Chip Kelly gets DeSean Jackson’s attention with demotion

If anyone was wondering about Eagles coach Chip Kelly’s willingness to shake things up, let them wonder no more.
Even beyond speeding up the pace, playing loud music, or getting rid of the tacos, Kelly has been willing to push his new team to make sure his message was being received.
That included making one of his best players, wide receiver DeSean Jackson, run with the third team at times.
“There were times when I was going with the threes, times when I was going with the twos, things like that,” Jackson told Tim McManus of PhillyMag.com. “There was a point where I went into Chip Kelly’s office and talked to him face-to-face to see what was going on with that.”
Kelly told him what he’s said to others, that nothing was going to be given, regardless of previous status.
“He just expects everyone to do things a certain way,” Jackson said. “He was asking everybody to do the same thing. For myself, I just had to really hear it from his mouth to get that rapport with him and be on the same page with him. When I went in there, he said he expects everybody to buy into the system and do everything the right way.
“And if there is any little thing a player doesn’t want to do, that’s his way of reacting to it. The best thing I did was go talk to him instead of just sitting back and being mad.”
Kelly wants his offensive skill players to be versatile, which means knowing everyone else’s assignments as well as their own. When Jackson wasn’t up to speed, Kelly gave him some remedial work.
Jackson admitted that was new to him, since he was given one assignment, and generally executed it well under old coach Andy Reid.
And while he required some time and a talk, he said he supports Kelly’s plan now.
“At the beginning of the process I didn’t know the full offense and I didn’t know every play, so that probably had to do with why I was moved to different teams and things like that,” Jackson said. “Now I am all-in on the offense and I’m very familiar with the whole system. It’s a good thing that I am able to learn that and know what everyone is doing instead of one person. . . .
“Now I’m with the right group and everything is good and there’s never been no problems. I just had to get a feel for [Kelly] and know what he wants and what he expects me to do.”
And Kelly also got the attention of the rest of the locker room by making an example of Jackson, a quick-strike move to establish his authority.

Source: PFT.com
Author: Darin Gantt

Kaepernick thought he was going to be a Raider

So the Raiders had a brilliant plan to make a trade to get the quarterback they so desperately needed, and it didn’t quite work out.
Stop us if you’ve heard this one before.
Peter King of Sports Illustrated outlines the background of the Raiders’ attempt to maneuver in the 2011 NFL Draft for Colin Kaepernick, a move Kaepernick himself thought was going to happen.
“Coach [Hue] Jackson told me before the draft they were going to do everything they could to try to get me,” Kaepernick said. “I thought there was a good chance they’d pick me. I never heard anything from the 49ers before the draft after I worked out for them [at Nevada]. I just figured they weren’t interested.”
Except, they were, and they beat the Raiders to the punch.
The Raiders loved Kaepernick, and had him rated atop their board of quarterbacks (ahead of top pick Cam Newton and first-rounders Jake Locker, Blaine Gabbert and Christian Ponder).
But everyone knew they loved him, so the 49ers knew who they had to get in front of.
Both teams tried to make a deal with the Patriots, owners of the 33rd overall pick, but couldn’t get it done. The 49ers were finally able to deal with Denver for the 36th spot.
“I think about it all the time, believe me,” Jackson said. “No question in my mind we wanted it to happen, and no question I thought it could happen. We wanted the kid in the worst way.”
Not getting Kaepernick then led to a string of bad decisions, from using a supplemental third-rounder on Terrelle Pryor to panicking and giving up a first and a second six months later in exchange for Carson Palmer.
Landing Kaepernick could have changed so many things, perhaps keeping Jackson on the job, and that might have kept Reggie McKenzie from taking over as General Manager a year later to blow the place up and start over.
But obviously, this was all Zak Gilbert’s fault.

