East is currently the most intriguing division in football, but the NFC East is about to close the gap.
Last night, PFT noted that running back DeMarco Murray intended to take a visit. Adam Schefter of ESPN thereafter discovered that the team Murray will visit is the Eagles.
At first blush, it felt like a ruse -- a win-win for Murray and the Eagles aimed at getting the player more money and forcing the Cowboys to spend more than they wanted. With Darren Sproles under contract, Chris Polk a restricted free agent, and Ryan Mathews reportedly agreeing to a three-year, $11.5 million deal, Murray at whatever price he wants becomes as useless to coach Chip Kelly as LeSean McCoy at $10.25 million.
But with the news, as noted by Geoff Mosher of CSNPhilly.com that Mathews hasn’t signed his contract, the situation becomes more complex. Have the Eagles asked Mathews to tap the brakes in the hopes of furthering the façade? (How fançy.) Have the Eagles pressed pause with Mathews pending the completion of their effort to get Murray? Or has Mathews simply decided to wait, given the impact of Murray’s presence on Mathews’ workload and/or the possibility that Mathews could get more if he becomes a possible Plan B in Dallas?
In a week, the Eagles have gone from McCoy to Frank Gore to Mathews to Murray. For Kelly, who always has everything planned out, the idea that he’s careening like a pinball from tailback to tailback makes little sense. Kelly knew exactly what he wanted to do after trading McCoy; if Gore was the first option, Murray surely wan’t the third.
Unless Kelly genuinely has been stung by local and national criticism of the perception that he is wielding power recklessly and without regard to the broader business realities of building and maintaining a team of football players with whom the fan base connects (and whose jerseys they purchase and proudly wear), his courtship of Murray merely satisfies Kelly’s insatiable thirst for gamesmanship at a time when there are no real games to be played. But if Kelly has heard, and been hurt by, those questioning his loyalties and mental faculties (and by at least one guy who didn’t call Kelly a racist but simply raised on multiple occasions the question of whether he’s a racist), reeling in the 2014 NFL rushing champion after running off the 2013 NFL rushing champion makes sense.
That would be the far bigger story. Signing Murray would show that Kelly isn’t completely committed to his supposed vision of an offense full of interchangeable robots that execute his system faithfully, efficiently, and without question or complaint. Signing Murray would show that Kelly is indeed human, subject to the same natural factors that influence many of the decisions we all make.
