Chip Kelly apparently could have done even more damage to the Eagles last offseason.
That is, unless you believe Marcus Mariota is on his way to becoming a true superstar in the NFL.
On the radio with Colin Cowherd earlier this week, Fox Sports NFL insider Peter Schrager gave the specifics of the trade offer Kelly made to the Titans to move up to the No. 2 pick in last year's draft to select Mariota.
Per Schrager, the Eagles offered the Titans their 2015 first- and second-round picks, their 2016 first-round pick, any quarterback on their roster and any defensive player on their roster in exchange for the No. 2 overall pick. (H/t to Philly Sports Network for finding the interview.) And the way Schrager stated it was not "any one defensive player," it was "anyone" on defense, which could have even meant multiple pieces.
That is utterly insane. Not that the Titans would have necessarily selected the players the Eagles took with those two picks last year, but that trade offer could have meant Sam Bradford, Fletcher Cox, Nelson Agholor, Eric Rowe and this year's first-rounder for Mariota.
So many things would have turned out differently had the Titans accepted that reported Godfather offer. For one, Kelly would almost certainly still be here because no matter how poorly things could have played out last year, it's hard to envision Jeff Lurie just one year later firing the head coach that sold the franchise for his ideal quarterback.
The Eagles' cap situation would be completely different now, too, because Bradford's and Cox's money wouldn't be there. Who knows how or where Kelly would have misspent this year's money in free agency.
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Their 2016 draft position would probably be different as well. Would an Eagles team with Mariota but weaknesses in so many other places have been better than 7-9? It's not crazy to think that Eagles team would have been almost as bad as the Titans were last season and that the 2016 first-round pick included in that deal would be a Top 5 pick, making the trade look even worse.
But ... they'd have had Mariota. In this alternate universe, is there any way the Eagles would have been a better team? They'd be without one of the NFL's best defensive players in Cox and two young building blocks in Agholor and Rowe. It's obviously still too early to know whether Agholor and Rowe will live up to their draft stock. But when you add to the equation this year's first-round pick that would be lost, that's another young building block they'd be without, too. So they'd have potentially sacrificed young answers at four different positions to land their QB of the future.
At the end of the day it's nothing more than an exercise because it didn't happen. But definitely a lot to digest and analyze.
I don't even do this kind of stuff in Madden.