Source: PFT.com
Author: Darin Gantt
AP Photo, Tony Avelar

McNabb wants father-son meeting with Griffin

When former NFL quarterback Donovan McNabb recently called out the Cowboys for giving quarterback Tony Romo a nine-figure contract, many wondered whether this meant that McNabb would criticize any quarterbacks who in his mind justify it, or whether he’d simply use his fairly new media platform to settle scores with former rivals.
McNabb, apparently, is taking the more balanced approach.
He tells Mike Wise of the Washington Post that Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III is doing “too much right now; it’s just too much.”
Specifically, the second overall pick in 1999 believes that propensity of the second overall pick in 2012 to find and linger in the spotlight will potentially hurt the team.
“I get some of things he’s doing to draw attention to himself: the Adidas commercials, going out and enjoying the life of a young, famous NFL quarterback.  I understand RG has a lot of stuff going on,” McNabb said.  “But if you’re coming off ACL surgery, you don’t need to be having a press conference at OTAs.  Every week?  Really?  It becomes a circus, a sideshow.  It takes away from the focus of what those sessions are supposed to be about:  the team.”
McNabb compared the situation to the manner in which his coach in Philly handled similar situations.  “One thing Andy Reid did is he never let the injured guys become the story if they were off to the side at practice,” McNabb said.  “He thought it took away from the guys who were grinding and practicing every day.
“So when I look up on TV and see him up there talking all the time about how great he’s doing — or doing jumping jacks or someone else talking about his supernatural healing powers — I wonder to myself:  Is this about selling tickets to the fans or what?
“I don’t blame him.  They’re letting him do it.  But at some point, it can be counterproductive.  You can set yourself up for more criticism later.”
Criticism also can come from comments made by Griffin’s father, who recently expressed public concern that the Redskins expect Griffin III to run too much.
“His dad should have never done a one-on-one interview like that,” McNabb told Wise.  “You can’t say what he said because it almost undermines his son, who has to answer all the questions about it later.  Now, we all know what he said was right.  But that’s something you voice behind closed doors because otherwise it creates a wedge that didn’t have to be there.  No team needs those kinds of things hovering over them.”
So McNabb has offered assistance to Griffin III.  And Griffin II.
“I would really like for me and my dad to sit down with he and his dad just to tell them what we went through and talk about our experiences,” McNabb said.
McNabb tried to reach out to Griffin last year, but McNabb never heard from him.  In contrast, McNabb has spoken to Russsell Wilson “many times,” because as McNabb explained it, “I know what it’s like to be young, good and have the world looking at you.”
Regardless of whether McNabb is merely looking for the new generation of quarterbacks to do some NFC-championship-ring-kissing, his experiences and knowledge would be useful to any young player.
Of course, by taking his criticism of Griffin III public, the phone now may never ring.  Especially given McNabb’s views on the Bed, Bath & Beyond wedding-gift controversy.
“When that happens, it just looks like rich people receiving things from the poor,” McNabb said.  “I know his intention wasn’t that, but it’s the perception people take from it.  It’s disrespectful.  You just don’t do that.”
What you also apparently don’t do is ignore Donovan McNabb.   It’ll be interesting to see whether McNabb’s decision to call Griffin III (and II) out results in a sit-down, or provokes an equally public response.

Source: PFT.com
Author: Mike Florio
AP Photo

46-year run ends for Pro Football Weekly

The handwriting has been on the wall for months, given the lack of handwriting or other new content appearing at the Pro Football Weekly website.  Despite the controversial and headline-creating Geno Smith scouting report by Nolan Nawrocki, the worst-kept secret in media circles had been that PFW was in an apparent death spiral.
On Friday, editor Hub Arkush posted a farewell message on the publication’s website.  A separate link revealed the cold, hard truth:  assets of $143,000, and liabilities of $8.5 million.
“Over the last five years our majority owner and each of the minority partners invested a tremendous amount of money, time and effort to try to build a bridge for PFW from the rapidly deteriorating world of old media to the new, exploding market of digital media and glitzy, new products,” Arkush writes.  “We built some truly great stuff that you all seemed to love, but try as we might, we couldn’t get enough of you to pay what it cost us to deliver it.  There comes a time when there is just no more money to lose, and now we are forced to close the doors.”
While PFW could have, in our view, remained competitive in the world of new media — indeed, the publication’s “Way We Hear It” feature reflected Internet-style rumor mongering long before folks were mongering rumors on the Internet — the name itself epitomized old-media realities.  “Weekly” would no longer cut it; news and analysis must be delivered in real-time via electronic means, not once per week in a publication that looked and felt more like a newspaper than a magazine.
At one point, PFW was an indispensable source of league-wide information and analysis to supplement local newspapers that focused on one team and national newspapers that provided only the most superficial information (but at least they did it in pretty colors).  Put simply, times changed and PFW didn’t.
Every new-media publication should heed that warning.  Times will continue to change.  Those who don’t change with the times eventually will have a pile of liabilities that dwarf their assets, too.

Source: PFT.com
Author: Mike Florio
Photo: Pro Football Weekly